The future of science: the sweetness of dreams
Fresh, fresh from the garden, predictions about the future wonders of science and well (rather than like wine, but like cheese with mold :) aged old. Perhaps the predictions of modern scientists are not as fantastic as what their colleagues imagined 90 years ago. Or maybe the current promising research and predictions will cause our descendants the same condescending smile as the dead-end directions of the flight of scientific thought and utopias of the 20s – with us.
Scientists' predictions about the near future: a new brain, a piece of paper computer and the death of mobile communications(IA Regnum, 2009)
Authoritative scientists – organizers and participants of the international symposium PIERS 2009 (Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium), held in Moscow from August 18 to 21, tell about what awaits humanity in the very near future.
Alexander Samokhin, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor (MIREA), Chairman of the Organizing Committee of PIERS 2009 Moscow:
I think real three-dimensional televisions will soon enter the market. 3D displays have not been news for a long time, but perhaps no one has managed to achieve the effect of full immersion yet. Computers in the form in which they are now, will "go on the shelf" – the computer will look different. For example, a piece of paper computer will appear: it can be rolled up like a candy wrapper, and then unfolded. Mobile communication, such as we know it, will also disappear in 30 years. There will be changes in medicine. Ultra-thin contact lenses will appear, which will not need to be removed at night. The improvement of heart stimulators and the brain tomography process is expected. There will be new materials, for example, wire as thick as a hair, on which you can hang a ton.
Vladimir Zernov, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Rector of RosNOU, member of the International Advisory Committee PIERS 2009 Moscow: Almost certainly in the near future, an artificial brain will be built into the human body. The human brain will become like a dual–core computer: one core is the native brain, the second is artificial. So the student will be able to use the second brain for guaranteed memorization and accurate reproduction of the information he needs. In addition, the human brain sometimes needs rest, and thanks to an additional brain, our native one can be turned off, for example, at night. There will be serious breakthroughs in medicine. Very soon, mobile devices such as wristwatches will appear, which will independently transmit all data about the patient's well-being at any time and to any point of the globe. RosNOU scientists have already developed a mobile cardiocode – a device that will allow its owner to conduct a cardiological examination almost independently at any time and in any place.
Yuri Shestopalov, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor (Karlstad University, Sweden), Vice-Chairman of the Organizing Committee of PIERS 2009 Moscow:
One can imagine that money and credit cards will fade into the background or even "die off" in their physical manifestation. This will save us, for example, from queues in stores. So, a person comes to the store, picks up products and passes through a special device that, using electromagnetic waves, automatically reads the amount of all purchases through a chip embedded, for example, in a wristwatch. There will be tiny computers with a good display and reliable wireless connection. And it will be in the next 10-15 years. In medicine, changes will affect devices that recognize the internal environment of the body, primarily tumors, because with the help of electromagnetic sensing, much can be studied. At the same time, we must not forget about the study of the influence of electromagnetic waves on the human body. In the near future, there may be a revolution in cars. I assume that many will switch to electric cars with solar panels. By the way, you can buy an electric car even tomorrow, but it won't be cheap, and you won't drive very fast. I am sure that in 10 years this type of transport will become much more competitive than the usual cars.
Sergey Nikitov, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of Information Security of RosNOU, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences:
Photonic crystals and metamaterials can serve as a powerful base for the emergence of an optical computer. Of course, there will not be a purely optical computer, but optical elements in the "memory" will be popularized in the very near future. So, on a home optical computer, which will not differ in any way from the usual one, for example, all the libraries of the world will be stored. The changes will also affect telecommunications systems. Over the next five years, new methods of creating optical fiber will be invented, thanks to which the data transfer rate will increase by orders of magnitude. High-quality 3D broadcasting will enter the market in the next five years. There will be a significant development of laser technologies in medicine.
Alexander Sigov, Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences, Professor, Rector of MIREA, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the International Advisory Committee PIERS 2009:
I am the type of person who does not like to fantasize about technical innovations. Science should not be focused solely on practical application. The same Faraday thought little about practice. He said that science deals with sophisticated things and is quite far from practice. But without his discoveries it is impossible to imagine the modern world. And what is the modern world? This is, in fact, information that you need to be able to transmit, record, store and process. All this is based on the phenomenon of interaction of electromagnetic waves and substances. By studying various areas of interaction, we can go very far and, probably, lay the foundations for future big steps today. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to study the properties of electromagnetic waves in a variety of media.
