2068

The year 2068 we will ever live 

George Orwell : Our only authentic life is in the future. 

Date: May 24, 2068

Location : 35.199943°N 101.913297°W 

Avzar Melchik, Ba?l?l?k (‘Dependence’) : “But what if light and shade should be reversed? If you press the switch then, would you turn the darkness on?” 

Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing here? What am I expected to do now? 

...I thought. 

Just like in a movie, I could be Travis in “Paris, Texas.” This period of recovering consciousness after a full day of sleep has always fascinated me. Like in and out from a zone, one moment I am off somewhere and the next moment I am here, with you. A fascinating recovery of one self... 

I had a strange dream, that kind from which you wake up in relief from having escaped something undefined or from constantly arriving late from place to place. In reality I am not in a hurry of any kind. 

I am always late in my dream. A crowd was running in the night holding a forehead lamp, reading coordinates and finding cues like those night trails. In my dream I was one of the particles in the stardust. 

Could you imagine each one of us holding a small light source on the forehead since childhood? It would be unbearable to hold the lamp continuously. I thought: we became miners of some sort but no need for the appendices. 

If you care to know, there is not a single window to open here. I am sitting by my bed inside in my small box apartment, with 27 square meters, in the N23 floor. “N” stands for “negative” or, if you care, below zero. 

Ever since the urban beings (Portas, 2012) have developed (or been diagnosed) this damn thing, I had no option but hiding for protection from any intense light. 

For that reason, a sort of mask has become a trend as well as a protection layer for the skin. Every year one gets information on the latest composites and designs that fit your persona better. Nutrients your face skin absorbs while the UV radiations are sufficiently filtered. In certain occasions the protocol expects the use of certain colors and the palette has limited choices. 

Skin is covered with UV-proof clothing and faces decorated with these facial paint masks, which have become such a conventional wearable that personalisation has developed colorfully. Recently, some regions started calling for people’s face standardisation. 

In my case it has started with my vision, with something like a color loss, some 10 years ago. One day – one of those days – I felt like a character, on another movie, this time a second-rates movie. 

Today, ironically, virtually every electrical energy we use is solar. The major practical energy source is the Solar system. Everything has always been solar, only now we perceive it more drastically first-hand, directly in our bodies’ limitations, which could not adapt so rapidly. Resilient, but not that much. 

Even the energy we teleport to Mars today is solar. Since 2015, September 28th – I remember very well that day –, when NASA announced that water existence had been confirmed in Mars. The Sun is the major energy source... such an enormous source of energy due to is strength reaching the Earth’s crust that Urbans’ skin cannot bear it directly without being damaged. 

Our only Sun works as a giant nuclear reactor, converting the gravity into electromagnetic energy, and plants on Earth transform an infamous share of that energy into chemical energy. After that, animals eat plants, transforming chemical energy into kinetic energy. 

The interaction of the gravity from the Sun and the other planets shapes the Earth’s orbit and determines how much electromagnetic energy we receive, how much chemical energy the plants generate and how much kinetic energy the animals generate from this, and all is determined from here (Morris, 2010). 

The Sun is too strong for our skin, but that is not the only reason for me to be living inside. For a couple of years, there have been built around 20 nuclear power nations, several of them within a very unstable region of the globe (Morris, 2010). Another good reason to be installed in an underground bunker most of the time is the radiation-proof construction. Nuclear waste has been treated and recycled for some years, so that problem has been solved for the sake of our species’ resilience. 

As I said, in my case it started with something like a moving picture. I can only go to the dark movies but those were my favorites anyway. My personal movie was to turn monochromatic that day, with a sepia tone and I have only realised that when at work. I was, ironically enough, working in a well-ranked position at ROV, the well-known worldwide multinational that stands for Remote Operated Vision Inc. 

Suddenly, after a three-hour shift, like any other normal day, my screen started doing something like that old effect of image noise, interferences like a signal loss. “Impossible!” I thought. Digital signals don’t fail, especially that way as VHS and these ROV systems are fully failure-proof. Back up of the back up and the back up. 

It was clear: the problem was myself, and my own vision. Well... I wished it were my eyes... but these two eyes are too close to the brain not to be part of it. Just two extensions of the central nervous system that happens to be located in the forehead. 

The first diagnose was “achromatopsia” (ACHM). Those who got worse have developed some kind of light rejection. Some cases involve extreme pain. Thankfully that is not my case. Discomfort glare is enough for me. 

They call what I experience “Photophobia.” That makes me stay indoor most of the daytime, when out during the day I privilege blackouts, shutters closed, sometimes even sunglasses indoors and, in extreme bright days, even the eye-covers. 

