prospectivehistory

[prospectivehistory]

Reinventing “Trailer” Parks (Part 1)

Standing in front of the park in Tucson you won't guess how special it is. Obviously, the park seems clean and all the trailers are well taken care of.

But don't be mistaken this is far from the regular trailer park milking what's left of the poor. This is a new concept of living, of building and harvesting its citizens potential and creating a better world. But it's also a business making a profit. It's not optimized to make the owners much richer, but it's making a profit way higher than you could do with a park.

After seeing a short youtube video from one of their citizens I just had to go there and learn about it.

Keep reading >> 

[prospectivehistory]

No social-score discount for you!

Fa scrolled through her list of friends keeping the phone close to her face. The women in front of her still held the shopping bag. Tall slender she wore a yellow dress with a star shaped name tag. Looking around and tilting her head waiting for the young girl.

"No social-score discount today. Buy or come back later." the women said.

"But why?" Fa looked up to the women and widened her eyes in a last try of persuasion.

"I am not a fairy. Pay full price or fix your score." The clerk put the bag to the side and strode to the next customer forming a broad forced smile. They nattered for a while and looked back over to Fa with a grimm grin and shaking heads. If she only had a top score, this gossip girl wouldn't work here anymore by tomorrow.

Fa still stood in the middle of the store, looked at the bag with her new shirts and back to her phone. A loose string hung from her sleeve - quickly she tore it of and hid it in a pocked.  Another try,  her fingers started to swipe downwards in the list of friends. Suddenly her thumb squeezed right in the middle of the screen, another swipe in the other direction and there he was.

A lunatic snoot with big green sunglasses, a black bowler hat and a well known name on the side: "Yun for Fun". Her thumb forced the app to open his profile and wandered towards the "block" button. Pressing it a message appeared "Do you really want to block Yun for Fun?". Fas arms fell down, her shoulders went back and she looked up opening her mouth mumbling some incomprehensible question. The shop keeper turned over with a grim tone and pointed to the door by shaking her elbow in its direction.

She pressed "cancel" slid her phone back into the ripped purple bag and scooted outwards away from her shirts, away from the stupid tattlers.

Back from the unsuccessful shopping Fa sat in front of the apartment building on a small wall swinging her feet and typing into her phone.

Message: Fa: "you owe me 20" Yun: "I ow you bonkers?" Fa: "score down - no discount" Yun: "your score your problem. Do I look like yo mama?" Fa: "I have no mama - stupid! :-("

Fa pulled her right sleeve through her face and snorted while looking away from the street. No answer for a while...

Yun: "I'm very sorry. I am stupid :-/... I pay you the discount..." Fa: "I don't want no money - I need the score. For discount, classes, job, rent..." Yun: "Live here too! Don't tell me stuff. Lets meet?"

Fa rubs another time over her sniffling nose and answers: "15:00 ice cream... You pay" Yun: "thx! :-*" Fa: "???? Just Ice cream!"

This story was written and published on wattpad.com before the very similar black mirror series appeared on Netflix - how cool :-)...

[prospectivehistory]

Where to go.

Sitting in the "low score" waiting line, looking along a endless row of disturbed citizens all gazing over to the high social score queue. The high social score queue, where the shiny harmonized residents quickly frolicked towards their goal.

"What have you done wrong for sitting here?" a gray haired fellow sitting next to Fa asked.

"Wrong friends, internet and maybe some books I liked. I guess... and you?" Fa groaned.

"I don't use the internet."

Both looked at each other scanning for a reaction and bursted out in laughter.

"Too much internet, no internet... Such a crappy system..." he roared.

A slick tall woman in a white dress with orange stripes walked over and reared up to her maximum height. She held a smartphone into their faces to immediately get the citizen profile of both. She touched some checkboxes and pointed towards the gate with a grim frown.

"This room has to stay quiet - please leave now."

Realizing that she just got into another negative event, which will harm her score, she tried to hide her face behind her hands.

"Mrs. queue Manager - Mrs. queue Manager - I'm sorry, this was my mistake, she is not involved. Please don't register her."

The man stood up and stepped in front of Fa. Some seconds later, Fa also raised from her seat drawing attention from another Queue manager.

"No. Dear Manager. This was only a misunderstanding, we were talking about a software product from Microbytes. It was about an american software for the internet. Please don't register this old man - he is quite confused."

Fa opened her eyes wide, stepped closer to the tall gazelle, lowered a little and looked up in the best begging manner possible. The manager lost a short warm smile, held her finger to her mouth and signalized to be silent. Both troublemakers sat down with a short look of acknowledgement.

"So let's fit in Fa, just fit in and don't lower your score."

She started to do what everybody was doing. Grabbing her phone and starting to swipe through whatever appeared on the screen. Scrolling through her citizen social stream where she quickly liked, shared and swiped what ever looked community compliant. Slowly breathing out air through her blown up cheeks with a empty stair to the screen revealed her dislike of this ritual.

The gray haired fellow peaked over her shoulder at how quick and easy she went through all kind of lists and items increasing her score. He whispered after checking if the Queue manager was looking over.

"You are very good with this - could you teach me? And why do you still have bad scores, if try to fit in?" her neighbour asked.

She turned the screen of her phone away from him and covered it with her hand.

"I told you - it's mainly some uncompliant friends. Or lets say one specific friend. Playing the accepted social game is helping. But looking at other people's screens it definitely not helping." she shook her head and checked for the queue manager's attention.

"But you could show me how to do that? Maybe I can help you hide your friendship?" he mumbled keeping his view on the managers.

"How would you want to help me? You don't use the internet?"

"I know how to bring people out of the country."

