Arcoscenario

This was a message I sent to the Arcology mailing list on Dec 8, 2002:

We could do several things besides just Flash presentations.

1. Multimedia cross-platform readers and hypertext programs. Some allow readers to mark text, add bookmarks, links and comments, etc.
tk3 - http://www.nightkitchen.com
Palm and Pocket PC - http://fictionwise.com/
Thinker - http://www.webcom.com/thinker
Revolution - http://www.runrev.com
MetaCard - http://www.metacard.com
Rebol View - http://rebol.com/prod-view.html
These are just the ones I have used. There are others.

2. We could have Quicktime movies, like the ones at http://www.windpower.org/en/core.htm and http://www.waltopia.com . These could also be sold as DVD's or videotapes.

3. Write short stories and scenarios (to be published in the above mediums, as well as web pages)

Here's a semi-autobiographical scenario I am writing :

Danny walked across the nature garden, where he sometimes saw a raccoon or de-scented skunk at the pond's edge. He hopped on the open-air elevator next to the waterfall and ascended 20 floors to his office. He lived in a city-in-a-building, called an arcology. All businesses, residences, offices, and light industries were under one roof, although it looked more like a shrubbery, tree, and flower covered (elongated and semicircular) pyramid. Since he was 8 he dreamed of living in a city that would make travel easy, cheap, safe, and quick. He had lived in many "normal" cities, and tried for short stretches of time to get by without a car. He walked, rode a bike, bus, and moped. But all those cities were built around the auto, and anything else was intruding where it didn't belong.

He lived on a farm in Kansas when he was a kid. One day, this 8 year old boy saw something that started a chain of events that led him here. A half mile away there was a slight bend in the highway. The driver had veered off the road at an estimated 90 miles per hour. He waited for the police, towtruck, and ambulance to leave. When he got there, the highway was still littered with small pieces of human flesh. He saw something next to a tree and walked over to look. On the ground sat a complete human brain. That started him thinking about how to make cars safer.

About 4 years later, after he had moved to Florida, in the Orlando library he found a fascinating book of drawings by an Italian architect, Paulo Soleri, who dreamed of the world being speckled with one-building cities, some with a million or more people living under one roof. Since living and working areas were close together, cars were not a necessity. Now Danny was living in one of these, called NaVisney (from Navaho-Da-Vinci-Disney). In his office, he was surrounded by his favorite plants, birds, reptiles, and a few other small animals that had grown to be semi-tame. Sometimes a squirrel could be coaxed to scamper up and snatch a peanut from his fingers. He spoke to the floor, and part of it raised up to become a table, flipping to reveal the 3-D touch display of some infinite dimensional hypertext/database software he used to help design new arcologies. Using it was like sculpting a movie with his hands, along with the hands of many other artists, technicians, architects, interior designers, civil engineers, plumbers, electricians, and even a token politician. The software was inspired by the ideas of Ted Nelson, Douglas Englebart, and David Gelernter*. He also had the option of putting on some data-gloves and VR goggles and working at home, in the garden, or by the lake. With these tools, he could have the feeling of being in, and walking around in the arcology being designed. But he wasn't alone there. Also around him were the co-designers a new arcology, named TechNatur. They made changes, then walked around in them in an iterative process.

*Ted Nelson -
Floating World - http://xanadu.com/zigzag/fw99
Abora - http://www.abora.org
gzz - http://www.nongnu.org/gzz

Douglas Englebart -
Bootstrap - http://www.bootstrap.org

David Gelernter -
Mirror Worlds
Scopeware - http://scopeware.com

Jack Seay
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