jump to navigation

Toms Shoes August 28, 2007

Posted by Tom in Environment, Science Fiction (for now), future, new world, social problems.
add a comment

I haven’t been suffering from writer’s block, or blogger’s block… I”ve been trying to find something really good…

Well, unless I’m wrong, I think have found another great New World Idea.

Toms Shoes

As far as I can tell this is a great idea and part of what I envisage in the future.

Business that gives to those who need.

How?

By selling to those who have.

I might be wrong and I would like to research this further.

I like the idea.

In Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series he writes about a new economy for Mars as it is being terra-formed.

It is an ecological economy in which giving is fundamental to the way the economy works.

I would like to read more about this so any suggestions are welcome.

Anyway back to the point, here is a quick video with a slightly gushy we’re going to save the world feel about Toms shoes

Vertical Farming June 20, 2007

Posted by Tom in Cities, Environment, Science Fiction (for now), Techstuff, anti-car, future, tech news.
1 comment so far

One of the vertcal farm ideas
I have many visions of the future of humanity living in a world that we have finally grown old enough to manage sensibly. I have lots of ideas on this topic but one area I like to dwell on is the future of cities.

I would love to share them all now but I think I will finish my second degree first and get some more knowledge, then they (my ideas) might be taken more seriously and have some positive effect other than spreading ideas (which is, of course, useful). That is how I would like them to be taken so that’s the way I’m doing this.

Anyway one of my personal visions is that we all live close to one another. By this I don’t mean that all humans live crammed into a tiny space.

We will, I hope, reach a collective realization that our personal goals are less fulfilling than that of our planet’s and species’ survival and we will live in communities (I’m not envisaging some future communism) in which all services and needs are taken care of close by. If they aren’t serviced in that region they will be in the next. This will involve a dramatic decrease in the use of transportation of goods and people.

I cannot go into too much detail here as I mentioned earlier I wish to be able to develop this idea further.
What has struck me in the news this week was Vertical farms.We are one step closer to this idea. Vertical farms are skyscrapers built with farms on every floor. They will have a renewable power generator (solar or wind) on the roof that provide energy throughout the building and will have elaborate irrigation systems that recycle all the water.

So while people in cities live close to their food supply (that hasn’t been flown in from miles away), the countryside, outside the population centres, can thrive and seeds can evolve as they should.Some may feel this is removing the natural from food. What many don’t perhaps realize is that this happened a long time ago. What we may be looking at here, is allowing the natural food sources to develop themselves so we can develop our own versions safely without destroying the source.

One has to be careful though as with all miracle solutions, we do not then want to turn the solution into another problem. I would hate to see the remaining countryside be used for biofuel production.
Another projectAll images from the project’s site: http://www.verticalfarm.com/index.php