I became a pet, a nice one I can assure you. We all eventually do anyway. Some don’t hear, some don’t see, some don’t talk. And some of us Urbans pretend very well. The most sensitive situation to me happens with daylight, especially the diffuse moisturised light, what I call the “white days,” which makes me feel like in a white blindness, exactly like Saramago once described as “too bright to see.” 

We tend to imagine blindness as a pitch-black surface, but it can actually be the opposite: a complete white space with no references. But blindness has nothing necessarily to do with vision. Thankfully there is the night-time for free, you see? 

 Still, eyes need to be protected even from reflected light on certain surfaces. Of course there are processes for correcting that, but I am a bit conservative when it comes to my own eyes. One can do that through cheaper optical implants directly on the cornea, as old-style contact lenses, and those who are privileged could implant an internal fovea cover. 

The alternative was a brain molecular implant, but there were some bad rumors on those and I am holding back that decision. In some situations the use of dark glasses has been forbidden in public space due to the need authorities have to perform accurate facial recognition from images being captured, by the same ROV. 

Called PAV glasses, after “Personal Adaptive Vision” because of the lenses they hold, with usage, the optics adapt to the user. One learns and familiarizes with the other. They call these intuitive materials and they adapt so well that they create a high dependency, and soon you are dependently hooked, and it is hardly possible to live without them. 

Vision is a fundamental sense, whether we like it or not, and to be honest, I would prefer our feelings to be better distributed around the senses. We have 17 confirmed anyway. I lost my job almost one-and-a-half years ago. I was stably working at ROV and professional experience didn’t prevent me to get to this vulnerable state the doctors insist in calling “a condition.” Sometimes I feel like a veterinary that developed a skin rejection to animals. 

Doctors say these are very common disorders these days, so the waiting time for ophthalmological appointments and to finally get the medical receipt for the fancy glasses is long and, in case you don’t protect, that wait turns certainly painful. Technically, the Hemeralopia (H53.11) belongs to the class of Subjective Visual Disturbances (H53.1), and is normally referred to as “Day blindness,” since it results in defective vision in bright light. 

For this reason, these last long months I haven’t been producing, only consuming, I only manage to go out at night, well after the sun sets in the west, and whatever I have or want to do, playing Cinderella, I must make sure to be protected by my black-out blinds at home before any sign of sunrise. My daily routines have migrated to become nightly routines. As a representative of another nocturnal species, I have embraced it. Sunset and sunrise can be so important in one’s life, and I have only realised that when out of reach. 

Christopher Alexander: “The great thing is that our urban habitat, towns too, also become a part of nature.”

After a couple of months you get used to the routines, but you will never get used to the lack of any sun ray if you have once experienced it. It’s impossible, believe me. Under these circumstances I guess Kiruna, in the top north of Sweden would suit me perfectly during the six months of winter season. I wonder if its mines are still working there. 

Another positive side of all this heat (with the Sun intensity the heat also increased significantly) is that for a few years there has been no snow in the Nordics, so not even from these reflections I could be harmed... and a new agricultural boom taking place in the region has attracted many job opportunities to the Nordic-North Consortium... maybe I should consider the night shifts. 

The thing is: there is enough to see during night-time, but one thing is to do things by choice, and another, very different thing is to let your eyes decide for you. Reminds me of the Latin saying: “what you see is what you get.” In this case, what you don’t see is what you will eventually get. 

To believe only what I see is not really my life motto, and since I have never seen war or a single piece of corruption, or even the colors of stupidity, banality or vulgarity, that does not mean they don’t exist. Does it? 

They do: if we give them space, they take the room. The population on planet Earth stopped growing this last decade. Some years ago the Urbans have reached a number of 10.5 billion people and stagnated there. Some advocate the number of Urbans will eventually shrink back. Today, 80 percent of the world’s population already lives in cities. Just imagine yourself living a combined urban conurbation like Tokyo, Mexico City, New York, S?o Paulo, Shanghai, all combined into one single city, where each person consumes on average one million kilocalories of energy per day. 

The Olympics are this year, and the Paralympics have been officially replaced by the BiONlimpics, a different category in competition where gender is not distinguished and where the once disabled are allowed to use prosthetics and performance-enhancement substances. 

 Antonio Damásio: “...a sense of personal future...” 

I am only out at night, and as much as possible. The wind increases, suddenly promising a rain shower. It will clean the air, refresh the city, and I do love the city lights reflected on those subtle ponds. The tunnels are waterproof, don’t worry. 

