Cloud City
Discussion
Ralph Horat and Jan Baeriswyl:
“After a city has reached a certain size we argue that physical growth no longer contributes to social flourishing. The reverse side of mega cities are a shrinking civic design space, overused infrastructure & overcrowded physical space, lost connection to nature and faster spread of viruses. To further increase our collective intelligence, forge meaningful relationships beyond our local environment, expand our cultural horizon and strengthen our innovation capability the virtual dimensions become essential. Cloud City can be thought of as the global and virtual metaspace, acting as digital commons for the citizens of the Cosmopolis-Network and the world at large. It could be built from the ground up by its members as a virtual and augmented reality world, creating a whole new experience of social interaction between people around the planet. In contrast to the physical city, it can harbor an indefinite number of people due to its non-rivalrous nature and facilitate meaningful relationships amongst them due to the extensive information network Cloud City is built upon. Below we outline some of the functions that Cloud City could provide (not exhaustive).
Cloud City could function as the “brain” of the Cosmopolis-Network, where knowledge, data, software, production designs and other immaterial assets are being pooled, intelligently organized and made openly accessible to everyone. The more data that is being gathered, organized and shared in an intelligent manner, the more powerful the network becomes, resulting in a drastic increase of the collective intelligence.”