A World Without Doors
(I blame the following story on Julie, who lives down the hall. She suggested how cool the world would be if we could all teleport...this was in addition to our musings about how useful it would be to have six arms, or be telekinetic. Many hands do indeed make light labor.)
Now that everyone can go anywhere they want, there aren't anymore borders. I mean, its kind of pointless to have borders when a guy can be anywhere within or without of them when he wants. Of course, tourism's now a world industry, and war has become pretty much pointless because people can decide to not be where the shooting is.
But its not all sunlight and roses. How do you keep a mass murderer in a jail when he can be wherever he wants? You can't. The corporal and capital punishment are pretty much universal now. And even they're pretty hard to do. Of course, murder's virutally impossible, because people can choose not to be where the murderer is.
You meet so many interesting people, especially now that the world economy's gone. Everything's electronic, because...well, money's useless when you can't keep it safe and secure...and what with tourism being so big and all. Of course, there's still the communication barrier, but I mean you pretty much HAVE to be fluent in three or four languages now if you want to be understood. Unilingual people are just so dull.
Buildings go up so quickly. Without the need for doors, you just throw some windows in and you're set. No elevators, no stairs, no doors. Just the foundations, and the floors, and the windows. Of course this means that you get restaraunts that are just tables and a bar. All the foods brought in from fancy central distribution facilities (which is pretty much how all franchise places work, anyway). The food-sweat shops of South-East Asia were in the news just last week, people too poor to live anywhere, so no matter where they go they need to do menial labor just to make ends meet. Sure you can go anywhere, any time, but if you don't have job skills or a way of getting them you've still got problems. But...not so much, of course. Global hobos and all that.
They're talking about a space program. Of course, they'd need supplies, enough to get a man on the moon, then onto Phobos, then onto Mars. But if you keep leapfrogging, you could be out of the solar system in a week. They still haven't figured out terraforming, or how to properly colonize other planets, but you can book a room on the ISS, so we may just have to start moving materials and constructing more stations farther out.
It's a brave new horizon, this world without doors.
Now that everyone can go anywhere they want, there aren't anymore borders. I mean, its kind of pointless to have borders when a guy can be anywhere within or without of them when he wants. Of course, tourism's now a world industry, and war has become pretty much pointless because people can decide to not be where the shooting is.
But its not all sunlight and roses. How do you keep a mass murderer in a jail when he can be wherever he wants? You can't. The corporal and capital punishment are pretty much universal now. And even they're pretty hard to do. Of course, murder's virutally impossible, because people can choose not to be where the murderer is.
You meet so many interesting people, especially now that the world economy's gone. Everything's electronic, because...well, money's useless when you can't keep it safe and secure...and what with tourism being so big and all. Of course, there's still the communication barrier, but I mean you pretty much HAVE to be fluent in three or four languages now if you want to be understood. Unilingual people are just so dull.
Buildings go up so quickly. Without the need for doors, you just throw some windows in and you're set. No elevators, no stairs, no doors. Just the foundations, and the floors, and the windows. Of course this means that you get restaraunts that are just tables and a bar. All the foods brought in from fancy central distribution facilities (which is pretty much how all franchise places work, anyway). The food-sweat shops of South-East Asia were in the news just last week, people too poor to live anywhere, so no matter where they go they need to do menial labor just to make ends meet. Sure you can go anywhere, any time, but if you don't have job skills or a way of getting them you've still got problems. But...not so much, of course. Global hobos and all that.
They're talking about a space program. Of course, they'd need supplies, enough to get a man on the moon, then onto Phobos, then onto Mars. But if you keep leapfrogging, you could be out of the solar system in a week. They still haven't figured out terraforming, or how to properly colonize other planets, but you can book a room on the ISS, so we may just have to start moving materials and constructing more stations farther out.
It's a brave new horizon, this world without doors.
posted by Derek the Bard at 2:14 a.m.
1 Comments:
This is pretty cool, man. When you mentioned it earlier today (or was it late Saturday night?) I wish I'd been awake enough to realize I didn't know what you meant and that I should read the blog.
You're right. You could turn this into a comic. A really odd comic, but a really interesting one, too. Expand, expand!
- jasonk
Post a Comment
<< Home