Scientific utopias of the first years of Soviet power
(published in the magazine "Russian Life" in August 2007).
Soviet scientists of the 20s proved to be the legitimate heirs of utopians and inventors of the past. They developed the principles of interplanetary navigation, hoped to defeat death by rejuvenation, fatigue by special injections. And they also tried to marry fundamental science with fundamental morality.
The pioneers of Soviet science presented their futuristic fantasies in a series of articles collected and published in a separate book: Life and Technology of the Future (social and scientific-technical utopias). Edited by Ark. A-na and E. Colman. – Moscow Worker, M.-L., 1928.
We offer three of them to the reader's attention.
Psychology of the man of the future (socio-psychological essay)
Prof. A. ZALKIND
Background of the questionIs it necessary to think about what a person will be like in hundreds of years?
Isn't this an idle idea? Is a scientific approach to such predictions possible? Such were the persistent questions put to the author by a number of public and scientific workers who love our revolutionary modernity. However, next to these questions, the author was presented with other questions, even more insistent. "Give us at least an approximate idea of this distant, deeply socialist descendant of ours! The modern man is very little attractive, and it is so difficult to distract from today's average man in the direction of that future man for whose sake we are now crushing our skulls and tearing our hearts!.."
Considerations about the distant socialist future will be useful for our half–friends, both in the West and in the USSR. The West does not know our ideal specifically. The most unexpected ideas about the socialist man prevail there. Either they are terrified of socialism, or rather they are idiotically afraid: "the communization of women", "forced mechanization of the individual", etc.; or they mock socialism: "gray boredom", "stupidity", "emasculation"; or they do not trust in a friendly way: "nonsense, fantasy, impossible." At best, they indulge in pink romance: they imagine a socialist revolution like a sugar revolution, the coming communism is served to themselves with a sugary, sweet sauce. We need to help these dislocated brains straighten out. If sometimes the operation will be painful, it is still impossible to refuse it. The real truth is not born without pain.
I am especially drawn to talk with friends who gravitate to us so far only by instinct. They feel that we are building something new, important, unprecedented, but they have not yet been given to know what this new thing is, where it tends, what it will result in.
Personality in the period of transition to communismA socialist of the USSR is a skillful strategist and tactician for the defense of his fatherland and for deepening the world revolution.
He is an acute dialectician and materialist, revealing objective truth to its origins, who has made Marxism an instrument of his everyday construction. This is a socialist-Americanist who uses the frenzied pace of American methods of industry and "Americanized" life for the purposes of socialism, socialism turns the "Americanized" economic element into a system of ideally working Gosplan.
To the number of common features that equally characterize both the Soviet socialist and the Western proletariat of the transitional era, it is necessary to add a special ethical attitude, which could be called revolutionary proletarian puritanism. Energy saving, austerity of life, the highest condensation (condensation) forces for combat purposes. In the transition period, not to luxury, not to leaks – all forces should be directed to the goals of the struggle. Proletarian puritanism will differ from the puritanism of the bourgeoisie during its golden, revolutionary heyday in its deeply materialistic content: not for God's sake, not for the fear of devils, but in the name of revolutionary expediency. The ethics of proletarian puritanism should include both firm, combative class discipline, and strict moral and business control of everyone over everyone.
This is not the gloomy, frightened, mystical puritanism of the time of Cromwell, this is the free, joyful modesty of a scientifically confident, hardened fighting class.
Sexual life. Sexual loveIn the sexual area, thanks to the rich switchability of the energy of the human body, the chaotic environment of capitalism pressed a lot of biopsychological values to which the sexual function has no right, and this created a "psychosexual disproportion" – with the sexual swelling of the non-sexual areas of a person.
As a result, the mass sexual fund of humanity turned out to be disorganized, deeply poisoned, and the infection "in the neighborhood" even affected healthy social strata – the proletariat, fortunately, to a much lesser extent.
In a mature communist system, the sexual nature of a person will be able to be rebuilt in the same way, just as the whole person will be melted down. Marriage as an economic union will disappear, and at the same time the forced sexual connectedness of the spouses will disappear. The upbringing of children will be completely public, and the family as a center of education will also be eliminated. Matrimony will be liberated, and sexual life will be freed from the artificial conditions of its development. The supply and demand for prostitution will disappear, parasitic idleness and painful overexcitation as a source of early and excessive swelling of sexual desire will disappear.
