And more generally, if you are the world's leader in fetching, organizing and navigating the information, it puts you in a great position to jump on new trends.
I believe Google's business plan goes like this:
1. Master the world's information flow.
2. Make some money in the process.
3. Invest in promising new technology.
4. Strengthen your competitive advantage even more.
5. Massive profit.
6. World domination.
See? No "???" item.
As a technocratic optimist, I am glad that this plan extends the human knowled
There's a big difference between 'cautionary tale' and 'impossible' (indeed, 'cautionary tale' is one of the valuable tools that designers can use to make things possible and not fuck them up...); but anytime somebody proposes some arcology-style megastructure, I immediately think of all those (relatively modern, relatively upscale in terms of rent/unit area and clientele, office buildings that can't even maintain comfortable temperatures in many of their rooms, despite being built, by a single entity in th
After reading the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, I think when talking about the space elevator, we should always consider what happens if (when?) it fails. Space fountains seem much more appealing.
* The center of mass is in orbit, the structure won't fling itself far off into space.
* The segment of the string above the break will be under less tension which means it'll spring back a bit, but it's not in orbit down there so it'll be pulled back down to the earth so we could repair it.
* The segment below the cut will plummet down. Regardless of the material, we can safely assume at least several hundred tons of material will be falling from the sky which will completely destroy the ground based install
And more generally, if you are the world's leader in fetching, organizing and navigating the information, it puts you in a great position to jump on new trends.
I believe Google's business plan goes like this:
1. Master the world's information flow.
2. Make some money in the process.
3. Invest in promising new technology.
4. Strengthen your competitive advantage even more.
5. Massive profit.
6. World domination.
See? No "???" item.
As a technocratic optimist, I am glad that this plan extends the human knowled
Once thing they should look at is a city within a single mega-structure.
Why should they build an Arcology, when there are already two in progress:
Masdar City in Abu Dhabi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
Arcosanti North of Phoenix Arizona: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
After reading the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, I think when talking about the space elevator, we should always consider what happens if (when?) it fails. Space fountains seem much more appealing.
* The center of mass is in orbit, the structure won't fling itself far off into space.
* The segment of the string above the break will be under less tension which means it'll spring back a bit, but it's not in orbit down there so it'll be pulled back down to the earth so we could repair it.
* The segment below the cut will plummet down. Regardless of the material, we can safely assume at least several hundred tons of material will be falling from the sky which will completely destroy the ground based install