She turned away hissing quietly and tried to ignore him. After some minutes of waiting he continued.

"For real. I know how you can get out of the country if you or your friends wants to."

She held up her open hand to the side of her face to hide behind it and try to act focusing only on her phone. She turned further away and bumped into another unfortunate person to her left.

"O sorry, sorry..."

A annoyed stare came out of hairy face above a stained blue shirt.

"Igh" Fa turned back in disgust.

"I thought getting out of the country is easy. And why don't you get out?" she gave in into his approach.

"Getting out is easy, but where do you go, and what about them keeping track of you. I can solve that..." he murmured and suddenly stopped as the second shorter and broader queue manager walked by.

In a professional smile she walked along the low score queue looking happy towards everyone that was holding a smartphone. At the end of the line she grabbed a box with snacks and walked back to the higher score line giving them away.

"Ok, but why don't you get out, if you're so much into that?" Fa whispered.

"I like my house and garden - I'm fortuned that I can life around the system and endure the very few moments I just have to interact with it, like today. But still, I gets harder, I'll have to get into this social citizen crap to keep my place independent."

The whole line stood up and moved over to the other side of the room where the queue manager was waving for them.

"Dear citizens, thank you for visiting us today - there is time for another five people to register, as our leading fellows are finished. So the first five can come with me and to the others I wish a very nice evening and recommend to be her Monday morning again."

A frowning went through the crowd and silent frustration propelled everyone out of the government building.

"Do you want to join me for a coffee?" the gray haired man asked when they reached the street.

"Coffee with a old stranger not using the social citizen system - My parents would turn in their graves..." she chuckled and looked for his reaction.

"Ok no coffee, so how about I give you some products from my garden, or what else you need and you help me to set up my first smartphone?"

"Your first smartphone? How do you survive?"

He silently gestured a question.

"Ok, I'll join you but not at your place - let's go to Chin Coffee - do you have your phone with you?"

He shook his head and she unbelievably opened hers to look for the next phone store.

"Ok come with me, we get you a contract and a phone."

Published on wattpad.com on 19th of June 2016 by one of our writers.

[prospectivehistory]

Heroin for Mommy - Teaser #1 next Nele Hackers Book: Jane's Deception

In our next book we will tell the story of Jane, our Deceptionista. You may remember her from our first book, “Ayden’s Choice”. Here are some teasers episodes to get you interested.

The green hat is missing the badge, and the sash she cut from a green t-shirt has signs drawn on it in black sharpie. But when she twitched her eyes to look into the mirror her outfit matched the girl scouts’ she had found on google image search.

Jane was back with her mother for a while, as, once again, she had been pulled away from grandma’s fastidious care. Quite a clash of worlds, but to the young Jane, dropping in and out of middle school, it was the world as she knew ist.

“People will get it.” she whispered to her mirrored self.

“I’ll make them believe it.” she announced a little louder, turning to see her profile.

“Don’t you think so mom? Mom! Mom look?”

A thin figure appeared in the door and sank on it’s frame. One arm hanging numb, a trickle of blood running down it.

“Get me more… Please, will you get me more…”

A crackling voice burst out of the pasty mouth. The girl at the mirror tilted her head, put on a distorted smile, and danced to what seemed to be her mother.

“O mommy. Did you sting yourself again… Let me clean that…”

She grabbed the now trembling arm, and despite being two heads shorter she managed to fixate it, as she had had to do so often before. She pulled a hankie out of her pocket, wiped away the blood and pressed the bleeding dot for a while.

“Didn’t we agree that you won’t do this yourself anymore?” she chirped with an odd happy sound, hoping to awake some last remainder of life in that drifting mind.

The mother’s other arm swung around, grabbed her by the hair, pulling back the small head. She shouted, spitting in her eyes. “You fuck! Bring me more. I tell you. I can hit it myself. But you fucking better bring me more…”

The girl swung around, desperately trying to get out of her mother’s grip.. Only a kick to her leg made her finally let go. A crack appeared in her carefully maintained facade and tiny tears began wetting her eyes.

“But no, no, we won’t. We are strong…” Jane repeatedly slammed her hand against her leg — a tick she seemed to have more and more often.

“And now what?” the mother began all over.

… Continue reading here >>.

[prospectivehistory]

Our first book just got published! http://www.nelevonlanthen.com/

[prospectivehistory]

Follow our newest project - Nele Vonlanthen Book Series.

[prospectivehistory]

Writing Exercise - Use all this University essay tricks - it’s bollocks

This is a writing experiment about this article - and I’m not sure if it’s bollocks :-) Article about 40 ways to let anything sound smart to non conscious readers.

This is a great picture you can find here: https://www.pexels.com/photo/city-girl-lens-flare-young-101647/

Please comment here.

