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dystopia
Posts Tagged “
Dystopia
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This glorious picture of the sunset by Eschipul in Houston reveals a sky flooded with ozone, a form of airborne pollution. In fact, the American Lung Association just ranked Houston number 5 for ozone pollution in its annual list of most polluted cities. Pollution makes sunsets extra-beautiful, as you can see in the two other sunsets (below) from more "winners" on the ALA's list.
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The Sunset Splendor of Ozone
This glorious picture of the sunset by Eschipul in Houston reveals a sky flooded with ozone, a form of airborne pollution. In fact, the American Lung Association just ranked Houston number 5 for ozone pollution in its annual list of most polluted cities. Pollution makes sunsets extra-beautiful, as you can see in the two other sunsets (below) from more "winners" on the ALA's list.
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dystopia
LA to Become Blade Runner-esque Dystopia
Sonny Astani is a big-time real estate developer in Southern California. He's also obsessed with Blade Runner. He recently unveiled plans to hang a 14-story LED billboard on the facades of two 33-story condos a la Blade Runner. More »
slavecity
An art studio called Atelier Van Lieshout has spent the last three years developing the perfect dystopia, called SlaveCity. SlaveCity is a place where every human right we've collectively worked toward achieving is turned on its head. But it's also the world's first zero energy town—because they recycle everything from cardboard to useless people. Pictured here is the Welcoming Center. Here, every single entrant to SlaveCity is screened via a taste test, and those who don't pass are stored in these massive vats. Check out a schematic showing how it works below.
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A Perfectly Modern Holocaust-Like Dystopia
An art studio called Atelier Van Lieshout has spent the last three years developing the perfect dystopia, called SlaveCity. SlaveCity is a place where every human right we've collectively worked toward achieving is turned on its head. But it's also the world's first zero energy town—because they recycle everything from cardboard to useless people. Pictured here is the Welcoming Center. Here, every single entrant to SlaveCity is screened via a taste test, and those who don't pass are stored in these massive vats. Check out a schematic showing how it works below.
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found footage
Vegans Kill to Drive Cars and Have Sex in a Dystopian Future
The aptly-named Blood Car is a near-future tale about peak oil and bloodthirsty vegans. Gasoline is so expensive that it takes almost 500 bucks to fill your tank, and most cars have been abandoned in vast "car graveyards." Archie is a nice vegan guy who wants to help the world by creating the first engine that runs on wheatgrass — but instead, he accidentally invents an engine that runs on human blood. More »
dystopia
Life Expectancy Going Down in the United States
In some parts of the United States, medicine has not improved the average life expectancy — and in fact, the average lifespan has been going steadily downward since the 1980s. No, immigration is not to blame for these shifting numbers. These are U.S. citizens in hundreds of different counties whose lives are getting shorter while many other people's lives get longer. A study published on Monday in PLoS Medicine shows where in the U.S. lives (especially women's lives) are getting shorter — and where they're getting longer. In these maps, dark red regions are those of decreasing life expectancy, and dark green regions are areas where it's increasing. Light red means life expectancy is lower than average but not decreasing; and light green means higher than average but not increasing. White is average. So what is killing people at younger ages now that didn't kill them in the 1970s? More »
mega industry
Though the EU has been clamoring to reduce carbon emissions, Germany is in the process of building 26 new coal-burning power plants. Here you can see a gigantic excavator machine mining brown coal near the Boxberg power plant yesterday. Consider this a "before" picture. Want to see what happens after the excavation?
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A Coal-Burning Power Plant, Before and After
Though the EU has been clamoring to reduce carbon emissions, Germany is in the process of building 26 new coal-burning power plants. Here you can see a gigantic excavator machine mining brown coal near the Boxberg power plant yesterday. Consider this a "before" picture. Want to see what happens after the excavation?
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apocalypse not
Bourgeois Survivalism Hits Wall Street
Ever since the subprime mortgage crisis hit, Gordon Gekko types have been understandably jittery. But this? On Sunday the New York Times ran a story about a new wave of survivalism sweeping the upper classes as they hunker down in their penthouse apartments and beach houses in the Hamptons, waiting for the big one — whether that means nuclear war, pandemic, or the collapse of Bear Stearns — to come. Leading the charge is Barton M. Biggs, former chief strategist at Morgan Stanley, who lists wine as one of his top survival rations. Seriously?
radiation
One Pill Could Cure Radiation Sickness
Radiation exposure is going to be a serious problem after the nuclear apocalypse, or when your orbital home is going to be bombarded with plenty of dangerous cosmic radiation from solar flares. And in fact, it's already a problem now in many workplaces where people work with radioactive materials. But a solution may be in sight with a new pill, Protectan, that developer Cleveland BioLabs promises can prevent radiation sickness. More »
dystopia
If you have too many cars on the freeway, the best thing to do is go vertical and build a skyscraper road system. Here is one possible way to do that, layering roads on top of each other until the traffic thins out. Perfect for Los Angeles, where it often takes three hours to cross town on the freeways. [Core Form-ula via Next Nature]
A Twelve-Layer Freeway Clover for Los Angeles
If you have too many cars on the freeway, the best thing to do is go vertical and build a skyscraper road system. Here is one possible way to do that, layering roads on top of each other until the traffic thins out. Perfect for Los Angeles, where it often takes three hours to cross town on the freeways. [Core Form-ula via Next Nature]
dystopia
Las Vegas' Project CityCenter, the largest private development in the Unites States, was to be 8 acres of shops, casinos, hotels, condos, and theaters. But now it looks like big portions of the project may remain in a state of half-built rubble piles for years to come, due to the current credit crisis in the United States. So what did this shining dream of real estate moguls look like before it turned all Resident Evil: Extinction?
