ideaist

I guess I've pretty much had it with Arcosanti and the Cosanti Foundation. I mean, go guys, all the best, but I don't see them doing anything particularly interesting or promising, or innovative or imaginative. Still a nice place to visit, a great work opportunity, if you fit in. Me, I can't even bring myself to go to events. They hate me up there. Why? Um, I'm awkward, and I care. Nice of them to be so nice!

In my twenties I got super passionate about arcology, went to Arcosanti, lived there for a while - great experience, or, well, really fun. Kept trying to be part of it for the next twenty years. Really formative for me ... though you could argue that doesn't entirely speak well for it. Well, we'll see. I may salvage something out of my life, even yet ... career-wise, I mean. (Married a girl I met there. She's awesome.)

Just the way I thought, think ... not my fault ... but I thought we could actually build arcologies. Still do, I guess, but that takes some 'splainin'. Anyway, my thought was, if we could make building arcologies really cheap (to put it the simplest possible way), by doing some clever engineering work, they would get built. I had some idea about creating layered structure for pillars that would make them strong, something like that. It was bullshit.

The question I was asking, though, was, how would we build these things? Maybe the answer is obvious to people who (I guess, unlike me) are smart, but I kind of needed to think about it. (I mentioned thinking about it to Soleri. Guess what: he dismissed my idea as dumb.)

Any ... way, after I thought about it for a couple of years, I suddenly had a pretty amazing insight. So, I kind of could care less about building arcologies, today. I really did think this over, and Paolo's designs for cities actually SUCK. I mean, they're beautiful, which I do find really interesting, but when you study them more deeply, they're horrible, like giant feet stomping on the landscape. In the end, he didn't get it right. Good effort, something to teach us - which I hope to write about - but in the end, he didn't figure it out, and then went completely off the rails. For example, Arcosanti is mostly really cool, although you can see the crap starting to creep into it here and there, but the plans for the future of Arcosanti, that you see here and there in their promotional material, are just weird office towers. There's not actually anything arcological about them.

If we actually work to understand what's beautiful about Paolo's drawings, it's something we can use, I think, to make really cool new cities - actually, as I see it, out of today's cities (which, by the way, are kind of cool, if you look at it the right way). I question whether anyone at Arcosanti actually gets that. Paolo didn't get it himself. He was actually just on autopilot, with interesting results, to be sure, but at some point someone needs to take the wheel, or we'll just fly off into oblivion. Oh, well, nothing wrong with oblivion. It's been a good ride.

Well, one thing Paolo didn't think about very much - he actually said as much, over and over, so I'm not just casting aspersions - was how to actually build arcologies. I felt like I was kind of out there, because I really did think about that. I already described one of those thoughts, which was, make building them super cheap. I do not mean cheesy, I mean efficient. You need a system, and what I dreamt up - it just popped into my mind - was just such a system. So, I don't see anyone using that kind of system in any kind of construction ... I feel like I've invented something. Now, here's the question: if you invent something, what should you do with it? Well, you should secure a patent, license the system, and build a very big industrial company. Right? If we are going to build something fantastic - see, I don't want to call it arcology any more. It's a nice word, it's actually kind of the right word, but it sounds silly, and it comes with some baggage I can't really deal with - build something fantastic, in the way of new city type stuff - it's probably going to be by doing business.

If any of my readers find the idea of developing an industrial product interesting - going for patents, licensing, marketing, going for huge profits - and have some useful insights for me, as far as how to proceed (I'm kind of lost), or some resources, connections, for example - and if you think it's possible I could have a legit idea, and if you can contemplate actually talking to me, and being my partner, or giving it consideration (and I'm not going to describe my idea unless I'm pretty comfortable with you as a partner), well, that is what I'm looking for. This thing I dreamed up has, I think, some pretty interesting implications for just building in general. It could make it possible to build stuff that, today, is pretty much just fantasy, an actual practical (meaning, in a way, easy) thing. I know it's kind of a laugh, but, any takers on someone with an idea?