In order to feel the wind in my face I have to leave virtual reality and go out on my bike. In other words I like to be outside - something not that common in today’s times. To put it in another way, everyone else sits inside hooked up to their computers running around in their virtual network. That is to say that I also like to fly around through the endless worlds of digital live. To that end I also have my full equipment to hook into the net.  But let’s go back to me riding this bicycle in a pink dress. Moreover, I’m riding a non electrified bike, one that you have to fully power with your legs. Furthermore it’s a quite old bike which I love very much as I inherited it from my older sister who left for europe. What’s more, this isn’t a closed community road, it’s an actual public road. Likewise this neighborhood is one of the unmanaged blocks without specific permissions. Similarly, the roads have no charging panels and but lot of holes and bumps. Another key thing to remember is that it’s close to sunset, which makes it even more awkward for me to be out here riding my bike, as well as wearing a nonfunctional pink dress. Not only am I violating our closed community tracking rules by not having anything digital on me, but also am I taking the risk of getting in contact with unmanaged people. Coupled with the sunset taking away the sunlight this is not a thing my friends would do. Firstly they barely disconnect from virtual reality, secondly they barely leave the house and thirdly they would never ride something they have to steer themselves, not to mention powering it by muscle strength. However they like to train their muscles by using their gateway stands where they are strapped in wearing video glasses, run and jump all around in crazy worlds. On the other hand the robot assistant brings them water with added chemicals when they sweat from moving around in a cage connected to the internet. Having said that I can go back to my ride. By contrast I like to go full risk, leave the closed community, unhook from everything and steer as well as power my vehicles. Then again, I like my friends for what personality they have left. That said there is a non digital coming towards me on the sidewalk. Yet I’m not from here he greets me by waving his hand. The area is marked as very dangerous but he sends me a heart warming smile despite this. With this in mind - let’s go on and meet some more non digital survivors. Provided that we call them survivors it still looks as if they can be happy. In light of his smile, I ask myself if they all have this ability, as my friends are not used to smile in real world. But my friends nonetheless send me a lot of smiles in virtual reality. That is just a digital representation of a brain wave the computer saw in their neurons but I appreciate it nevertheless. Notwithstanding the limitations of the brain scan emotion software, it helps to have at least a little bit more sole in the virtual world. For instance if you meet at at virtual hot spot and tell a group of people what you found, everybody was smiling in the past, now the software picks up boredom and shows it in their avatars faces. To give an illustration of what this could look like, picture you talking to a 3D animated avatar selected by a friend and suddenly it’s face starts to switch quickly between emotional expressions. Significantly, reality is more real than virtual reality, there you can find all nuances of emotion and especially users are self aware of what their faces do, what’s not always the case in the digital havens. Me still riding the bike is notably more interesting. Importantly as I am feeling the slight breeze which is not from a fan but from the real weather system of earth. In conclusion it’s windy which nobody can disable by a click. Above all it’s the world how it is: non scripted, non engineered and non coded. This is the most persuasive factor to me of being outside.  To me most compelling but all things considered not very looked for by my digital friends.

And to conclude this gibberish - don’t use this kind of writing, although it’s recommended by some university. If you’re able to keep things simple and short, readers will like you :-) But if you have nothing to say, than you can try to use this tools to hide it from non conscious readers. So to conclude - the picture is great but the article is: BOLLOCKS

Please comment here.

[prospectivehistory]

Our kids won’t know email.

Please comment

You are sitting in front of your e-mail program. Does it spell e-mail or email? It doesn’t matter. Nothing happens. Even clicking on your send and receive button doesn't help. You know today you don’t need that button. Long gone are the times when one had to send and receive mails manually when the device was online. You think “when were the devices ever not online?” - what a stupid sentence. What use are devices today if they are offline, that is how you experienced devices without power back in the days. Do the kids know that? Their kids, your grandchildren, don't even know email anymore.

You open your address book - having your address book that you manage on your local computer is weird  today - but anyway you want to send an email. So lets see: Albert… He has alzheimer and wont answer, so you would have to write to his daughter to check for a visit but she has no email address… So you would have to talk to her virtual reality self and not mumbling to much so her chat bot and voice recognition doesn't get confused. You hate those things. Sometimes you don't know whether the other person is there or if it's the bot and sometimes they try to answer but you never trust them. So you go back to your address book.

Bodhi - dead. Brandon - most likely still angry. Caroline… Caroline you would like to talk to. But, no, you remember she is dead, too.

Still no mail. You don't even get spam mails anymore. Back in the days of big business you managed to fight through dozens of mails being productive while using them to make all kind of business. Today not even the prince from this rich african country tries to give you money anymore by having you send some money first.

Ok, so focus. No Virtual Reality today, it always gives you headaches and you don't want to take the VR-aspirin or whatever they call it. Just simple plain email like in the old days when there still were mostly gasoline cars on the road.

Dave! That's it! Dave for sure still uses email! He hated VR from the very start. Ok, he also hated shopping online, but who cares. You write:

“Hi Dave - Long time no see. I guess you won't see this for a while, because you too don't get much mail anymore. I still use and like email - so if you have any thoughts, feel free to share, you happy old sack from the Cost...”

You press send and tell your home assistant to have the coffee machine make an espresso. Also a thing you distrust. If you mumble again it will order coffee from its makers or it  3D prints a new cup. You have a lot of 3D printed cups with presso written on them. So you go: “Hey Silvi. Please. Make. Me. An. Espresso. Now.”

Badabim - your computer makes a long forgotten noise. You are amazed as there is an email in your account.

“Dear Sender - we are happy to announce that all qmail.com users get a free VR bot - but our classic mail service is closed down. Please use VR…” … … The email goes on with new lines. ... ... “Hahahaha… Just kidding you fool. They will never turn off this old piece of junk qmail.com. As long as there are two old grumps like us, they have to keep it running or we will VR the hell out of them. Let’s meet like in the good old times. Most bars are closed, but my crazy exoskeleton mechanic has kind of a Bar serving coffee for waiting customers. Some stuff you just can't do online isn't it? Or at least I don't send in my exo and go back to the wheelchair without watching what the hell they are doing to it. Remember the old days, when you couldn't walk if you couldn't walk.”

You look down to your robotic left hip and leg with the green led glowing as the battery is still full, and laugh. What a crazy world this became, all while you barely recognized it changing step by step.

(Little experiment how Second Person Point Of View feels - it’s hard...)

Please comment

Image by:

https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-portrait-old-artist-25758/

http://www.reneasmussen.com/

[prospectivehistory]

As we discovered the first alien city in 2015.