What are the main "sexological and ethical" disputes about now? The discussion unfolds in two main directions. Which is better? Frequency and variety of sexual manifestations or thickening and deepening of sexual manifestations? Is the first compatible with the second? Rare or frequent sexual acts? Frequent or rare changes of lovers? Is it a holo-sensual sexual attraction or is it obligatory for the elements of love, moral, creative connection, even the dominance of these elements in it, their dictatorship over the sensual side of love? How will communism resolve these issues?
To illustrate the acuteness of these issues, I will cite excerpts from letters from the best representatives of our modern youth who are acutely ill with our ethical problems and sincerely want to combine their behavior with the actual norms of revolutionary expediency.
"I really want to be a new person and do everything so that the revolution wins. But what harm will the revolution do if I bring variety to my sex life? I'm happier to live, I work better, but life is short, I need to have more time to put in motion joy and work."
From another letter: "Every new love story, and I've had a lot of them, shakes me up hard. Each new "novel" gives new strength, new impetus for development, new aspirations to fight. Is asceticism really necessary?"
The above considerations are characterized by one common flaw: they completely do not take into account the qualitative originality of human psychophysiology, which will be developed by the distant communist era.
The process of the increasing creative development of the commune man over the decades and centuries will largely be fueled by the reverse switching into creativity and the qualitative rebirth of those energy resources that were once illegally stolen by sexuality in the conditions of pre-socialist chaos. Only as a result of a long, deep evolutionary preparation will an "explosion" gradually accumulate – sexual intercourse as the completion of an exhaustively close relationship. Such an approach will turn sexual feeling into an extremely condensed (condensed) emotion, completely inseparable from all elements of human activity and creativity.
With such a state of affairs, what can be the place of "volatility" in sexual manifestations? The commune will not bind lovers to each other for life. It is most likely that the "refreshment" of sexual objects throughout a person's life will occur several times, but each new love stage will be one of the most serious shifts in a person's life and will require deep and comprehensive restructuring.
The commune will not allow "two at once" to be attracted to "sexual partners" during one love period. After all, we do not allow ourselves to write two serious books at the same time: both books will come out bad, since the brain does not like the fluttering of creatively working areas. Humanity will not allow sexual bifurcation, sexual fluttering.
The depth and relative duration of sexual union will be mandatory for the era of communism, not in the name of "the strength of the hearth" (which will not be) and not in the name of educational duties to children (these duties will pass to society), but in the name of the most expedient procreation. The depth and power of the love feeling will be an obligatory threshold to the final sexual chord – coition, the only meaning of which will then be procreation.
The "right to jealousy" in a communist society?The right to fight for your love to the end – yes!
But distrust of a loved one, revenge on him for rejecting love harassment – no, this will not happen in the commune. I hear an insistent bellowing from a pre-socialist checkpoint: "Where is the mighty sexual instinct if there is no jealousy!"
A proud, fearless struggle for your love ideal is a positive, creative, fighting attitude. The rejected lover will always find where to creatively switch his remaining unspent sexual exercise: life will be saturated with endless possibilities of these switches, and the switching technique will be developed to perfection by that time.
The Man of the Future (in the light of modern advances in biology and medicine)
Private Associate Professor N.S. MELIK-PASHAEV
Why not assume that in terms of psychophysical development, the man of the future – of course, the very distant future – will be as different from us as physically and mentally modern cultured man differs from primitive man, and this latter from the closest ape–like ancestors.
There is no doubt that fluctuations in the organization of the nervous system will play almost the main role in the changes of the future.
The problem of fatigue and sleep in the futureRecently, Weichardt managed to obtain a special substance from the substance of tired muscles of animals brought to exhaustion, which, due to its inherent poisonous properties, Weichardt called the poison of muscle fatigue, or kenotoxin.
Forcing the guinea pig to run until it was completely exhausted, Weichardt killed it and, squeezing out a muscle extract, which was supposed to contain muscle poison (if any is actually formed in the body), injected it into the body of a completely cheerful guinea pig. After some time, this latter developed all the phenomena characteristic of fatigue – shortness of breath, palpitations, general weakness, lethargy, sluggishness in movements, despite the fact that a healthy and previously rested pig was taken for the experiment.
