The world inside

Does anyone remember this novel from about a half a century ago? The novel is set on Earth in the year 2381, when the population of the planet has reached 75 billion people. Population growth has skyrocketed due to a quasi-religious belief in human reproduction as the highest possible good. Most of the action occurs in a massive three-kilometer-high city tower called Urban Monad 116. War, starvation, crime and birth control have been eliminated. Life is now totally fulfilled and sustained within Urban Monads (Urbmons), mammoth thousand-floor skyscrapers arranged in "constellations" .Each building can hold approximately 800,000 people,



Dubai may actually build one of these buildings. A carbon neutral building housing up to one million people.

Quote: Pacomartin

The novel is set on Earth in the year 2381, when the population of the planet has reached 75 billion people

I suspect in 350 years the pop
will be substantially less than
it is now. There will be birth
management, a totally controlled
population. We're advancing so
fast now, 300 more years of it
will be a future we can't possibly
imagine.

I remember 1980 very well. The
computer run future that was
literally right around the corner
and nobody predicted it. Even
Bill Gates was surprised. In 1997
he said if someone had told him
just a few years ago that there
would be McD commercials that
had a web address at the bottom,
he would have said they were crazy.

He completely did not see the internet
as anything like it became. This will
happen again and again, we cannot
know the advances we'll make.

Quote: Evenbob

I suspect in 350 years the pop
will be substantially less than
it is now. There will be birth
management, a totally controlled
population. We're advancing so
fast now, 300 more years of it
will be a future we can't possibly
imagine.

Mankind has just about 1,000 years left. Birth management will not be needed as we have seen that when populations get rich the desire for kids crashes. 100 years from now decline will be happening worldwide. 250 years from now it will be an uncontrollable crash. People might be forced to have kids.

Quote: AZDuffman

People might be forced to have kids.

Nah. The kids will all be raised in labs women won't have to bare a child, that is so old school.

Quote: kenarman

Nah. The kids will all be raised in labs women won't have to bare a child, that is so old school.

Of course. They will be able to control
every aspect of fetus growth, but the
connection to the mother will be lost.
Of growing in a mothers womb. I
wonder how much that will matter.

Remind me, is Dubai the place that is being ostracized by its neighbors and needs self sufficiency? If so that might be a major factor in deciding to build such a structure.

Quote: Fleastiff

Remind me, is Dubai the place that is being ostracized by its neighbors...

No, that is Doha.

Robert Silverberg's 1971 vision of mega towers housing up to 800,000 people were unique in that there was no development around them. So all social life took place inside the building. He also wrote at a time when it was not clear that birth control was going to dominate developed societies as birth control for unmarried woman was still not legal in many states.

1965 The Supreme Court (in Griswold v. Connecticut) gave married couples the right to use birth control, ruling that it was protected in the Constitution as a right to privacy. However, millions of unmarried women in 26 states were still denied birth control.

1972 The Supreme Court (in Baird v. Eisenstadt) legalized birth control for all citizens of this country, irrespective of marital status.


Although the mega building has surfaced periodically, it is usually a way to get a million people near a city center of an urban area already over 10 million.




What seemed unique about the Dubai ziggurat is that it was located away from any other urban area, and was meant to be a self functioning unit. The problem is with human emotions. People sense a cage no matter how big it is. It is similar to anxiety people feel on islands.

I was told nearly the entire population of Whittier Alaska lives in a single dormitory kind of building.

Quote: Evenbob

Of course. They will be able to control
every aspect of fetus growth, but the
connection to the mother will be lost.
Of growing in a mothers womb. I
wonder how much that will matter.

We have already lost much connection to the mother in many cases. Mostly in the form of kids being warehoused in day care because the mother wants to "have it all" and will not cut back on her career. The kid becomes just another accessory, along with the perfect lawn and the BMW in the garage.

I still say watch the birth rate crash when the male pill gets approved. No more of this "honey, I have no idea how that happened!"

When do we socially get to the point where far less than half the population wants to have kids? I remember the times when if a couple did not have kids there was "something wrong" and people talked about it behind their backs. The social acceptance will be the real driver to population decline.

Who was that Futurist that focused on the Dymaxion car and the Geodesic Dome? He theorized the whole world's population could live in Manhattan if they just designed the buildings "correctly".

Some civilian contractors on remote military islands keep renewing their five year contracts because they have no other choice since they spent all their money drinking from opening time to closing time on the prison-like island.

The Pill: Males always said women did not want artificial control over their cycle; women desperately wanted it.

Tax funded day care and tax funded schools are very expensive germ factories that impose great costs on factories and medical facilities, but there is no way to get women in the USA to opt for wet diapers and screaming brats instead. Home schooling? No way: Hubby leaves, the noisy brats leave...women have coffee klatches, lunches, spas, lovers, etc. during the day but not hubbies and not brats.