Add your comment.

Dust covers the brown leather chesterfield and only the clean circles on the table testify of recent visitors. Once in a while we hike to this hotel from the 1970s in the middle of the forest. It’s not the most beautiful hotel in the region but it has several advantages. As it was already equipped with a lot of solar collectors we could reuse them to have some power after the grid failed in 2043. But as you know we didn’t move into it. Still it serves as kind of a close by holiday place although we seem to be the only guests.

Claire brought her son Micah who can’t stop nagging me about the old times and all the big things that happened back when the wheels still turned. So he asks me about the first time the world had believable official evidence of advanced alien live. There is not a clear simple answer as opinions differ a lot. Was it the first time we could decrypt an alien message or was it after a probe found equipment on the jupiter moon. 

I say it was KIC 8462852 back in 2015.

Micah asks: “2015? Fuck! How old are you?”... 

“I’m so old Micah, I don’t even give a fuck anymore about you saying fuck”

Micah laughs and Claire slaps our heads leaving us both grinning.

“So why do you think KIC 84x whatever was the big thing grandpa?”

“First of all I’m not your grandpa and second of all let me finish telling my story. I’m slow but if you want to hear it, wait.”

“Ok! I’m just asking… Don’t loose your last hair about it...”

“Shush… zip it… So back in 2015 finding new planets in other solar systems was the big thing. They found a new method by looking at changes in the light of a star to determine if there is a planet in it’s orbit.”

“Mr. Graybeard - I’m not asking about planets, I want to know when they first found out about aliens and how you reacted.”

“Arg… Just give it a second, I’ll try to make it short. So I was sitting in bed scrolling through 9gag on my smartphone, as I found some joke about alien cities. Not knowing what they were joking about I went to my news stream to see this article of big think, a smart blog, I liked to read...”

“What the fallout is 9gag, what’s a blog and why was your phone smart?”

“Ok. Let’s make it simple. They found a star with light changes that could not be explained by natural causes. The only explanation they found was a big sphere around it which collects the stars energy and has some holes where the light goes trough.”

“And how did people react.”

“Not much. It was very scientific so the regular distraction dwellers didn’t take notice.”

“No wonder most of them died. Stupid generation of polluting throwaway fools.”

It’s always the same with Micah. As soon as we talk about how people were back in the old world he get’s angry about how stupid my fellow humans where. Luckily it’s easy to distract him by talking about our next step to expand the settlement.

Credits:

Big think article

Discovery News

The Independant

Great space city image Source Wiki

Add your comment.

[prospectivehistory]

Drumpf’s second Detroit - abandoning Silicon Valley

Yesterday my dear sister left this world. After suffering in secret for several months there wasn’t much we could do. It’s not a good idea to get sick in Silicon Valley today, once the digital jewel of our old center of the world. Gone are the times when the glowing stars of the internet filled the valley’s coffee houses with hipsters hacking some new ideas. If you were lucky to work in one of the rising stars you had everything including health insurance. Today most people are happy if they can pay the ticket for the bus.

In 2017 the so called “exodus of the smart” started as Drumpf took office and nobody could continue to pretend that the old west is a good place for innovation. It just didn’t add up anymore. The backward laws, the crazy fears, the lack of basic services and freedoms every other developed country provided. Drumpf was merely the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

But she couldn’t leave. My older sister was always a little nostalgic and much more into horseback riding than me. We both grew up on a farm close to Mountain View and somehow both ended up writing code changing today's world. I still get the question how a farm girl ended up writing software, but stepping into this big white room and filling it with our own crazy ideas always made sense to me.

We were already looking for places in Canada some months before the election. She was very angry about me thinking about leaving. I told her she’s so smart she will easily find a new amazing job in a nice startup and that we can move her horses there. Her team was working on a break through neuronal network engine and she just managed to get her therapeutic horseback riding side business to run. So it wasn’t her time to leave.

I clearly remember the morning after Drumpf was announced. There was a frustrating whisper and several of our intellectual stars filed for relocation to Europe or even quit their jobs in the valley.

At 11:00 we all got a message to get into a global company hangout. Larry and Sundar where on the screen smiling and welcoming everyone as we were used to. They gave a breathtaking speech about how our mission is important, more important than any political development and much bigger than any country borders. Then they told us that they insist on keeping everyone and will offer amazing relocation plans for all the bright minds that want to leave the states. Somehow they managed to get several locations with a strategy to extend them for all employees. And then the line of the century hit: “By now the official headquarter and country of A-Z is moved outside the US…”. It went around the globe like a wildfire. The company that created the most amazing search engine, a revolution in mobile operating systems and ground breaking technology in every important field was not a Silicon Valley company anymore.

This step was like a shock wave to the tech world and the impossible happened. Most smart minds and with them nearly every important technology company left to resettle all around the world. Silicon Valley became the Detroit of Drumpf and was the starting point of a gray wave spreading all over the country. It wasn’t a apocalypse, it was a slow decay that spread further. A decay that a lot of regions where already used to before.

I’m very sad that this decay also hit my sister and that somehow I didn’t see it coming. After they closed the borders and nobody could leave anymore it was very hard to get any support to her. I begged her several times to join us but she just didn’t want to leave the farm. But at last she could stay at the place she loved most...

Image by Pietromassimo Pasqui - Flickr Creative Commons: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lifelog-it/15755199586

[prospectivehistory]

Internet breaks down - data will rule!

=> What will happen if the internet breaks down? Comment your idea!

Greg is throwing away the filled coffee filter and fills his cup. Slowly stirring in the milk and sugar he’s walking towards his workbench. He’s sitting right at the door of a big copper cage in the middle of a storehouse. A new batch of devices is stacked on the right and boxes sorted with electric parts on the left.