The chemical composition and properties of muscle venom (kenotoxin) have not been solved, and attempts to obtain it in its pure form have not yet been crowned with success. However, there is no doubt that such a poisonous and, moreover, extremely complex chemical compound exists in the cells of a tired organ, in the blood or in the excretion of an animal. There is no doubt that in the coming decades, the chemical composition and properties of muscle venom will be studied so much that the kenotoxin can be obtained by laboratory means in a test tube.
On the other hand, relatively recently, after long experiments and twelve years of hard work, two French scientists, Pieron and Legendre, managed to prove the existence of a specific poison of the nervous system, or the so–called sleeping poison - a hypnotoxin with pronounced poisonous properties, which, when injected into the body of an animal tired of insomnia, kills it. Cerebrospinal fluid or blood serum taken from an animal that has fallen from insomnia and injected into the blood or spinal canal of a healthy dog causes sleep-like phenomena.
The previous view of sleep as a result of fatigue of the cerebral cortex has now been abandoned, and the cause of sleep is considered not only the local accumulation of poisons in the cerebral cortex, but throughout the nervous system and, more precisely, throughout the body. At the same time, it can be noticed that with age, the need for sleep decreases significantly, in other words, the body's ability to neutralize sleep poisons increases with age. And indeed, the need for sleep is reduced by 3 times: from 20 hours required for an infant, this need is reduced to 8 and even 6 hours a day.
How can this interesting phenomenon be explained? Obviously, during life, the human body acquires new properties and abilities: it gets used to the poisons accumulating in the body, and learns to cope with the toxins of fatigue and sleep easier and faster. Without a doubt, the body is, as it were, immunized against hypnotoxin, a habit is developed in it, just as it is developed for many other poisons – for example, morphine, cocaine. Thus, our body, developing a known immunity to hypnotoxin, reduces the time required for sleep from 20 hours to 6-8 hours a day.
Active immunization of the person of the future will take away from sleep and these 8 hours, pushing the boundaries of wakefulness and creative work. And in fact, one third of a person's life is spent aimlessly fighting the toxins of sleep and fatigue. The man of the future, having conquered sleep, will stop sleeping and will forever be freed from this duty, which takes out twenty years of life with an average life expectancy of 60 years. Therefore, we have a solid reason to assume that the man of the future will not know fatigue and sleep, there will be no human bedrooms in his everyday life – these, according to the apt expression of Dr. Ostromyslensky, disguised infirmaries at home, in which a person powerlessly lies down for healing every night.
What scientific data do we already have at the present time for such an assumption?
If the fight against sleep poisons in natural conditions occurs by developing antidotes inside the body itself, then the problem of defeating sleep in a person of the future should be reduced to the possibility of artificially obtaining antidotes for fatigue and sleep outside the human body and periodically, as needed, introducing them into the body of a tired or falling asleep person. Science is likely to find these antidotes in the coming decades and will receive them by appropriate immunization of animals or even by purely laboratory means.
Already a few years ago, Weichardt, using the usual bacteriological methods in such cases, received an antidote to fatigue – the so-called antikenotoxin or rettardin and, by injecting it into the blood or even into the digestive organs (through the mouth), achieved the effect of fatigue disappearing and restoring working capacity without the usual and habitual rest and sleep.
Thus, when solving this problem, a person of the future, day after day, in a certain dosage, will take orally with food or inject fatigue and sleep antitoxins into the blood, without bothering himself at all and almost without wasting time fighting fatigue and sleep. From day to day, new and new doses of antidotes injected into the body, enclosed in small peas or tablets, will act on the newly formed portions of kenotoxin and hypnotoxin in it, preventing them from accumulating and revealing more or less noticeably their poisonous effect.
There is no doubt that the philosopher's stone of the man of the future – a universal antidote that cures not only fatigue and sleep, but also all toxic diseases – will be found by man. And now the old ways of dealing with fatigue and poetized sleep – through rest and night rest – are the only possible means in the hands of modern man. To him, accustomed to the rhythmic routine of life, to the well-known alternation of wakefulness and sleep, this life without sleep is drawn as a heavy, incomprehensible nightmare. He, our contemporary, is both creepy and sorry to say goodbye to a poetized and sung dream, it is difficult for him to imagine the mental state of a person of the future, freed from the burden of sleep and fatigue. Life without fatigue and sleep… This life and the very routine of the day now may seem to us as incredible as a space with four dimensions! Life without sleep... "Doesn't it mean to suffer endlessly, to live without a smile and laughter, with an unquenchable sadness in your eyes and with longing in your heart? Dr. Ostromyslensky asks. – Think, free and purify our thinking apparatus from poisons. Work, enjoy and at the same time do not feel tired, do not wear out the body. No, not grief and sadness, but eternal cheerfulness, laughter and joy will be a constant companion of this future person. Strong and happy, he will go forward without looking back, conquer and conquer more and more new areas."
