The young (under 17) population of the City of San Francisco is 107,524 today, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau figures. And declining. A rapid estimate says that San Francisco will shrink to about 700,000 in the next generation. What will happen to the gigantic infrastructure that former generations built up? It will be unnecessary and unmaintainable, and will decay like Detroit. Or it will serve and enjoyed by another race, that will wonder about the giants that built those canyons, bridges, pyramids and other monuments. No one will remain to lament the disappearance of those millions who live to enjoy and have no interest in the future.
There is much intelligence and creative work going on today in San Francisco. Pity that it will soon fall silent and forgotten.
6 comments:
No, it will be a thriving city populated by the Chinese. I live in the area, and even the suburbs are becoming Chinese.
The alternative scenario is "a different race". In fact, was not thinking about Chinese, but the "new Brahmins" of Gore Vidal's book.
When you visit Italy, there are many signs that the barbarians didn't know what to do with the Roman infrastructure. At one point, they had lost the ability to smelt metals so they tore the metal masonry clamps that were installed in the Colosseum out one by one just to recover the little bits of iron. They picked up stones that had fallen from temples and incorporated them randomly in their crude structures, laying columns on their sides, etc. Some of the barbarian leaders wanted Roman style tombs but they didn't know how to build them so they built small crude imitations or repurposed bits and pieces of earlier Roman buildings. They lit their campfires and pitched their tents on the mosaic floors of Roman temples. The Roman Forum became known as a place to graze your goats. I have visions that this will be the sad fate of America's infrastructure also.
K
Yes the militant gays (a misnomer if ever there was one) will see to it that SF remains childless. The US is turning into a huge laboratory for testing maladptive scenarios.
Ivan
K
Your scenario is already being played out in Detroit.
I often wonder where we would be today if there had not been a 1000+ year Dark Ages. Some of the Roman technology was not equaled again until the 19th century.
This pump: http://100falcons.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/a-roman-pump-in-perfect-condition/
could not have been built again until perhaps the 18th century. Pumps and engines are close cousins (as are electric motors and generators) and it would not have taken much to turn this pump into a steam engine. Had the empire not fallen, the age of steam power and the industrial revolution might have begun maybe 1000 years earlier. Imagine what life would be like with 1000 more years of technological development!
But perhaps we are like Icarus and fall to the ground when we fly too close to the sun.
K
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