A week ago they turned on the global consumer network for the first time. It’s not yet completely global and most of the time you won’t get much out of it. It’s limited to messaging and e-mails containing only text and it’s still very slow. No reason to worry, one has to adapt everyday in this crazy times. 

G: “… Hans…” 

Greg is still pronouncing it pretty wrong which doesn’t help to get Hans listening. 

G: “… HANS …”

Greg throws a pen over to a short guy with broad shoulders, random hair and a huge pair of headphones. Hans slowly pushes a worn off button of an outmoded machine, takes of his headphones, pushes back on his swivel chair. It’s an actual analog music device from the 90s, still supporting CDs.

“What’s your wish mister…” Hans growls while turning back to Greg who returns...

G: “How’s it going with the Rapetti tablet?”

Hans starts to smile and picks up his headphones.

H: “Give me some time there, we’re up to something…”

G: “No, we’re up to shit… He’ll be here at 15:00, you know him. He’s not a nice guy, he’ll want to know what you could get…”

Greg looks annoyed.

G: “You know he’s crazy about his family photos and we should find an accounts spreadsheet he really needs!”

Hans lays down the headphones again and beckons Greg to come over to look onto his screen.

H: “Do you see this?”

It’s an old looking screen, more like a very old tv with a gray plastic box. One of those boxes, not the flat ones. On it is a list of text scrolls through green on black. 

G: “Couldn’t you use one of the regular screens, it’s not very clear.” Hans shakes his head.

H: “Come on, I’m scanning, let me do my stuff, I let you do your stuff… So look closer, please!”

Greg puts his head closer to zoom in on the letters as if this would help.

G: “Yeah, a bunch of city names and short sentences, looks like a tourist guide.  So what, you’ve found his personal images with the locations from the camera gps? He’d love that…”

Hans shakes his head walking to the coffee pot and pours it into a big aloy mug. 

H: “Forget vacation images, forget travel guides… This is real stuff… If it’s what I think it is, we can close up pretty quickly. You’ll have to hold up Rapetti, I need some days to get this ready.”

When Greg drove down to Audioshack for replacing his phone to find out that the world went offline he wasn’t much into data.  But with some odd friends like Hans and some sale skills it was a quick step into the grey marked of recovering data after the solar flare.

=> What will happen if the internet breaks down? Comment your idea!

Credits:

Image: Abandoned computer on the coast

[prospectivehistory]

India Pune: Used Smartphones Power my Electric Rickshaw.

=> comment your thoughts here.

“Hello Little Brother... A battery just blew up! Again. I’m stuck at Connaught Road right to the railway station and the left power box is smoking! Move your ... over to get me running again! Today is a great day for work and a bad day for burning batteries!”

My brother is building power boxes out of old smartphones. There was a big boom about electrifying rickshaws six years ago and he hopped right on it. So my rickshaw runs on his batteries, which can be good and bad depending on the day :-).

I don’t like how he is constructing them but sitting inside all day long scraping smartphones apart and tinkering them back together into a box doesn’t float my boat. I like to be outside in the traffic: seeing, talking, shouting and living in this vibrating city... 

Everybody is talking about how we do the internet for Asia now and there are more and more people coming to create crazy technology. My rickshaw is also crazy technology. I can manage the electronics with an app in my smartphone and there is a tablet built into it. It has navigation, shows the power levels, earnings, and a heat map of people so I know where to go. That feature is really rocking! It uses the mobile network to calculate how many people are in which cell and how many of them are moving or standing still. This is all built by people like my brother as technology today can be formed by everyone.

So now my smartphone shows “error: overheating battery - automatic shut down.”... But who cares - there are another million old smartphone batteries we can use to replace this box.

=> should we built rickshaws with smartphone batteries?

(Fictional story looking back from the future...)

Picture by Abhijeet Somvanshi: https://tookapic.com/photos/16007

[prospectivehistory]

Food for china colonising mars: Breed insects and cultivate plants in simulated conditions.

=> Add your comments.

Dear Sister

I write you from Shanghai where we just had a resourceful meeting with their space institute.

The samples are finally selected to be sent into space. I can’t wait to see the spacecraft dock to the global space station delivering our work. Up there the insects and plants will be tested and trained in microgravity to perfect our work.

Fifteen years of my life and ten years of funded research went into this plants and insects designed to thrive on mars. Ten thousand hours went into perfecting our strains and combining them to create a closed ecosystem supporting them. We ended up with eight closed systems in parallel which all have a very good chance to be the primary source of food on mars.

The idea is very simple:

Insects are a great source of food.

Some insects can survive in extreme conditions.

The very short reproduction cycle makes them perfect for breeding towards a specific environment.

Insects can be transported in very small containers and amounts to propagate at destination.

There are much more plants which are edible by insects than by humans.

Plants can be selected by how good they may grow on mars and then breed insects that can nourish on them.

Two years from now the final selection will be done in space. This final group of plants and insects will be sent straight to mars with the “Hóng huò” spacecraft. Who had thought that the chinese will realize the first mars colonization project.

But I don’t mind if the chinese are the first. As long as mankind finally becomes an interplanetary species we did the right thing.

Can you believe that they finally send our work to space?

It still bugs me that I had to leave you and our friends eight years ago due to the stubbornness of the government. But researching in europe really helped our work a lot. We were finally able to get funding from all sides without any false protective regulations.

Madeline was very good in working out contracts with all the parties interested in going to mars without restricting us.

This must be rather boring to you. But do you remember when I told you first that I want to create the source of food for mars colonization? Do you remember how you tried to talk me out of it and having a different more realistic focus?