The success of modern rejuvenationNow we are witnessing significant success of rejuvenation, which has already taken a decisive step from animal experiments to human experiments.
To rejuvenate men, Steinach chose the same method of dressing or cutting the vas deferens, which gave good results in experiments on laboratory animals. Steinach and his students have noted many cases of rejuvenation of a person with positive results.
Even more spectacular are the cases of rejuvenation performed by Dr. Voronov, whose rejuvenation method differs from the method of cutting or twisting according to Steinach in that Voronov transplants the sex glands taken from younger subjects, or the sex glands of monkeys close in blood and kinship to humans. The material is operatively removed cryptorchial testicles stuck somewhere in the inguinal canal and causing pain to their owner, and recently testicles taken from young people who have just died.
Here's how Voronov in the book "Sex Gland Transplantation" tells about an interesting case of rejuvenation by transplanting monkey glands to an Englishman 74 years old – that is, at the age when the third, and maybe even the fourth rejuvenation will be performed in the practice of the future.
"Before the transfer, two years ago, E. L. (74 years old) he came to me with the appearance of an old man, withered, bent, obese, with a flabby face, with a powerless look, hardly moving, leaning on a large stick. In addition to the age that was already making itself felt, he had another 30 years of stay in India, where he had to develop a lot of activity, despite the oppressive effect of the climate of this country. Add to this that he had smallpox, that two years before our operation he underwent a laparotomy for peritonitis and that his recovery was complicated by pneumonia and pleurisy. On February 2, 1921, I transplanted several pieces of a great ape's testicle under local anesthesia, using the usual technique."
The wound healed quickly, and the patient left Paris after 12 days. And when Voronov met him again 8 months later, he was amazed to see E. L., "who had lost half of his thickness, cheerful, with cheerful movements, with a lively, slightly mocking look. The obesity disappeared, the muscles strengthened, the figure straightened: he gave the impression of a man enjoying full health. He bent his head, and we had to admit that his bald head was covered with thick down. He was returning from Switzerland, where he climbed mountains and engaged in various sports, beloved by the British. This person has really become 15-20 years younger. Physical condition, intelligence, sexual potency – everything has radically changed under the influence of testicular transplantation, which turned a decrepit old man, powerless, pathetic, into a strong, cheerful and enjoying all his abilities. The photographs presented by Voronov show this 75-year-old elder fencing, climbing stairs 4 steps at a time, lifting weights, etc. After undergoing a second examination, almost two years later, he struck Voronov with progressive rejuvenation and even the flowering of the whole organism: "He has a youthful appearance, a straight figure, a flexible gait, which surprised me most of all – his bald head was covered with hair, the length of which is now equal to three centimeters."
The problem of organ transplantation and the life of organs outside the bodyEven now, surgical practice works wonders.
Isn't the very idea of borrowing organs from corpses – organs that undoubtedly survive the life of the organism as a whole - new and opens up wide possibilities?
So, the severed finger of a person, preserved under the hood and inserted with the lower end into the neck of the flask, at the bottom of which there is an aqueous solution of chloroform, retains its viability for several months, which is confirmed by the continuous growth of the nail, as well as by the fact that the severed finger, as normal, reacts with sweat to the injection of pilocarpine.
There is a well-known experience of Brown-Secar with the revival of a severed dog's head by injecting fresh and warm dog blood through the vessels of the head (the so-called carotid arteries). At the same time, the dog's head came to life, reacted with movements of the eyes, ears in the direction of the one who loudly pronounced the dog's name. This experience is reminiscent of one of the fairy tales of the Thousand and One Nights, where the head of the executed sage answered the caliph's questions.
Experiments with the revival of the heart and even with the revival of a whole corpse are not uninteresting, for which they usually use rather complex devices and devices. With the help of such devices and a special nutrient mixture saturated with life-giving oxygen and grape sugar, which serves to nourish the heart muscle, it was proved possible not only to maintain life for a long time in a heart cut out of a freshly killed animal, but also to revive it a few days after death. And indeed, when the flow of nutrient fluid passes through the heart, it begins to contract slowly at first, and then more and more vigorously, and eventually begins to beat rhythmically and clearly, like a living person.
