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The Venus Project; The concept of a smarter city
Topic Started: Aug 27 2013, 01:26 AM (780 Views)
Sam
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It takes a mere second for treasure to turn to trash.

My older brother posted this on Facebook and it is fascinating as hell. It's called "The Venus Project" engineered by a 97 year old man who experienced the Great Depression back in the 1920's USA. The BBC just recently covered it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23799590

Thoughts?
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This sort of thing has been attempted many times before and it never works. Sometimes it's financially unfeasible, sometimes it's over ambitious, sometimes the people behind it decide for whatever reason to abandon it all together before even starting. I honestly don't think humans are quite ready for a utopia yet. We're getting there. There is less conflict in the world than ever now. But we're not ready. Not whilst some people are still greedy and self centered and corruptible. Give it 100 more years and I think we'll be ready for this sort of lifestyle.


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POOHEAD189
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For once I agree with Pelador. If humans lose the need to actually DO anything, we lose the need for humans.
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We will always be doing something. Trying to better ourselves for example and learn new technologies. Ever increasing our standards of living. I don't believe there will ever come a point where humans collectively sit around doing nothing because it's all been done. There's plenty of the universe's secrets to unravel yet and plenty to learn about ourselves.


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I meant doing as in physical, or both physical and mental. Sure there will always be people sitting there, daydreaming. I don't think that's really doing anything though.
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I don't know what you mean by physical. You mean exercise? I don't think people will ever stop wanting to exercise and stay in shape. Especially now that we have so much knowledge about diet and healthy lifestyles.


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Greetings. I will be your waifu this season.

I can't help but look at those CGI people from the point of view of an outsider to the planet and think "what's the point?"

There is no goal in that society, humans need a goal, if we're all free to not give a f*** about anything we'll just sit about doing nothing.
How would entertainment work out? People like to receive things for their contributions to the world, you couldn't just stop that. If a whole team of people bust their asses making a movie or a game they're going to want more than a thank you.

The buildings etc are fine(though I wouldn't want a place that looks like that) but the society just wouldn't work for humans.

And with machines doing everything, unless we modified ourselves we would just become a pathetically weak race, physically we would devolve and it would just be sad.


I'm going to bring aliens in to it.
In a world where we have no military, what do we do if we get attacked? It is quite likely that at some point, maybe thousands or even tens of thousands of years in the future that we will have contact with life from another planet, what happens in that scenario? They would decimate us and all that fancy stuff would go to waste.


Also if we were so dependent on machines if a comet hit the planet and created an EMP we would just die, nobody would know how to do anything without machines after 100 years of living like that.
Heck we have trouble now, how many people can make a fire on their own?
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You're right, humans do need goals and they like to feel sufficiently rewarded for their work. But I think in a society like this we would have goals. Like how can we make this place even better? Can we recreate this environment on another world or under the sea? Can we come up with a system of government better than democracy? All these ideas would come about naturally if people were given high standards of education, healthcare, culture and entertainment.

I think a currency is fine. It's technically worthless but still makes us feel rewarded. Perhaps because we can exchange the cotton strips and copper pieces for things we want or need? it's good to get a reward for hard work.

I think physical labour could be replaced adequately with other activities. Sports would still be a thing. Plus people could be encouraged to do art and read lots of books. Grow their minds and their bodies. Make music, write plays and poetry. It could be fantastic. If you want to build stuff then I doubt anyone would stop you if that's what you really wanted to do. No one would force you to sit on your a*** all day.


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Greetings. I will be your waifu this season.

Yeah but a lot of people need that push to do things with their lives.
If you don't need to be fit and healthy for any reason at all then your only reason is if you feel like it, if nobody cared about how you look or anything then it wouldn't really matter to everyone.

There would always be people doing sports and taking part in scientific endeavours sure but not everyone wants to do things like that and if you don't get anything out of it then it lacks purpose.
People don't like going to school usually but they have to in order to get somewhere in life unless they have some innate talent, so if you didn't have to go to school in order to get a job and get the things you want...why would you want to? Only people who really want to learn would even care.

I think it would certainly be a huge mistake to stop using currency.
A worldwide electronic currency would be fine, credits(like in many sci-fi series)

With no weapons or police what's to stop someone who's went crazy and taken a laser kitchen knife to go kill people? After 100 years of peace not many people would be able to defend themselves or know how. Conflict is necessary for humans to adapt and evolve, peace just isn't realistic, only if it's temporary does it work for us.
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This is why I said we aren't ready as species for this kind of thing. I'd much rather play a pc game than read a book, even if it was an awesome book. Our minds generally aren't in the right place.