We did it! I found the best closed ecosystem to feed humanity on mars and even in space.

Best regards, your little brother Isaac

---

This is a new separate story around space travel. Maybe it will get together with our journal some day.

Credits:

Lab image 

=> Add your comments.

[prospectivehistory]

Day 20: Liftoff from desperation.

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The night shift teared on all of us and despite the suspense I was able to sleep. It took me some time rolling from side to side trying it with and without blankets or music, till I actually managed to drift away. 

In my dreams the big slim guy from the digitals followed me everywhere. We were in the pharmacy hiding from the addicts, running through the city on the look for a doctor and walking through the empty boat with everyone gone but the bionic limbs. Stepping out of the the boat I saw the whole group standing at the rail taking a big step to leap into the toxic water. In this very second everything blurred out and a foggy soup of daylight dazzled my eyes. I pulled my blanket across my face holding it against the tall figure throwing a shadow from the now uncloaked window. 

“You better get up quick! Get your shit together and meet me in the control room!”

My eyes were not yet adapted to the light so I wasn’t sure who he was. But the loud bang and shaking of my bed by him smashing the door activated every single cell in my body. Jumping out of the bed fetching the next piece of clothing close to me I ran out onto the corridor.

Nobody there! It was quite surreal. Behind me others from our ward looked out of the door and asked what happened. I shushed them away and ran towards the stairways.

In the control room there was Lia, the slim tall guy and some other Digitals looking at a video footage and talking to Kylie and Amina. Kylie had the shoulder mounted cam and was kneeling down over Amina. Her pale face and tired eyes revealed how much her body already suffered from the pollution. She gave her something to drink and helped her to sit up. After letting her breath from a bottle of clean oxygen she pulled the charcoal filter mask over her head. A monitor started to blink and her vital data appeared a column next to Kylies. 

Kylies voice came over the speakers: 

“We have to fly her out, there is no other way…”

Her voice changed. I recognised her but it wasn’t the funny happy tone I was used to. It sounded very mature, focussed and detached.

“Yes of course you fly her out, that’s what we trained you for…”

Lia shushed me away and whispered in my ear “They know she couldn’t do it and prepared everything for them to take the alternative route… but no… it’s shit… it’s real shit…”

“Ok, Kylie there are some things you have to know if you want to do that.”

A old soft reassuring voice came out of a corner of the room. 

“We went through this, you can do it. You’ll have to bring her up the little hill, mount her to your harness, turn of the power limit and put all the power into the engine. Please make sure you turn off everything before you start. As soon as your on altitude you’ll have to turn of the engine and visio flight info. Take one of the cubes and wait until it starts to blink red and then you drop it. If you hear the whistle sound you’ll have to chop the canopy and throw your round to survive. But we think there shouldn’t be any of the big drones around…”

Lia explained me quietly that they have some crazy tool against all drones and even the Cheetahs get buzzed from it. Only the ducted fan hunters are too fast, that’s why she was talking about the whistle sound. 

I’m happy that we could completely avoid this dark area of our fading country. Nobody thought that we’ll use those tools within the old western countries and they promised to use it only to clean the middle east from the black plague in the 20s. But as technology available is also used we have them now securing all the areas, borders and regions our government wants to keep quiet. There are huge areas without much to fear or much control and most discontinued cities are not repressed. But some areas like the buffer zone are totally crazy. Sometimes I think they have no plan and just put their leftovers to the police which overuse them in areas they are allowed to.

Watching Kylie trying to get Amina half a mile to the hill was nothing I wanted to do to myself and not being able to help, made me wanna leave.

“Where are the girls? Why are they not here! I thought they would watch Kylie all night?” I asked them. They looked at me as if I spoke an unknown language. So I went to look where they hid in the hospital. I found the girls hooked up to the sleeping aid. Nothing I support unless it’s very necessary. But missing one of them it’s understandable so we let them rest.

After checking on the whole group and giving them some kind of reassuring message about the progress of Kylie’s mission, me and Ulick went back for the control room.

The screen now showed two cameras letting us see how they got ready to start. In the background we could see over the park from a small mound. There was a long slide going down the hill and a forsaken playground. Amina seemed in much better shape and manipulated all her gear without any help. She got clean water, oxygen, mask and some heavy drugs to revitalise her body.

Hearing her voice over the radio rushed a feeling of familiarity through my body.

“Hi there. We’re ready to do that. I’ll steer and Kylie will handle the drones… I also have a coilgun from the labs so she’ll be able to use that to if the cubes don’t work…”

The big slim guy grabbed the microphone: “They will work, don’t do anything stupid, forget the coilgun you’ll never hit them and the cube will uncharge the gun.”

Now the voice managing the mission till now stood up and took away the microphone from his Digital colleague. He slapped his face and pointed him to leave the mission room without saying a word. Sitting back down the guy with long snow white hair spoke as nothing happened.

“Sorry, we got distracted here. Of course take your coilgun, but focus on the cubes. They are important. Remember blinke means activate and drop, whistle noise means chop and throw the round reserve. There is nothing more to know.”

Kylie appeared in front of Aminas camera so we could see both women on the same screen.

“Hey there friends. We’ll shut down now and see you later…”

My heart nearly exploded hearing this strange soft but scary sound of her voice. This was her way of saying a possible good bye.

“If you don’t hear from us we’ll go one by our self. Don’t look for us. We’ll go on to our common goal and meet you in some weeks.”

Ulick shook his head pointing towards the map and ran out of the room.

“Kiss my two angels and tell them not to worry as we will fly together as promised!” 

The vital signals of Kylie went black and her image froze.

