Our Developers,
which art in studios,
hallowed be thy games;
thy product come;
thy patching be done,
in beta as it is in final release.
Give us this day our daily quests.
And forgive us our trollings.
as we forgive them that trolleth against us.
And lead us not into hacks;
but deliver us from fail.
I really need to find more things to do with my life.
Just a quick post about a little theory I’ve had and the results of some research I’ve done.
Despite the many sociological, technological, cultural, logistical, health and [insert other such words here] problems associated with such a scenario, if we had to, how could we, as humans, go about building one major city that would focus nearly all of our population, and use the rest of the unused space on Earth for more efficient agricultural and mining activities.
The City of Manila in the Phillipines. According to their 2007 Census, the city has a population of just over 1,660,000 people living in an area of 38.55km2. So, that rounds out to 43,079 people in each square kilometer of the city. As you might expect, it’s the most densely packed city on Earth. But being so densely packed, it’s probably not the most ideal place in the world to live.
So, for a counterbalance, let’s choose Los Angeles. All in all, not a bad place to live by most sources. In 2009, it was reported as having a population of around about 3,833,000 people, but they live within a city area of 1,214.9 km2. That evens out to a much more comfortable 3,155 people for every square kilometer.
According to US Census World POPClock Projection, at the time I’m writing this (11/18/10 at 06:10 UTC (EST+5)), there are estimated to be 6,882,253,988 alive on earth. And that’s a lot of people… So, where do we find room for them?
Using the existing densities of 43,079/km2 from Manila and 3,155/km2 from LA, let’s see just what kind of an area we could compact all of Earth in to.
Based on Manila Density:
6,882,253,988 people / 43,079/km2 = 159,758km2. For a comparison of the size, the country of Tunisia is 163,610km2, and is home to about 10 million people.
Based on Los Angeles Density:
6,882,253,988 people / 2,970.4/km2 = 2,316,945km2. For a comparison of the size, the country of Algeria (which is right next to Tunisia. Go figure) is 2,381,741km2, and is estimated to be home to about 35 million people.
And just for fun, suppose one day humanity did hit a sustainable 20 billion people…
Based on Los Angeles Density with 20 billion humans:
20,000,000,000 people / 2,970.4/km2 = 6,733,099.9km2. For a comparison of the size, the entire Australian continent is 7,692,024km2, and it is presently home to only 22.5 million people.
Now, given that we’d need a lot of room for logistics, infrastructure, and other such things in a city so massive add anywhere between 20%-50% on top of the existing estimates.
All things considered, to future-proof most of the city, and place it in an ideal geographical location, Europe would most likely be the most hospitable area. Covering just about 10,000,000km2, I’m thinking there’d be enough room there to build a pretty enormous city.
But, for all of this theory, that would still require demolishing most of Europe, relocating all the worlds population, planning a metropolis the size of a continent, hyper-industrialism to build the city, much more clean and efficient means of power generation, and probably hardest of all, consolidating and merging all of humanity under a single government.
So… yeah. This won’t happen any time soon. Could make a good premise for some sci-fi, though.
Orthrographic Projections of each country mentioned
Tunisia
Closest to Manila-based estimate
Algeria
Closest to Los Angeles-based estimate.
Europe
Potentially the most ideal place for this towering metropolis?
Skip the boring stuff, and go to the important info
‘kay, so a few days ago, I found myself in need of a new phone. After a bit of research, I came across and decided upon the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. It was relatively cheap on a plan, nice specs, and was a light year away from my old phone (a Samsung F480. Nice basic touchscreen, pretty resilient. Just lags like an ass as it gets old). So, I jumped on Google and read a few reviews about the X10. Pretty much all good things to say, except some people were really critical of the battery life of the phone. “Well, yeah. It’s a 480 x 854 pixel screen with wifi, GPS, and a pretty beasty little set of other features”, I thought to myself. And besides, since it can charge from a USB cable, no major problem if it’s really a bit of a problem anyway.
So, with all of this in mind, I went out, rejigged my cap, and bought the phone. And I wasn’t disappointed. Tried out the wifi in town, and managed to connect via a VPN back to my home network. Browsed the app markets, customized a few things, re-did my phonebook, and just generally perused the features. Ya know, all the normal fun stuff after getting a new phone. So, I took it back home, plugged it in, and charged it up. After it was charged, I jumped back on, and started randomly installing and trying out various applications, like a kid in a cybernetic candy store.
However, that’s where the problems began.
The phone began to lag. Not seriously at first, but it seemed to increase. I figured the RAM was filling up, so I rebooted the phone. All was nice, until my random perusing of apps made the lag start again. So, I rebooted again and just decided to call it a night.
Next day, I woke up uncharacteristically early. When I reached for my phone to check the time, I noticed the battery was dead. “Huh, wierd”, I thought. So, I threw it on the charger again, and found the Battery status under Settings > About phone > Status, and it’s shiny percentage counter. Much nicer than the “1 bar, 2 bars, 3 bars” measurement I’ve been having up until now. Anyway, after two hours or so when I had to leave, I saw the phone was at a nice 100%, so I took the phone off the charger and left. After my general browsing around Facebook, and a few other things, I decided to play some Robo Defense for an hour or so. After three hours, I decided to check my battery.
It was sitting at about 40% after a few hours of moderate use.
That’s when I realized that there really wasn’t an Exit function for most of the apps. Just going back to the main window and opening something new. Just adding more straw on the proverbial camel’s back.
After some quick searching around the phone, I noticed something odd. There was no mention of a built-in Task Manager. At first I thought about using connectBot and poking in the dark on the command-line, but then decided to jump online and see what everyone else’d found. Turns out, I wasn’t the first person to come to this conclusion, and most sources I found mentioned using Task Killers to battery drain.
After a quick search, I found an app called Advanced Task Killer. Sounds about right.
Like you’d expect, you can tell it what programs to kill, etc. But it also has a nifty function called Auto-kill. Basically, you can set it to kill off applications at certain intervals, or events. In my case, whenever the screen goes dark, it will automatically kill any applications not consuming processing power (called the “Safe” auto-kill level). So, if you go experimenting with apps and forget about them, it’ll clean them up whenever the screen goes on standby. So when the display is off, it’s actually consuming less power. Not just acting like it is.
So after installing it this morning with a fully charged battery, I used it today. I gave it some pretty heavy use today, and in the 4 hours I used it, it only went down to about 72%. So, if I didn’t use it at all, and just left it in my pocket, it could make it through a day pretty easily, I imagine.
(Also, I just checked my own phone. After 5 hours of doing practically nothing, it’s dropped by about 9% or so. So, there’s definitely an improvement)