Millenium Madness: What Does the Future Really Hold in Store for You?

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Millennium Madness: What Does the Future Really Hold in Store for You

Now here's a timely story, as you guys'N'Gals out there in the off-line world gather around your New Year drink tables and prepare to toast good-bye to the sad ol' 20th century.

Out with the old. In with the new. Ciao concentration camps and holes in the ozone layer. Hello cold fusion and global understanding via the Net.

Yep, we've discovered a web site - Chronicle of the Future - that has bravely manufactured a fictional timeline of the next century, while various luminaries are richly paid to hazard guesses about the shape of the future on this portal of the potential.

Chronicle of the Future (CoF) divide their site into various topics such as science, medicine, finance, warfare and other subsections.

I suspect that if we could fast-forward 50 years hence, most these predictions would look as dodgy as the Amazing Tales covers of the 1930s. That is to say, all gleaming Jetson-like cities and air-car traffic jams. Still, it's a good attempt, nevertheless.

Here's an except from their architecture section, which might help you make your mind up as to whether you're going to surf on over for a visit or not ..

<SNIP>

12.01.09

NOT SINCE the 1890s have architects had such a fascination with natural forms. But where art nouveau was a purely decorative movement, the New Organics are dealing with the highest of high-tech. The British engineering firm Ove Arup started it in the 1980s, with its research into the strength of natural structures. Now buildings inspired by spider's webs, giant hogweed, bird's nests, coral reefs and termite mounds are on drawing boards everywhere.

The reasons are not simply poetic. A spider's web is amazingly tough. A fragile-looking plant can withstand a gale that will blow the roofs off buildings. House martins can build lightweight, durable homes very rapidly. Coral reefs shape themselves according to climatic conditions. And termite mounds - cities in microcosm - have sophisticated natural ventilation systems that could provide an alternative to power-hungry air conditioning.

Architects are combining new engineering techniques and new lightweight materials - some being developed to build bases on the moon and Mars- to produce a new aesthetic. Plans to create the world's first branching, flexible skyscraper in Melbourne - a building that spreads out as it rises, unlike the rigid tapering columns of 20th-century towers - look likely to succeed, given the new economic boom in the Pacific Rim and Australia's determination to outdo resurgent Japan and Korea.

If this has wet your appetite for a sneak at the possible shape of the big 21K, then this is URL to visit:

http://www.chronicle-future.co.uk/

If this isn't to your taste, then browse some new SF books in print

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