“Keep up the spirit and go on, there is nothing you can win from finding us. Just go on.”

Aminas vitals went black and step by step all information on the screens went blank. The white haired guy turned back to us looking stern but calm.

“They have a fair chance. If they can handle the glider with the additional weight they’ll make it.”

“Where to? Where will they go? They are too heavy for using thermal lift and as we know now your cubes will discharge all batteries in a big radius around them!”

Lia asked the Digitals being pretty angry.

“They head to a gravity storage… It’s absolutely possible to get there and as it’s very basic technology it should work…”

Inspiration:

Amazing Image by Thomas Hawk

Bill Nye (one of our Heros!)  about fracking and gravity energy storage

Gravity power storage company

Add your comments!

Day 1: To the city. - Day 2: Entering the grey Zone. - Day 3: Broken bridge. - Day 4: Toxic Rain. - Day 5: Forsaken robot. - Day 6: Eating Insects. Kyleis robot. - Day 7: Neglected cities. -Day 8: Hiding in the Pharmacy - Day 9: Everybody left - hoping for satellite images - Day 10: Toxic oceans and soil - farming in deserts of concrete. - Day 11: Worthless bills on a shabby boat. - Day 12: The gap of long living. Ruled by scientist elite.  - Day 13: Fixing bionics. - Day 14: Future Inbox: “Women revolutionised Asia - the new center of the world…” - Day 15: Joining “The Digital People” - living in Virtual Reality. -Day 16: Resistant bacteria - greed and cheap meat destroyed antibiotics. - Day 17: Climate Ignorance: Flooding, Drought, Famine… the poor suffered first. - Day 18: Dead forests in the buffer zone. - Day 19: VR Training for Kylies trip through the polluted Fracking zone. - Day 20: Liftoff from desperation.

[prospectivehistory]

Day 19: VR Training for Kylies trip through the polluted Fracking zone.

=> Do you like this episode: comment!

We composed Kylies training material all night. She’ll start from a nearby tall office building and climb for about 20 minutes. After that she’ll have to stop the electric engine and glide from thermic to thermic area to keep or gain altitude. The drones stay within a certain altitude and as long as she’s not running the engine she shouldn’t be detected. The hard part will be to follow the right route and land at the right place. That’s what we actually train her for.

We work with the newest maps from the old star labs satellites, old street vision images and 3d view from maps. She’ll be able to train the trip three times but we have two possible routes and getting back is the harder part.

Leaving the dead forest will get attention on her and the only alternative way back is up the river and through the sewers which are pretty toxic. But the digitals have some special tool. 

As I asked the big slim guy how she’ll be able to start again with Amina without getting caught looked at me blinked and held his finger against his lips to keep quiet. But he didn’t tell me. They don’t want us to know but they promised it could work. 

So we focused on how they could get back along the river and through the sewers. The water is primarily polluted from fracking. They had a big spill back in 2015 but it didn’t end there. The Fracking went on in all the region and ruined all ground water which also goes into the rivers.

They used a stupid trick to prevent the public from knowing about their ingredients. It was argued about some intellectual property law and all government was bribed to stick to the story. 

It’s amazing how stupid they were continuing to do this inefficient and polluting way of getting energy. Especially considering that already back then there was the technology to easily use clean energy.

Kylie was set to sleep a little longer. We hooked her up to a sleeping aid that keeps you in the right phase the way that you have maximum recreation. This is a machine usually only owned by active contributors or people who got somehow lucky by earning enough extra money. Those digitals have some nice sources for equipment.

She was never strapped into a full VR station as her parents were against the digital alternative. A program that help the organized public to be occupied by interesting activities without using to much energy or needing to much space.

So she needed some minutes to get into it and we run her through the basic boot up simulations. The brain very quickly adapts to VR but at the beginning you have to keep a low dosage. So keeping her in there for that long time was quite brutal. After the first hour she puked right over the station forcing us to make a break. But she went back in right after cleaning her face and drinking some water. Her dizzy look and big smile were stronger than her stomach.

Going there and remembering the route was unexpectedly easy for her, but taking of on the way back wasn’t. We added the guessed weight of Amina to the physics simulation and that made everything very hard. The glider needs much more speed and so she has to run much more and push the engine to the limit.  Which also needs much space and didn’t give her much time for a second try. After 4 times failing by falling, flying in a tree or swinging over back into the ground she ripped away the glasses cursing the machine and running into the bathroom.

The other girls followed her and as she came back she told us that she’ll try it live and if it wouldn’t work amina will have to do it. But we all knew what this meant. They’ll go back through the pollution. So we stopped the flying and walked her through the alternative as often as possible. Finally at 17:00 we stopped and put her back into the sleeping aid. Now it’s close to midnight and she started about twenty minutes ago. We didn’t join her. Only travis and the tall slim guy went there. Everybody is very quiet, most try to sleep but nobody does. I’m really looking forward to leaving this dorm. Some of us change to hospital gown or doctors uniforms to save their own attire. It’s comfortable but sleeping in one room with everybody feeling like in a psychiatry is not what I’m made for. Lot let’s believe in Kylie, she’ll do it! There is no other way.

=> Do you like this episode: comment!