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Welcome to the Crumbling Future of the Vegas Strip
Las Vegas' Project CityCenter, the largest private development in the Unites States, was to be 8 acres of shops, casinos, hotels, condos, and theaters. But now it looks like big portions of the project may remain in a state of half-built rubble piles for years to come, due to the current credit crisis in the United States. So what did this shining dream of real estate moguls look like before it turned all Resident Evil: Extinction?
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dystopia
In Tokyo, retail stores are turning into enormous metal caves. Here's one, installed by artist Kimihiko Okada on the ground floor of the Diesel store in Aoyama. Okada took a giant sheet of metal just millimeters thin and molded it into stalactite shapes. It looks like what you'd imagine nature might become 100 years from now when we all live in domes and are trying to recreate the natural world from industrial waste. More pretty caves below.
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The Sheet Metal Retail Caves of Tokyo
In Tokyo, retail stores are turning into enormous metal caves. Here's one, installed by artist Kimihiko Okada on the ground floor of the Diesel store in Aoyama. Okada took a giant sheet of metal just millimeters thin and molded it into stalactite shapes. It looks like what you'd imagine nature might become 100 years from now when we all live in domes and are trying to recreate the natural world from industrial waste. More pretty caves below.
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dystopia
Yes, it's another dystopian morning filled with the smell of burning chemicals and scorched ideology. And nothing says dark future more than working as a car bomb forensics expert, the detective who gets called in when a car bomb like this one (set off in Thailand over the weekend) goes off. It turns out you can learn an awful lot about who set this bomb off from reading the debris it left behind.
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Career of Tomorrow: Car Bomb Forensics Expert
Yes, it's another dystopian morning filled with the smell of burning chemicals and scorched ideology. And nothing says dark future more than working as a car bomb forensics expert, the detective who gets called in when a car bomb like this one (set off in Thailand over the weekend) goes off. It turns out you can learn an awful lot about who set this bomb off from reading the debris it left behind.
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advertising
Mind Control Is Just a Click Away
The goal of most advertisers is, frankly, to bypass your rational brain and reach down into the murky depths of your limbic system to control your desires. And the Web has given advertisers powerful new mind-control tools, allowing them to generate fake "buzz" for products by implanting references to, say, Hewlett Packard on YouTube or Cisco on Wikipedia. The idea is to make people think that their "friends" online like a product and artificially jumpstart a word-of-mouth recommendation for the product. At a South by Southwest panel Friday about the worst viral media advertising, several marketers and critics gathered to discuss the most heinous and failed examples of ads that are turning our mediascape into a William Gibson or Philip K. Dick nightmare. Two ad campaigns stood out as the worst. More »
dystopia
This is what a mass evacuation from a city looks like from space. Using satellites orbiting over Africa, human rights groups published UNOSAT satellite imagery to show, in very simple terms, the human cost of violence in the Chadian capital city of N'Djamena. Over 10,000 people are crammed on a bridge, trying to escape into the neighboring nation of Cameroon. The black dots are people, and the yellow dashes are vehicles, most likely trucks and buses. It's a chilling portrait of the human future, wracked with violence and recorded via space-based surveillance devices, taken on February 27. See the full map below.
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Satellite-Eye-View of People Evacuating in Chad
This is what a mass evacuation from a city looks like from space. Using satellites orbiting over Africa, human rights groups published UNOSAT satellite imagery to show, in very simple terms, the human cost of violence in the Chadian capital city of N'Djamena. Over 10,000 people are crammed on a bridge, trying to escape into the neighboring nation of Cameroon. The black dots are people, and the yellow dashes are vehicles, most likely trucks and buses. It's a chilling portrait of the human future, wracked with violence and recorded via space-based surveillance devices, taken on February 27. See the full map below.
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poll
What Utopian Scenario Will Totally Come True Soon?
Everybody's sick of dystopian futures and bleak predictions. Whatever happened to science fiction's tradition of sunny optimism and can-do cheerfulness? Just because our population is exploding, our consumer economy is dependent on the waning availability of cheap oil and our oceans are dying, is no reason to be negative. Click through to vote for your favorite scenario in which everything is going to work out totally okey dokey. Hunky dory, even. More »
chart
Economists agree the U.S. is sliding into recession, and that can only mean one thing — fewer movies about oppressive systems that crush the souls of ordinary people. We charted the number of dystopian movies in the U.S. for each of the last 30 years, against economic downturns, and found that dystopian movies are counter-cyclical. That is, dystopian films do best when the economy is booming, and a fall in the number of dystopian movies may predict a recession. Click through more details, including a bigger version of the chart and a list of dystopian movies by year.
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When The Economy Booms, Dystopias Rule
Economists agree the U.S. is sliding into recession, and that can only mean one thing — fewer movies about oppressive systems that crush the souls of ordinary people. We charted the number of dystopian movies in the U.S. for each of the last 30 years, against economic downturns, and found that dystopian movies are counter-cyclical. That is, dystopian films do best when the economy is booming, and a fall in the number of dystopian movies may predict a recession. Click through more details, including a bigger version of the chart and a list of dystopian movies by year.
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