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Dynamic Skyscraper in Dubai

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The announcement of the world’s first dynamic building has echoes of the futuristic and modernist designers of the Archigram movement:

archigram domesThe 420-metre (1,378-foot) building’s apartments would spin a full 360 degrees, at voice command, around a central column by means of 79 giant power-generating wind turbines located between each floor.

It is interesting to see certain elements, including the modularity, individualism, and dynamism of concepts like the Archigram Plug-in-City re-emerge in the 21st century.

The Dynamic Tower itself is impressive in it’s grandeur and the scale of it’s ambition. The fact that the architect claims the building “would be energy self-sufficient as the turbines would produce enough electricity to power the entire building and even feed extra power back into the grid” adds to the wonder.

[story via BBC News][image by Claire L. Evans]

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Testing Drugs on Troubled Veterans

rxSounds like science fiction, or maybe soon-to-be-an-episode-of Law ‘n’ Order.

Somebody’s thinking went like this: Let’s test Chantix, a stop-smoking drug with possible side effects that include suicide and “neuropsychiatric behavior,” on Iraq war vets already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. What could possibly go wrong? Former US Army sniper James Elliott “snapped” months after he began taking the drug for $30 a month, left home with a loaded gun, and was stopped by police responding to a 911 call before he could do any harm.

It wasn’t until three weeks later that the Veterans Administration advised the veterans in the Chantix study that the drug may cause serious side effects, including “anxiety, nervousness, tension, depression, thoughts of suicide, and attempted and completed suicide.”

[Image: Mike Licht]

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Does science need art to answer fundamental questions?

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Violin and Playing Cards, Cubist painting by Juan Gris That’s the question posed in this fascinating article by Jonah Lehrer at SEED Magazine. Riffing on the possibility that Niels Bohr may have been influenced by his interest in Cubism when he came up with his new model of the atom, Lehrer argues that science needs art in order to answer the most fundamental questions:

Physicists study the fabric of reality, the invisible laws and particles that define the material world. Neuroscientists study our perceptions of this world; they dissect the brain in order to understand the human animal. Together, these two sciences seek to solve the most ancient and epic of unknowns: What is everything? And who are we?

But before we can unravel these mysteries, our sciences must get past their present limitations. How can we make this happen? My answer is simple: Science needs the arts. We need to find a place for the artist within the experimental process, to rediscover what Bohr observed when he looked at those cubist paintings. The current constraints of science make it clear that the breach between our two cultures is not merely an academic problem that stifles conversation at cocktail parties. Rather, it is a practical problem, and it holds back science’s theories. If we want answers to our most essential questions, then we will need to bridge our cultural divide. By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science can gain the kinds of new insights and perspectives that are the seeds of scientific progress.

(Via Idea Festival.)

What do you think? Is he on to something, or is this just a romantic plea to an unromantic world to put art back on the pedestal of importance it once occupied?

(Image: “Juan Gris: Violin and Playing Cards (1995.403.14)”. In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.)

[tags]art,science,physics, neuroscience[/tags]

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Help re-imagine Project Orion – nuclear space propulsion in the noughties

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NASA\'s Project Orion - concept artIf you’re in need of something to bring a bit of excitement to your Tuesday (and let’s face it, who isn’t?), maybe you’d like to get involved with re-thinking the idea of launching space missions using the Project Orion model – in other words, the sixties concept space vehicle propelled by small nuclear explosions. [image courtesy NASA via Wikimedia Commons]

No, that’s a genuine NASA concept. And this is a genuine request; the following email turned up in the Futurismic contact inbox over the weekend from one Peter Queckenstedt:

“My name is Peter, I’m a Canadian designer, currently studying for my master’s in transportation design at the Umea Institute in Sweden.

I’m doing some advance work on my upcoming final degree project, and thought Futurismic might be able to aid me. My plan is to revive the idea of Project Orion, the atomic bomb-propelled ship designed in the 60s. My focus is not so much on the engineering side, but more on the ‘blue-sky’ ideas side. I want to explore what kind of changes 50 years of technology would make to this craft. My main intent is to get people excited about the idea of sending people into space in a serious manner.

If you know of anyone that might be interested in collaborating, sponsoring, or providing inspiration and input please let me know. Engineers, fiction writers, artists, mad scientists, bloggers … I’m open to anything as long as it’s interesting.”

There you have it, folks – if you fancy getting your crowdsource on and thinking about nuclear-powered rockets, now’s your chance! I think the best way to do this would be for you to leave a comment below if you’re interested in helping out, making sure to use a valid email address which I can then forward on to Peter.

But feel free to share ideas at the same time – for example, is Project Orion any more or less reasonable a suggestion now we’ve had five more decades of experience with nuclear power and weapons, not to mention the economic cost of space exploration?

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Ephemera of the Future

When writing science-fiction – aside from the grandiose themes of plot, concept, and character – one occasionally has to portray the mundane aspects of life in the land of the speculative.

Inclusion of day-to-day ephemera can lend a touch of realism, a sensawunda (like when Hari Seldon takesweb_2.0 out a pocket computer in Foundation – an idea that would have seemed fantastical in the 1950s), or even humour to a storyline.

However the devil is in the details. Part of the joy of science fiction is the way grand concepts like the Singularity manifest themselves in mundane, day-to-day things. This can also make the writing a little trickier.

For example the contents of business cards, ripe fare for design students are shortly to be revolutionised by the continuing liberalisation of the domain name system by Icaan, the Internet corporation for assigned names and numbers:

Individuals will be able to register a domain based on their own name, or any other string of letters, as long as they can show a “business plan and technical capacity”.

If this works out it will (presumably) mean that there will now be thousands of new top-level domain names. The projected cost of registering a domain name is quoted at “…at least several thousand dollars…” but I’m sure there are plenty of individuals, organisations and companies that would love to acquire their own patch of web-real-estate equivalent to .co.uk or .eu.

It is a tiny item, but it shows how much the world has changed, and how difficult it is to predict where change will come from.

[story from BBC News][image by jonas therkildson]

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