Inspiration:

Image of Women with Virtual Reality 

Mini photo satellites project

Polluted Colorado Anima River

Day 1: To the city. - Day 2: Entering the grey Zone. - Day 3: Broken bridge. - Day 4: Toxic Rain. - Day 5: Forsaken robot. - Day 6: Eating Insects. Kyleis robot. - Day 7: Neglected cities. -Day 8: Hiding in the Pharmacy - Day 9: Everybody left - hoping for satellite images - Day 10: Toxic oceans and soil - farming in deserts of concrete. - Day 11: Worthless bills on a shabby boat. - Day 12: The gap of long living. Ruled by scientist elite.  - Day 13: Fixing bionics. - Day 14: Future Inbox: “Women revolutionised Asia - the new center of the world…” - Day 15: Joining “The Digital People” - living in Virtual Reality. -Day 16: Resistant bacteria - greed and cheap meat destroyed antibiotics. - Day 17: Climate Ignorance: Flooding, Drought, Famine… the poor suffered first. - Day 18: Dead forests in the buffer zone. - Day 19: VR Training for Kylies trip through the polluted Fracking zone. - Day 20: Liftoff from desperation.

[prospectivehistory]

Day 18: Dead forests in the buffer zone.

Tell us what you think => comment here.

After helping and fixing on all levels of the hospital our hosts are seem to be thankful. The tall slim guy called me over to talk about the vehicles he will get us. He lead me into a big windowless room with an operation table and an old auto-medic-robot. “We have a problem” he told me very quietly as if there were other people listening. “Amina got our medication but she is stuck somewhere in the buffer zone due to a battery failure.”

So there we are, an important member of our group missing, not able to go along without vehicles and a big group of nerds that would rather starve than go out into the sun themselves. So I guess we have to do this ourselves and get her out of there.

They were able to track her down to a old polluted park with dead trees. A gift from the fracking and bad water management of our predecessors. Definitely not a good zone to stay.

As far as they know she crashed into one of the trees, but was able to cut herself loose to hide in an old bistro in the middle of the park. The buffer zone is heavily monitored by patrol drones and iSecure-Dogs.

We have two options to go there. Either through the sewers and by swimming down a nearby river, which is very unhealthy. Or we could also go by air and figure out how we can carry two people back with one glider. Both plans are not very appealing, since an overloaded glider is very dangerous and it’s still quite a distance from there.

They are also offering us to get the medication by their own drone, giving us the vehicles we need in two to three days and leaving Amina out there. The tall slim guy just mentioned that we can try to get her ourselves later on, maybe she will be able to hide long enough without dying of thirst. A very satirical death being surrounded by a river with fresh water, or let’s say not so fresh water.

Back in our compartment I took Ulick, Lia and Travis to the side to tell them our options. Travis pushed over a bunk and kicked in some battens. Walking back to the group everybody had his own special I know this will be a shit discussion pose. Kylie looked up, fighting some tears.

So I confronted the group with our choices to vote. And not everybody voted for rescuing her. I understand why some people think it’s better not to go into the buffer zone, and pragmatically they are right. But the majority voted for rescuing her under any circumstances.

As I explained the options, we discussed several variations and came to the conclusion that first of all the group will stay in the hospital. Now we proposed to go there by water as a group of 3 including Ulick, me and Lia. But then some surprise happened. Kylie came in with a scale, jumped on it and yelled: “52kg! And Amina has to be around 65kg, that’s 110kg plus equipment. How much does a glider carry?”... Lia immediately tried to calm her down and make her leave us to our planning. But Kylie insisted: “What does it help if you three get sick or stuck. If you give me the right equipment I’ll get her, and if the glider fails we at least can try to go back by water. But then you have only two of us at risk and not 4.”

She had a point and after some back and forth we gave in to the fact, that this was the best option for the group if Kylie is willing to this. The other two girls didn’t think so, but I’m not sure they understood the situation completely.

So there we are, we need to train and equip Kylie within 24 hours for her first mission, with a glider she has never flown, to get somebody from the buffer zone. Not the easiest task, but the digitals are very motivated to help us, in order so they get their medication.

Credits:

Image from Robert Sanchez 

Auto medic robot 

patrol drones: There will be patrolling Quadcopter drones :-)

iSecure-Dogs:  K5 Patrol robot and Boston Dynamics spot robots

electric Glider 

Gun Shooting Quadcopter Drone

Fracking Pollution

Tell us what you think => comment here.

Day 1: To the city. - Day 2: Entering the grey Zone. - Day 3: Broken bridge. - Day 4: Toxic Rain. - Day 5: Forsaken robot. - Day 6: Eating Insects. Kyleis robot. - Day 7: Neglected cities. -Day 8: Hiding in the Pharmacy - Day 9: Everybody left - hoping for satellite images - Day 10: Toxic oceans and soil - farming in deserts of concrete. - Day 11: Worthless bills on a shabby boat. - Day 12: The gap of long living. Ruled by scientist elite.  - Day 13: Fixing bionics. - Day 14: Future Inbox: “Women revolutionised Asia - the new center of the world…” - Day 15: Joining “The Digital People” - living in Virtual Reality. -Day 16: Resistant bacteria - greed and cheap meat destroyed antibiotics. - Day 17: Climate Ignorance: Flooding, Drought, Famine… the poor suffered first. - Day 18: Dead forests in the buffer zone. - Day 19: VR Training for Kylies trip through the polluted Fracking zone. - Day 20: Liftoff from desperation.

[prospectivehistory]

Tell us your main future wish and worry! - 1111 FB Followers Special

Prospective History is all about it’s followers and readers. We want you to think about your prospective future, about your topics, about your wishes and your fears. As our first special we want to celebrate our 1111 followers from all over the world, so please help us to make this special.

Think, imagine, learn and change your future!

Please tell us your main future wish worry. ==> Add as a comment here! 

Is it the wellbeing of your family, having a great job, is it green technology or flying to another planet? Is it hunger, no work, is it natural disaster or computers taking over the world? We want to hear what your personal topics for the future are.

Credits:

Image from https://unsplash.com/ thanks to this great Photographer