Difference between revisions of "The look of our environment"

Latest revision as of 12:49, 9 May 2024

Even more so than with 3D printing organic looking housing is for free once designed once.

Surface level of new cities may become park like. Everything looking rather grey and concrete like here is somewhat unintentional and only due to image generating AI being to biased towards today's worlds materials.

Also beyond cities much more parks and nature to expect due to automated maintenance and former farmland getting free for repurposing.

Vast nature reserves (made accessible for minimally intrusive observation). Former (conventional flat surface) farmland repurposed to such nature reserves.

This page is here to focuses exclusively on the expectable optical look of a future in which advanced atomically precise technology has spread far and wide. Plus some minimal reasoning behind it. Some things may become a reality long before APT is reached some not.

[Todo: add short explanations and links]

What drives large scale differences

Cost of building structures (out of nontrivial materials)

One of the biggest impact properties of gemstone based APM is that
production of extremely large quantities of products/materials becomes cheap
and that regardless of the complexity of the products/materials.
That is: Even high performance computing chips and solar high efficiency cells
become as cheap as or (more likely) much cheaper than even the cheapest materials we have today.
That is: Cheaper than asphalt and concrete. And even more so cheaper than clay, wood, iron, glass, and cheap plastics.

Cost of underground working

Likely to expect is that undergound working becomes orders of magnitude cheaper due to
– cheaper production of undergroud working devices (of all sizes)
– more advanced undergound working devices. See: Underground working

Cost of Energy

While there is plenty of solar energy locally or regionally we might not want to plaster our living spaces beyond a certain point but … For the foreseeable future there is near boundless solar energy to be harvested from the worlds oceans.
See e.g. page: Carbon dioxide harvester buoy.
Foreseeable future meaning not going to Kardashev scales yet.

While there is lots of solar power hitting Earth it is not not extremely dense per area.
Meaning if cities grow more vertical (both below and above ground) then only fully local solar won't be enough.
Three points to that:

• Cheap energy transport
• Big chap local storage capacity
• Nuclear (though cooling can become an issue eventually)

There can be local reserve energy storage.
Being it hydrogen in old caverns or some sort of chemical zipping storage.

Nuclear (both fission and fusion) is likely to become more accessible too. Plants cheaper to build and safer.

Cost of long range (solar energy) transport

Long range transport of the harvested energy from the seas to where it's needed would become cheap.
Harvested energy would likely transported chemically rather than electrically as …

• conversion to and from chemical energy will become highly efficient
• transport of chemical energy is more efficient than transport of eclectically energy

See page: Chemical energy transmission

Electric overhead lines would slowly become a relic of the past.
Today they are still almost a symbol of modern civilization.

Cost of automation of physical tasks

Robots (humanoid & not) and truly capable AI may well arrive still before gem-gum-tec at current progress (2024).
Still with the new technology things will get still faster & cheaper.

Consequences on the look of our environment on large scales (outdoors & underground)

Outdoors

Most of surface land use today is farming. "Open surface farming". With it's scars well visible from space.
Given the above a lot (if not most of) land use would move underground, more or less vertical, and become fully automated.

This reduces the need for "open surface farming" which opens up large areas of land for repurposing.
Several options for repurposing old "open surface farming" land:

• Nature reserves (made accessible for minimally intrusive observation)
• Vast areas of recreational parkland (fully automatedly maintained; for edutainment, sports, arts, …)
• City spaces (that may not look all that different form park spaces on the surface level)
• And perhaps other stuff (minor recreational manual surface farming, …)

Note that this is not necessarily about replacing old world systems but extending them.
Sometimes it might turn out easier to build new cities (possibly even in in formerly inhabitable places like deserts) Old cities might

• either gradually upgrade and become a wild mix of old and new
• or get completely abandoned and gradually form a postapocalyptic landscape (without the apocalypse).

Especially with rising sea-levels (before the climate crisis is fixed) there might already be a few candidates for abandonment spottable.
Yes, be then AI migh be so good at programming that reviving some old abanoned cities becomes possible.
If so desired. For actual use or perhaps more likely as restored museum cities (the whole city is the content of the museum).
With petrol cars and all.

Underground

This will not at all feel claustrophobic.
There can be huge caverns. Much more advanced lighting options than today.
Fore those who really can't bear seeing a blue only once in a while going to the surface.
Display tech by then will likely be able to simulate the sky indistinguishable from the real thing.

Outdoors (list format)

• agricultural field area replaced through parks for humans and nature or other things
• streets drastically changing appearance and character
• vanishing electric power transmission towers
• sails replacing windmills
• much more variety in shapes of architecture
• variety in daily seen ethnicities - stronger societal mixing due to cheaper transport
• a lot of public displays - screens replacing all billboards screens on/in many other surfaces (like e.g. house walls and parts of streets and walkways)
• more intense colors - artificial environment starting to feature whole gamut colors
• brighter colors - as bright as the blazingly glistering reflected sunlight from waves
• radically different kind of clothing (clothing partly independent of time of year - except naked)
• radical variety of clothing (open source archives of styles the past always remaining accessible)
• abundant physical telepresence
• much decreased negative effect of some natural disasters (earthquakes, storm) – one reason: mostly indoor vertical farming
• most people wearing computer-glasses or computer-contact-lenses

• less people seen in local (i.e. direct physical) social interaction ?
• - more global social interaction
• - less working for survival
• - more working for what one finds needs to be done
• - vanishing fixed place of work
• - dispersed interest groups

• lights shining down from one or more Moon-Cities (depending on amount of outdoor lighting)

• very quiet environment
• - no more jackhammers on newer construction sites **
• - quieter planes
• - quieter trains
• - no loud and stinky reciprocating combustion engines
• - no loud macroscopic reciprocating compressor pumps

• no more people fighting mosquitoes

Indoors (list format)

Office, workshop and general working room related

• digitally adjustable shelves (adjustment probably wont be done that often) - many styles
• tables usable as computers? (might not be needed so much because of VR/AR)
• workshops degrading to just spaces where things can be put together by hand without tools
• many upgrades to the workshops that explicitly work with "old" materials making those products cheaper too but not as cheap as gem gum stuff.

Kitchen related

• unbreakable tableware that retains the so much appreciated characteristics (hardness, sound, "coldness" that is thermal conductivity)
• breakable tableware (just for effect) that slightly bluntens all the edges when broken
• upgraded dishwashers (???) and washing machines (???)

Bathroom and toilet related

• not too much change in toilets ?
• active self cleaning ? inch sized cleaning bots ?

Livingroom and bedroom related

• Body shape adapting furniture. But dynamically. That is: Not enforcing a certain sitting position.
  Many styles. Also trivial then to have extremely advanced massaging chairs.
• always perfect temperature (not exactly a visible parameter but excuse this exception **)

General

• semi soft floors super friendly for naked feet
• new types of doors (hand sign to let it slide open - no slide in slot)

• Multimedia way beyond screens and projectors.
• Astounding robotics. See: Multi limbed sensory equipped shells and Gem-gum balloon products

Related

• Large scale construction
• Likely visual appearance of gem-gum products
• Future world scenarios