SCIENCE IN 1980
by
Jacque Fresco
The interior of the home will be arranged to suit the tastes of the occupants. Walls and partitions, though standardized too, will be flexible. The walls will fold back and roll away all by push-button and tape from the central programming panel.
Lighting will come from the rays of the sun, converted by the skin of the exterior, a photo-electric selenium-like material. The skin reacts to the sun's rays, converting the rays directly into electrical power; which is stored. The amount accumulated would be more than 50 watts per square yard per minute. A few days sunlight would provide sufficient power to light the home for several weeks.
The sun's rays not only lights the home, but runs the entire mechanism of the home; the kitchen unit, heating, air-conditioning, air filtering, and radio-TV receiving apparatus, etc.
Inside this home, the television receiver apparatus would be built-in as all other components, furniture, etc. as an integral part of the home. This receiving screen will appear on the wall, presenting pictures and entertainment in third dimension and natural color. The television screen will also operate a color phosphor-reactive plastic sheet, which will appear as a continuous roll at the base of the TV screen. This phosphor sheet will receive news of the day. in pictures and print, for the occupcmts. After this newspaper is read, is placed back in the receptor slot of the TV apparatus, where the phosphor print is erased electronically and prepared for the next electronic printing. "Clippings" can be recorded on a memory bank.
The bedroom consists of a sleeping chamber enclosed by a half-silvered mirror for one-way viewing. The beds will contain automatic sheet changing facilities. Upon exit from the sleeping chamber, a fresh sheet is rolled into place while the used sheet is cleaned and sterilized ultrasonically.
The bathroom contains molded-in features such as proximity water controls, which turn on the water when hands are in the vicinity of sensory apparatus. All windows and sanitary facilities in the house are so electrostatically treated as to repel dust and foreign matter from the surface.
The furniture will be molded up out of the floors as an integral part of the flooring. Pick your floor, pick your furniture! A multiplicity of floor plans can be selected.
The standard color of the room is white by means of a dial, you may very the frequency, which in turn varies the color. The house is entirely self-cleaning and self-maintaining.
THE METROPOLITAN CITY of Miami of the future will be built radially around a massive· central dome. This dome will form the nucleus of lhe city. It will house an atomic power plant and the great administrative computer, an electronic machine designed to handle problems far too complex for human brains.
Extending outward, we find the second perimeter which houses the industrial control sequences. In the third perimeter, research and development. 'The fourth perimeter contains the apartment houses surrounding the various research buildings, and extending outward and beyond the apartments into the fifth perimeter, we find the residential districts. The sixth perimeter ... parks, playgrounds, recreation facilities, art centers, cultural centers for man's leisure activities. The seventh perimeter contains the agriculture belt and food processing industries.
THE AIRCRAFT of tomorrow will consist of a huge ring of saucer-like center with transparent steel undersurface and transparent steel section on the upper-surface of the disc. Surrounding the disc, three wings or blades will extend outward from the centrally located passenger section. Future planes will not be welded, riveted nor bolted. Instead they will be manufactured by a process to be known as electromigration or electro-forming. This is similar to the electroplating system of our own time.
In flight characteristics - the blades will be rotated by ionic propulsion installed at the tip of each blade. The craft will rise very much like the helicopter of the present day; however, without noise due to electro-static repulsion of air from the tip of the rotors. As the aircraft attains an altitude of 30,000 feet, it tilts on Its axis and heads in the direction of its destination.
The ionic propulsion lessens at the bladetips and is now ejected from the disc itself. As the craft attains the speed of 800 miles per hour the blades slowly come to a halt, presenting the appearance of a three-pointed star with one part of the flooring. Pick your floor, pick your furni- blade aimed in the direct.Jon of flight and the remaining blades presenting the appearance of swept-back wings. At this point, the acceleration increases to speeds up to 5000 miles per hour. The craft is well above 100 miles.
IN THE YEARS to come, machines linked with one another will take on higher orders of complexity, brought about by direct linkage of the machine to the environment. At the present time, we speak of such subjects as man-machine systems, programming, etc.
These processes were necessary and man filled the function of that agent between the environment and the machine. With the further development of feedback systems, the problems presented by time compression no longer enable man to participate as an intervening agent between the machine and environment. It is just that factor that we are beginning to encounter at present. For machine systems have developed so rapidly that the participation of man has become one of the limiting drawbacks in the performance and carrying out of highly complex tasks by such machines.