Off-the-Grid 3052
The future that accommodates 10 to 20 billion humans will
necessarily be highly structured and orderly. The flow of daily life will not
well handle exceptions. For instance, when there are hundreds of people
ascending through the levels of a subway station on escalators there will be a
low tolerance for anyone who stops walking when they reach a new level and step
off. They will be pushed aside while the crowd continues along. A person moving
in any sort of personal transportation will not be accepted if they travel too
fast or too slow. The optimum speed will
need to be maintained or the system will fail.
Even though the order will have to be maintained, there will
be those people who inherently resist the conformance to the policies and rules
of the society. As we do today, there will be the outliers who eschew the conveniences
and conformity of the established order. They will seek to live off the grid so
to speak in places beyond where the commanded order prevails.
These people will necessarily not be supported by the
Establishment or any of the efforts that today allow people to live in the most
out of the way places and be self-sustaining. None of the infrastructure will
extend to where they dwell. Municipal water pipes will stop miles from their
location. Electric and telecommunications lines will not serve their
coordinates. Fortunately many of the urban systems will have adopted the
sustainable practices of rooftop gardening, rain capture, wind and solar
electric generation. That convergence of styles with the off-the-grid
independent people will make the outlier societies far more possible. They will live in similar environments but
far less dense and far less structured by rules that are essential to
accommodate that structured society.
Fortunately for the independent minded people, the
government of the urban areas will not give them a second thought until and
unless their actions serve to negatively impact the order and supply of the
urban areas. Such an intrusion might be the diverting of too much water or
impounding it too long thereby denying the larger organized areas the water
they need.
Even today, we have such water use conflicts where residents
of Phoenix, AZ want "Eastern Yards" with grassy lawns and deciduous
trees that require periodic inundating from an irrigation system. They must
compete with the classy golf courses for that water while people with
"western yards" say don't take my water and curtail my use.
In some regions, gas and oil drillers consume millions of
gallons of water per well even during drought conditions that leave lakes and rivers
nearly empty.
As of the 21st Century there are people who think of
themselves as naturalists and survivalists.
They want to grow their own food, build low-energy houses and live a
simpler way of life. By 3052, their only
remaining effort will be to live in less dense areas, since it will be their
pioneering efforts that eventually become adopted by the larger civilization.
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