An ocean liner is a totally enclosed system.
It has medical, hospitals, emergency rooms.
but it has no kitchens in the bedrooms. There's a dining area.
It's inefficient to put a kitchen in every bedroom
on the ocean liner. Do you understand that?
They have areas set aside for that.
They have a nurse, several nurses, on the ocean liner
but what does a nurse do? A nurse can bandage.
She can close in surgery.
There's no reason why
the future will not have automated systems for doing that.
They can invite a doctor from any area of the globe
on board that boat. They can invite him
as a virtual image or as a symbol manipulator
and that doctor can study the condition without being there.
You have a totally different system. That's why I use the term
'total enclosure systems'.
Each building generates its own electricity.
It provides for all human needs
and even grows or prepares food in the building.
Today you have places where you have fast food.
You have 15 cooks and waitresses and all that.
In the future, you'll be able to extrude the food
very rapidly with no people at all. You don't need people.
You don't need waitresses, cooks, and all.
What you need is the food handled
the way the food is handled by people, only much faster.
Remember, it takes a doctor time to diagnose.
He's got to study the symbols and tell what the problem might be.
Scanning by machine is very fast.
I can't tell you exactly what hospitals will look like
or what the cities will look like.
Although we know that beds would be very similar
only they'd be more flexible.
Not only that, the bed will have monitors built-in.
If there's any kind of emergency, the bed can stimulate you
out of that emergency and call for help without you even knowing it.
If you have palpitations or unusual physical conditions
while you're asleep, a staff would arrive.
When I say 'total enclosure' I mean
methods for dealing with all problems that humans might have.
Does that mean there won't be a kitchen in every home?
There will be, during the transition.
Until we realize, instead of having 5,000 homes
with 5,000 sinks and 5,000 ovens
and refrigerators, you have gigantic refrigerators
and a food preparation system. Do you understand that?
It will not be like it is today.
When people look at these cities that I drew up here
they picture conventional approaches:
a bedroom, a kitchen, a dining room, a dining area
because you have people over for lunch
the same value systems we have today.
I would say that this is where the future is going
and the future design would depend on how far into the future
and how far technology has gone.
When they can read symbols and make diagnosis
when a machine can do drafting instead of thousands of draftsmen...
A machine can do drafting much faster than man.
It can scan those lines in
if you put in the specifications of what you want.
If you want a hospital to house a thousand people
with the most economical structures
which have built-in heating and cooling systems
all that can be stored in information systems.
The building can probably be forthcoming in minutes
than rather hours that it takes draftsmen to do it
and the amount of draftsmen and the amount of space allotted for things
will not be the same. If you took an industrial area
with movable walls
and if some manufacturing process needed
the production of 100 aerocars a day
that space could be assembled.
The movable walls could move to accommodate the production methods.
If the production methods are faster two years from now
the walls come together, the factory is smaller
and the production rate is higher.
Whatever you have today: ovens, kitchens; all those things
will be smaller in the future, produce things much faster
and not occupy the same space.
When you say "How much space do you need for hospitals?"
It depends: If people eat nutritious food, do exercise
you don't have many hospitals.
I can't tell you exactly what the hospital space will be
or how technical they will be.
I can only say this:
The future will occupy much less space for the same turnout
and that's the message. If you try to design a city
with a hundred drafting tables in it, or 30 machines
that is with today's thinking.
And the building will get... The zone that creates that
will be smaller and have less people.
Instead of having generalists
where the doctor is a generalist and he knows
everything from neurology to other physical problems
it's much easier to have computers with that information.
Not only do they scan you and record it in symbolic logic
what the condition is, it is then read.
Instead of doctors, it's read by a machine, very rapidly
and then the appropriate action can be taken by a machine
if it's surgery or whatever else is required.
To sit down and design a surgical system
based on today's values and today's methodology
would be inappropriate for the future.
A city of that size will do ten times the work
that a city today of the same size does.
That's why I can't give you an exact description
of what hospitals will be like, only an overview, in general.
A ship is a total enclosure system.
A passenger liner that has a thousand passengers
has hospital equipment, cooking, dining areas, sleeping areas
air conditioned, children's room, and nurses take care of children.
It has everything that a thousand passengers may need.
Do you understand that? A ship is almost a total enclosure system.
It doesn't generate its own energy.
It uses machines, diesel engines
to generate electricity to operate the generators.
In the future, the surface of the ship
will supply the energy needed. The wave power
and the surrounding area will supply that ship
with the energy it needs rather than require input.
Most of the buildings that I draw that you see there
can be put in the cities of the future on the outer perimeter.
You need not... You can use the same basic drawings that I have today
but trying to fill in the buildings, as to what's in them
I'd rather not divulge that specific information.
I can go into specifics
but they would only serve temporarily.
The method of delivery of people or moving people
depends on the technology of the future
and it depends on how easy it is to move people.
If you have total enclosure systems, it means each system
is self-operating. It doesn't depend on central power
but they're all connected to the central computer
and they're connected to all events in other cities.
If the city system mechanisms fail
other mechanisms take over
and notify the appropriate people
or the appropriate machines to carry out a given task.
They took all kinds of cardiograms of me today
and then it goes to the cardiologist.
The blood test is divided into different systems
where people with microscopes analyze the blood.
Whatever they see, they draw conclusions.
If it's symbolic rather than visual, they draw conclusions.
Machines can draw the same conclusions and many more.
(Roxanne) They've had experiments where they've given the same blood
to many different labs and they drew up different conclusions.
- I know, because their equipment varies in sensitivity, sometimes
and the time period, the temperature and other variables
which are not controlled. Also the profit motive
affects how late their equipment is, how modern.
People are more concerned with how many customers
or how many clients they've had.
The future concern is: optimizing human performance
which is very different, or equipment performance
making it date optimal
and all information's available and no patents
so you can use the latest information in designing your machinery.
You can correspond with people that know more about it than you do
or you can correspond with machines that know more about it than you do.
I can't say. It depends on when it's built.
"Total Enclosure Systems" from Series 4 (DVD or CD); Lecture Series 2010-2011