Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The Environmental Society


The future, a place of unlimited possibilities. Typically in film and television the future is portrayed as one of either two things, a technological behemoth, or an apocalyptic wasteland, there really is nothing else, but what's to say that there was a third alternative? The environmental alternative?

What if in the future, mankind manages to use the sophisticated technology of the future to manipulate the elements. No more fossil fuels, no more crude technology that damages the environment, but rather a society that lives in harmony with nature.

This society's energy will draw from many areas. Abundant wind turbines on the coasts and in the valleys of the world, countless solar panels in the deserts and other hotspots, ensuring energy to those in that area. None of this is new, but in this future it will be far more plentiful than it is now. But perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this future, is where do people live?

In this future, in order to save the trees of the environment, we no longer build our homes out of wood. Then what do we live in? It all starts with lightning.

In this future lightning will be harvested. There will be farmers whose sole job will be to harvest lightning from thunder storms, capture it into big power rods and course it through generators to manipulate it however is seen fit. Needless to say, lightning farming is a dangerous profession.

The harvested lightning will then be coursed through pools of water, dug in the ground. The electric currents will be so great that it will cause the water to take a solid shape, hence houses. The water will be laced with a non-toxic chemical cocktail made in the future that will allow it to maintain this solid shape without dripping and absorb any of the electric currents that could reach the humans inside.

People will live in these water cocoons. The water will be a pure, renewable way to live. New water will be coursed through continuously, and the polluted water in which they had been living in will be drained and repurified for future use. Of course, if our structures are made of water, what do we do for electricity?

In this future, everything is battery-powered. Solar batteries with tiny solar panels will be all the rage. Rechargeable batteries that will never run out. And forget about television sets, in the future everything will be hologram based. No need to plug a set into the wall, simply let the solar-powered hologram machine a float in mid-air and watch your favorite programming.

This is a future unlike any other, one that will be peaceful, full of passion and love. Whether or not a place like this will ever exist, I don't know, but one can dream.