And in fact, do not timid attempts to overcome death, attempts that are fully destined to be carried out only by a man of the future, testify that the mortality of man and animals is something conditional, that death, stopping the individual life of each of us sometimes on its most interesting page, that this death is not omnipotent and not omnipotent, and that it can be fought with great hope of victory. Even now, some parts of the body have been torn from the hands of death. It is enough to recall Carrel's experiments with growing this or that organ in special nutrient fluids prepared from blood and maintained at body temperature in special heating cabinets. Already in these nutrient fluids, pieces of the body can live and grow for an extremely long time. So, a piece of a chicken's body, placed about two decades ago, and still continues to grow and live. The heart of the embryo continues to beat for years under the glass, a piece of the body lives and grows as long as the human will wants it.
And these pieces torn from the tenacious claws of death, in which life is not limited by any limit, are a vivid refutation and reveal all the lies and inconsistency of superstitions that death is a manifestation of the divine will, that death is stronger than life and that therefore it cannot be subordinated to the will and reason of man. No, it can – and will – be subordinated to the man who is coming to replace modern humanity.
The dwelling of the futureArchitect P. BLOKHIN
Architect Le Corbusier (France), the author of an interesting work on urban planning, designing the city of the future (which he – we note in parentheses – thinks of as an improved form of modern capitalism), allocates six-storey houses of a stepped shape with windows facing gardens and parks for housing in the area surrounding the center. Each house occupies an entire block. Hanging gardens are arranged on each floor. Their service is carried out as in hotels. The number of inhabitants in each such house is about 4,000 people.
Corbusier's "City of the Future" is very different from our idea of cities. The skyscrapers of the city center completely overturn our idea of New York skyscrapers with its cramped and darkened streets, since according to Corbusier's project there is a gap of 400 meters between the skyscrapers, designed exclusively for green spaces. The main station is located in the very center of the city at the intersection of the main streets with a room on the roof of the station of the air service station.
Undoubtedly, for the possibility of the existence of this type of housing, the idea of a residential building as a family hearth must be radically changed, and from this basic position, the plan of the future dwelling of the German scientist-architect Bruno Taut begins to unfold. This is how he imagines the dwelling of the time when the emancipation of a woman from the yoke of the household will take place. Not only cooking, but also the maintenance of the house – "cleaning" – are removed from the woman, since only really necessary things remain in the dwelling, beautiful in their rational simplicity. These rooms are not cages bounded once and for all by heavy stone walls, but free spaces that may be more or less limited by movable partitions. The halls are always spacious for any number of people, as they can be freely expanded. The light of the sun's rays always pours into those rooms where it is most needed, since the whole house constantly changes its position following the sun. The side of the children's rooms, like a sunflower, follows the precious rays. Due to its mobility, the house is also always protected from both bad weather and wind.
All rooms are also comfortable because there is no bulky furniture in them. Heavy cabinets, chests and dressers are embedded in the walls. Inside the room there is only light, necessary movable furniture. The maintenance of the house is mechanized to the last degree. All the forces of nature are used for this: the wind, the movement of water, and the sun's rays. We find a further development of the same idea of the free limitation of space in the French architect Pierre Jeanneret.
The Jeanneret House is a garden house that has absolutely no space restrictions in its significant part. The entire upper floor of each residential cell of his house is under the open sky. This is a garden with swimming pools, green living rooms and solariums that have a blue sky vault instead of a ceiling. Green spaces and flowers are also found in all rooms of the house, and these are not geraniums on the window, characteristic of the housing of our time, but freely and rapidly growing greenery – whole trees that penetrate through the light, limited mainly by glass and light planes of the walls of the dwelling.
Both the internal structure and the exterior of the house are not looking for template forms familiar to us with heavy classical beauty, but are developing in new, independent forms. The walls of the dwelling are planes of glass, crystal palaces, or it is a semicircle or a ball, as in the project of Professor Bieber, who implements the famous formula of the ideologist of modern art Cezanne: "You need to design using the shape of a ball."