Thankfully there are no energy restrictions, and that has erased the discussion on energy efficiency. Not addressing happened to help tuning the streetlight levels down, as they have been gradually reduced in the last decades, and security cameras have developed infra-red HD scanning. Outdoor ads’ light levels have been regulated too. 

Cameras have no surveillance purposes these days. There is no significant personal crime on the streets, especially at night. Most criminal activities are online, digital hacking, so if there is a friendly environment, it is the night-time outdoors. When it happens, the personal harassment takes place at the domestic environment, where the aggressor and the victim are familiar with one another. 

This city I live in is composed of a network of tunnels and chambers, with sort of sentinels up there at the surface. Intra-planetary life, a fancy way to refer to living beneath the Earth’s surface in dug cities, composed by a mesh of tunnels and alcoves deeply located, have gradually become widespread. We call them Williamson Tunnels, paying homage to Joseph Williamson, who first initiated the project. They provide good shelter from excessive daylight and relief from the heat. 

Above-ground we have a kind of shelter space recalling mushrooms; these are called “The Meetings,” and they are numbered. We often meet at “The Meetings” and from there we head everywhere. Because one habitually meets here in these “stations” and then moves elsewhere, “The Meetings” became the privileged place for anyone who wants to be with other people, to sit, be, observe, listen or simply go where people are. 

These MEETINGS have become of standard use. One does not even question their existence, quite the opposite. We rely on their connectivity to the cloud. Here one can access the services, wait to take the elevated metro, or simply charge electric gadgets or headsets, while watching the news and official ads, since the city administration communicates via these media places delivering messages on public issues, services and calendar days. 

A year ago, the city has reached the record figure of 100 million inhabitants. It is the largest- density urban center on planet Earth. Some level of organisation synchronising the crowds has become fundamental. An alternative, the world’s deepest urban area, has been set at 11 kilometres below sea level, and is called Palomar (Calvino, 1974). Palomar is home to 300,000 urbanised people. Not only it is below sea level, it is also literally under the sea, below the rock grounds under the ocean bed of Mariana Islands, in the Pacific. 

Another alternative is interplanetary life – basically heading to Mars, officially colonized since 2053, when the first child was born there. She turns 15 years old this year, and this raises a relevant question: will she be able to choose? The Mars community, known as “The Colony,” is the permanent home of 280 people. 

This is one of two decisions one needs to make once reaching the adult age of 15 years old. Parents educate youngsters at home during the first 11 years, after which these young adults incorporate the pre-plan academy, responsible to prepare their children for this decision. The Urban’s social development has duplicated between the years 2000 and 2050 in relation to the previous 15,000 years (Morris, 2010), and will certainly duplicate again by 2100, in three decades. 

According to the anthropologist Leslie White, the definition of social development (or culture) is a combination of successful Energy Capture and developments with Technology. One may simplistically say that the capacity to go capture and use energies determines the social development level. If we want to be complete in White’s analysis, we should add other factors to the equation, such as Urbanization, IT Information and Military Capacity. 

We are located exactly at 35.199943°N 101.913297°W, sitting at the lobby of the Helium Centennial Research Center. Helium is the name for the Greek god of the Sun, but since the long-lasting crisis Greece has endured, the use of any tragedy references became taboo. The financial crisis is now considered to be over, 60 years after it started. 

We are where once Amarillo, Texas, was located, in the former USA. Today we will open the third time capsule. In recent years some speculation has been growing around this date and event. Some scientist say a secret has been hiding there for a century. First there was the speculation that the secret was the solution for what became known as "The Solar Neutrino Problem," or in more popular contexts "The Mystery of the Missing Neutrinos,” although that has been clarified with the distant Physics Nobel Prize in 2015. This atomic element for energy generation has been demonstrated to have mass by Kajita and McDonald, and research around the Neutrinos became a fundamental factor for solar energy generation today. 

But our mystery continues for a few more hours. What is a fact is that inside the capsule there is a hermetically sealed chamber... 

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities : Palomar does not underestimate the advantages the condition to be alive holds over the condition of being dead, not in the sense of future, where risks are always stronger and benefits of shorter duration, but yes in the sense of the possibility to improve the shape of our own past. (unless one is already completely satisfied with one’s past, case which would be too little interesting for us to dedicate any time.) Someone’s life consists of a set of happenings in which the last could infect change all the meaning of the all set, not because it is more important but because once included in a life, these happenings are displayed a non-chronological order that corresponds to an internal architecture. 

The urban setting is a fundamental environment for the future of humanity – lighting included. The lighting design installation has proven to be the best possible demonstrator of a plausible and probable future. 

THE MEETING : The Forum of Future Cities Design by Think Light