A rundown for the unacquainted is that they basically want to build a big geodesic dome over the U.S. city of Houston, which has gotten some positive coverage from the Discovery Channel's website. Now, why on EARTH would you want to build a big friggin dome over such a large city? Well, basically it's to do the same thing a Greenhouse does for plants but for people: condition the habitat for its occupants (in this case vegetables, including the special variant known as couch potatoes). It uses a material that allows UV rays to come through and thus allow plant growth, and the dome would be able to open up certain panels for ventilation et cetera. Overall it's a nice plan if you find a way to convince everyone to drive electric cars and figure out a way for the local new chopper to get it.
So sounds like a nice, futuristic idea, bringing the days depicted in science fiction one step closer. But this isn't the first example of human ingenuity reflecting themes and ideas brought about in science fiction. This makes me ask - are our fantastical ideas of the future as children or in the books we read or movies we see influencing our innovations of tomorrow? It certainly seems so. Of course, some things don't work out - building the tripods from War of the Worlds would be foolish as we A. don't have any murderous martians to put into them, and B. 3 legged transport is inefficient. Anyone who has watched Gundam would know 2 legged transport is the way of the future ;)
So if we really are making our future reflect what we think it should be like, how can we use this to make things better? Could this be used to implement perfect utopia? Could we have human-like AI controlled robots running around as bonafide members of society? And how come certain things (like city-wide domes and robot puppies) are worked on while other grand ideas like socks that never wear out that can be worn as shoes (not quite like this) or holographic HUD sunnies never quite grab attention?
Either way, the future looks very interesting, and given the trend so far, I think we can expect our lower-level dreams of the future to come to fruition soon. At least in Houston :)
Update: This is more what I meant by socks that double as shoes, but with a much less obvious sole (preferably none, but that's thinking a bit TOO big) and with a much longer neck/cuff/whatever the hell you call the long part of a knee high sock. Oh and a single colour, like long white school or sports socks. Now that'd be cool. You can probably guess that I hate wearing shoes.
Update: This is more what I meant by socks that double as shoes, but with a much less obvious sole (preferably none, but that's thinking a bit TOO big) and with a much longer neck/cuff/whatever the hell you call the long part of a knee high sock. Oh and a single colour, like long white school or sports socks. Now that'd be cool. You can probably guess that I hate wearing shoes.
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