In sharp contrast to these projects are the projects of Russian architects that solve the problems facing the construction of the current day, as well as more distant times. While the architecture of the West outlines the dwelling of the future, based mainly on the opportunities that the development of technology will give, new social forms of society play a major role in the projects of our architects, and the coming technology is only a powerful means for the implementation of those grandiose spatial constructions that will be created by new forms of social life.
It is therefore interesting to consider in more detail the project of the "palace of labor" as one of the examples of the design of a new life and a new social life.
The project of the "palace of Labor" was developed by a number of architects in the order of free competitive and academic work.
The Palace of Labor is the center of the administrative, social and party life of the USSR, the premises of the mechanism that sets the life of the whole country in motion. It unites a number of permanent, strictly organized institutions. The regularity and organicity of the internal work of this large mechanism were reflected in the appearance of the "palace" and its plans in the best of the "palace" projects, which are considered to be the projects of architect Trotsky for the All–Union competitive solution and the project of architect Sobolev for the academic one.
The main room of the "palace" – a large auditorium accommodating 8000 people – combines with purely parliamentary functions also campaigning and therefore is arranged so that one of its walls, facing a large area, opens and turns the hall into an outdoor amphitheater. The hall merges into an area that is able to accommodate and unite an audience of tens of thousands of people with the help of radio amplifiers. During such mass gatherings, any extraneous movement from the square is diverted to specially designed side streets.
The square of the "palace" and its general configuration are designed so that the "palace of Labor" becomes the center of the capital, to which all kinds of processions and demonstrations are directed. The approaches to the "palace" are planted with greenery, forming parks and boulevards for recreation and walks. The aerostation platform is located above the roof of the "palace". All the necessary premises are radioed and electrified. When designing the working rooms of the "palace" (halls of the CPSU (b), the Moscow City Council, etc.), the requirements of the greatest convenience of work and the least cost of unnecessary movements for communication between them are taken into account, which is characterized by the absence of unnecessary stairs, corridors, etc. The existing stairs, exits and wardrobes are designed to ensure maximum ease of filling and unloading premises. The structures of the building are the latest. The sun's light does not come sparingly through narrow windows, but flows freely through wide and high glazed openings.
These are the general features of the "palace of Labor" as a synthesis of a number of solutions to this task. But human habitation seems completely different at that stage of development of socio-economic forms of life, when labor will take up a minimum of a person's time, when there will be no classes and individual states, when technological advances will destroy the idea of distance, and new social forms will sweep away the concept of the city. This is the dwelling of a person to whom interplanetary spaces are subordinated, the dwelling of a person who has comprehended the world energy. The dwellings of individuals and collectives are spread all over the globe of the Earth and are sheltered in the best natural areas, some among rocks, in warm seas, others among the greenery of healthy forests on the snowy heights of the mainland mountains. These dwellings have organically fused with nature, completing its beauty. A light aircraft or an almost weightless aeroapparate can throw a person over any distance in a few minutes and deliver him to the colossal palace of the world conference, where issues of the entire association of the Earth are resolved and questions about the interplanetary position are discussed.
A little effort of will, a few seconds of time – and a person is "at home" again, where his main pleasure, the most joyful element of life is science, new and new discoveries that have made his home in a significant part of it a scientific study and united the whole world into one big laboratory of collective thinking. The thought and contemplation of beauty are the main sensations of a person, which educate both his feelings and will. Therefore, a person's dwelling reflects these two main human states and consists of only two main elements. The offices of scientific pleasures are precisely pleasures, not labor, since this concept and the sensations associated with it no longer exist – and the pleasure rest rooms, where a person prepares for new pleasures in the calm contemplation of beauty. There are no concepts about the bedroom, dining room, etc., since pleasures are not so tiring that there is a need for sleep, and the human body of the future has changed and improved so much that it is supported by several nutritional pills and extracts. The concept of a low feeling of satiety is preserved only in historical phonograms, which replace books. Household items and utensils as such do not exist in the dwelling, while mechanisms that perform individual functions necessary to maintain the human body in a particular position are organically connected with the entire structure – the human house. So, the chair is separated from the wall or floor where it will be indicated by the desire of the person, and the mechanism of the chair takes one form or another depending on the position in which the person wants to put his body on it.
Here is a picture of the future dwelling of man, as it is drawn in a number of utopias and fantastic essays, and their authors refer to the time when the genius of man will create a new society and when human knowledge will grow to the subjugation of interplanetary spaces.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru27.08.2009