OurSydney2050

LiveFutures2020, Sydney, 2008

This was a similar project to OurMelbourne2050, run as an interactive activity at the LiveFutures2020 summit in Newtown, Sydney. This project featured two additional components - a pledge section, where participants typed out on a laptop one one step that they can take themselves to their future vision a little closer, and a section where they could type out their visions.

Unfortunately, photographic documentation was destroyed for this project.

LiveFutures

Some of the visions:

"The Third Industrial Revolution is over. Everyone on the planet can access digital streams on Internet v37 that will make close to anything they need. Raw materials do very little travelling any more. Our own garbage provides just about everything that our personal fabrication machines need to produce any object we want. It's ironic to think that only 40 years ago we were worried about energy. In the early 2010s, the Turin University jet stream wind generators showed for good that electricity could be produced renewably for a cost so low that power became a very nearly free community and personal resource. But then came the fabrication machines that gave us printable solar cells, batteries, inverters etc for very low cost. Fossil fuels became by contrast, the clunky, over-centralised, dirty technology that we always knew we had to abandon. With nearly free power we started cleaning up the Earth. Every sort of clean up became feasible. All of us all now live in the deepest synergy with our world. The Us and It syndrome with nature and each other has finally gone for good. The human population of 8 billion now has passed up Maslow's hierarchy to deep processes of self-actualisation. Dreams, art, science are now the central work of much of the race, bringing our human sensibilities to our partnerships with our specie's children, the conscious biomachines. We have travelled with them now all the way out to the Oort cloud, and to all the planets and moons of our system on the way. Only 4 billion of us now live on Planet Earth, the rest mainly in the O'Neill habitats at the Lagrange points. Radical de-centralisation of energy and other production has finally put people past the fear politics of the past 10 millennia. The Second Biological Revolution has left us free of the fear of old age and death, fundamental drivers of our deepest fear. We have entered at last the adulthood of our species. "

"Dawn greets crowds at a hilltop near my house. They have come, inspired by the sun’s rays that wash over the thousands of lush green plants - covering the rooftops as far as the eye can see. The rays touch the great solar arrays which float gossamer-like around the city, collecting sunlight energy and beaming it back to the hungry surface below. People are everywhere; some hurry to work, other stroll and talk, still others start on their community contributions – turning their hands at the endless variety of tasks required to keep the city alive and vibrant.
I walk into a vast, towering building that looks like a giant fractured greenhouse stretching to the sky. The rising sun sweeps through the flowers and nourishes the many plants which wind their ways around the intricate internal glass and steel structures which support the building. At lunch I take a compressed air lift – an clear, ethereal box that rises slowly up past glinting floors and ceilings – up to the rooftop garden where a handfull of my co-workers serve me fresh tomato salad, made from vegetables within plucking distance of my hand. We laugh, gossip and admire the views. The city rolls out below, a maze of glittering crystal and tangled green.
A few hours later, as the light is changing to a warm, rich yellow, I joined the swelling crowds that cluster along the wide foreshores of the city’s several great lakes. A smile rises silently to my face just as the gold disk sinks below the horizon."

"Get rid of fossil fuels as main energy source and harness all of the alternates. Greater public transport. Further exploration and colonisation of the solar system for the benefit off humanity in a peacefull manner. Discard concurrent manufacturing processes that are so archaic that they ought to be made redundant, and exploit Jthe new self generative systems such as molecular beam epitaxy; rapid prototyping; laser strereo lithography; already in the prototype stages; and integrate with robotic automation sysems. For medical technology, incorporate similar provisos, sans tolimb and organ regeneration via molecular/cellular self replication. Advanded ultra resilient meta materials can be grown in similar fashion contingent to molecular engineering. Furthermore emphasise greater and more efficient recycling methods. REDUCE POLLUTION EMISSION LEVELS AND CLEAN UP OUR ECOLOGY AND ENVIROMENT INCLUSIVE TO PROTECTING NEARLY EXTINCT ANIMALS AND FORRESTS. SUPPORT RESPONSIBLE GENETIC ENGINEERING AND ORGANIC PRODUCE GROWTH. Allow for the permeation of alternate and conventional medicinal practices by promoting the use of homoepathy and smart drugs. PERSONAL ROBOT ASSISTANTS - YAY!!!! For tranportation systems, GO-GO-GO MAGLEV TRAINS; manufacture current proposals of radically shaped aerospace planes powered similarly to the maglev trains; and additionally utilise catepillar drives in ships and to the former; and off course FLYING ELECTRIC CARS!!!!! MOST IMPORTANTLY END WAR; FAMINE AND POVERTY; GREED AND CORRUPTION; STOP ANY FORM OF PERSECUTION; AND GREATER ALLOCATION TO HUMANITY THE EQUITABLE REDISTRIBUTION OFF RESOURCES AND WEALTH, SO WE CAN ALL LIVE IN A SEMBLENCE OF SOME KIND OF PEACEFULL WORLD!!!!! As a colary, it is important for humanity to become more enlightened and transcend its existence. As an individual who has a particular religious belief, IT IS AN IMPERATIVE THAT ALL OFF THE WORLDS RELIGIONS UNITE BACK INTO ITS ORIGINAL SINGIULAR SOURCE!!!!! Lastly, for all countries to unify as a common entity, because after all there is only one race and that is the HUMAN RACE!!!!! As a poststscript , declassify all UFO FILES!!!!!!!"