The Plane of the Future, by Alan N. Shapiro, and Congetture minime sullo spazi-tempo, by Pier Luigi Capucci

Dall’Ars Electronica FUTURELAB ci sono stati commissionati dei testi per una installazione artistica presso il nuovo terminale dell’Aeroporto di Vienna. Il tema dell’installazione era “Zeit/Raum” (“Tempo/Spazio”), ed è stato realizzato anche un e-book interattivo con tutti i contributi. Di seguito parte dei nostri testi. We have been commissioned by the Ars Electronica FUTURELAB to write texts for an art installation in the new terminal of the Vienna Airport. The theme of the installation is “Zeit/Raum” (“Time/Space”), and an interactive e-book has been made with all the contributions. Here are excerpts from each of our two texts.

Alan N. Shapiro

In airports as they are today, the passengers experience the terrible inconvenience of going through the security check of their carry-on luggage. This security system – the purpose of which is, of course, absolutely vital to the prevention of terrorist incidents and hijackings – is designed like an assembly line in a factory. You wait in a long queue. You wait and wait. You place your personal belongings into a tray sitting on a conveyor belt. You empty your pockets and hope that no one steals your wallet, passport, or house keys. You have to allow the security personnel to inspect your laptop computer (which may have data on it that is worth millions of dollars to you) or other electronic devices. They can inspect your personal health care items. If an item is larger than a certain regulation size, like 50 milliliters of skin cream, they will confiscate it. Then you will arrive in a foreign country and need to immediately find and replace something that is vital to your health. You stand there wondering if you will have to remove your pants belt, your wristwatch, your shoes. At the other side, there may or may not be a place for you to sit down and put your shoes back on. You walk through a little scanning chamber, and then you will have your body touched by a stranger.   After the advent of the ‘plane of the future’, this entire time-consuming and invasive assembly-line security procedure will be eliminated. The plane will be designed in such a way that the carry-on luggage of the passengers will be scanned for security after the passengers are sitting in their seats. The personnel observing the x-ray images of the insides of the bags can be remotely located at any distance from the camera which is recording and transmitting the images. There is no reason to be sitting so close to the machine. It may already be possible to install the camera equipment in all the overhead compartments of the ‘plane of the present’. The fact that this has not already been done makes one wonder what the real reason for the configuration of the current security system might be. To give you the feeling that Big Brother is taking care of you? Yes, I believe that it has something to do with that. Perhaps you are to be intentionally inconvenienced as part of the game, to make you feel intensely their power over you, to make the process as cumbersome as possible just for the heck of it.   The natural and healthy physical position for a human being is not one position. It is a continuous rotation of four positions: sitting, standing, walking, and lying down. The harmony of body and mind depends on practicing about equally all four of these postures. Zen Buddhism, for example, teaches us this. The fact that the ‘plane of the past and present’ forces us to be in a sitting position for many hours at a stretch – with nearly zero opportunities for standing, walking, and lying down – indicates that little thought has been given to designing the plane for the benefit of the health of the passengers. It has all been done from a utilitarian point of view – whatever is most economically efficient for the airlines and their shareholders.   The ‘plane of the future’ never needs to land or take off. It will always be in the air, continuously circulating. Landing and taking off should be regarded as being prohibitively expensive. We should learn this from Star Trek, where the technology of ‘beaming’ was chosen over having the Enterprise spaceship land on and take off from a planet each week. About 7% of the fuel that a Boeing 747 can hold in its tank is used up during take off alone. Most accidents and crashes occur during landing and taking off. Most flight delays are caused by problems encountered during landing and taking off. Eliminate landing and taking off of planes and you can then make major modifications to the architecture of airports. Change the architecture of airports and you will have a significant chance to save on real estate, noise, air pollution, and political strife.   We should eliminate landing and taking shuttle system that gets the passengers up to the plane from the ground, and back down to the ground from the plane at the end of the flight. The shuttle vehicles will be based on helicopter technologies. They will need to land and take off vertically; fly forwards, backwards and laterally; and hover way above the ground while waiting for passengers to embark into or disembark from the plane. The ‘plane of the future’ will also need to have some helicopter technologies built into it, such as hovering capabilities. In the long run, the security scanning equipment for carry-on luggage will be installed in the shuttle vehicles instead of in the planes.