If you look into the past at how we've bettered ourselves as a whole, then you can clearly see that we are on the right track. School for instance is a much more exciting and rewarding place for people now then when our parents used to go and I believe it will be even better for our children when we are parents. This means people will become much more interested in learning. They'll get more out of reading some good literature than being sat in front a tv. Hopefully anyway.


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Greetings. I will be your waifu this season.

Well hopefully, certainly not seeing that yet not here anyway only like half of the girls that are 14-16 here haven't left school and got pregnant same with boys but going on drugs or alcohol instead.
Hope those improvements reach here soon...

I think we really do need to stop using machines for everything though, bring factory workers back and just have more factories to level out the produce again, all a world with that needs is a way to be less polluted. We can't all be pioneering scientists and whatnot some people just aren't suited to it no matter how much they read.
Even if everyone was as smart as your standard scientist today you only need so many people working on a certain thing and some will always be better than the rest, unless we all end up being clones which would be horrible.


I think we should fix what we are now for like 100+ years and then maybe try this with some differences, imperfect beings can't create a perfect world.
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Sam
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It takes a mere second for treasure to turn to trash.

Knowing you both personally on some level, Steve and Pelador, I find your opinions fascinating. Pelador, you agree that, despite a significant time frame (very significant, ala 1813 vs. 1913 vs. 2013), this utopian society makes sense and could work. Do you think that it is a superior way of living, as demonstrated in the video presentation? You only seemed to comment on the fact that institutionalizing this concept would take a lot of time, both mentally and physically.

Steve, you're more focused on the quality of life. There would still be work for people there. This may sound like a bad reference, but, think of one of the Vaults from Fallout 3. In terms of preservation and efficient survival, which is essentially the concept of the Venus Project (though, with very different agendas of course) the utopian society would create things to do. There are still many things that expediate and improve on the quality of life that would drive people.

To me, it seems like the Venus Project is all about maximizing on the gift of consciousness and our ability to manipulate nature to our will to the levels that we do. Perfecting the human craft, in a way. Expediating our cities and thus indirectly reducing institutional dysfunction - a huge theme in The Wire, a must watch TV series. Consciousness. Manipulation. It's what we're good at. It separates us from the rest of the animals that inhabit this planet.

And it does make a lot of sense. Like I said and you pointed out Pelador, 100 year time periods bring huge change. If any of us are around in 2113 (and are still lucid!) your mind would be blown by the amount of change. I doubt it would be exactly like this, but, provided we don't blow each other to living hell in some war between now and then, it's a pretty rough picture of how things might end up. It's your choice to weigh the significance of that knowledge. It won't be your life that will live it, though it will be your children and grandchildren's.
Edited by Sam, Aug 27 2013, 09:05 AM.
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It would be a superior way of living but I don't think it's worth even starting right now. It would only fail before it got off the ground. When there's a lot less corruption, greed and war then we should probably make a start on something like this.


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Greetings. I will be your waifu this season.

It both is and isn't a superior way of living in my view.

I mean it looks superior, that is the image of the future people have in their heads.
But really more than superior it's easier there's nothing people really need to overcome, which I believe is what drives people.
Lack of money to get what they want.
Lack of a job or knowledge to get a job to get money for what they want.
Not a toned enough physique to attract a partner.

Mostly monetary stuff but it is what makes you do things nobody works a crappy job for fun it's to get the money for things they want in the end. People also like to have things they only got through hard work too it feels rewarding after you've worked really hard for years to buy a fancy car and show it off.
It would be too easy to just be handed everything on a silver platter you wouldn't have anything you really earned, I think it's important for some things to only be a privilege for people who worked to get it.

As it stands now life sucks for a lot of people, those in third world countries probably do a lot more work than any of us will do in our lifetimes but compared to us have little to show for it like expensive TV's etc so right now it's more important that everyone is equalized.

Everyone should have the chance to go to a fancy school and things like that but I think it would be important that you still have to work to get there but you personally not because your parents are rich.
So in a nutshell many aspects of that society are great but everyone should start out at exactly the same level and all have the same opportunities to branch out upper echelons of society by putting whatever work in that they can or want to, to achieve higher status, no differences due to family name, gender or ethnicity.
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