One can’t help but think of Yul Brynner in West World; the open west, technology unproven, dust, and excited participants. We saw how this ended so badly in the Hollywood version. However, it likely won’t be that way in this true life version.
Westworld Makes A Comeback
What if you could design a town – the perfect town? What if you could lay it out to the smallest detail – the infrastructures, utilities, residential areas, downtown businesses, even rural communities? Not only that, but you could also invite high-tech, cutting edge businesses to come and install their latest technologies, inventions and design ideas into the working town. The fascinating thing about it, is that it would be a vast testing ground, devoid of any human life, save for the lab coats carrying laptops and taking notes on how this strange new organism grows and develops.
This is exactly what is going on in New Mexico. Would you not give your eye teeth to be able to watch all the cool tech they are going to install and trial?
CITE
Enter CITE, a very coldly technological name for this location devoid of the warmth of carbon-based units to give personality and breath to the parks, homes and offices. Located just outside of Hobbs, it will attempt to imitate life there, with wires, tubes, pc boards and perfectly designed communities. The main area will be known as the City Lab, consisting of the suburban, urban and rural sectors. It will be pre-wired to provide instantaneous readouts of all data and processes, giving technicians fine-tuning capabilities of all simulation scenarios initiated.
It will contain a Research Campus and an underground network called the Backbone. There is also a Field Lab District, for future expansions.
The following is a news report on the city.
While it will be a strange environment indeed, the true goal is to test out the most innovative technologies available today in a town free from the encumberment of safety precautions for the general population. They will be evaluated and tweaked for commercialization. This is actually a very good thing, once we get over the eery similarity to Twilight Zone episodes. Companies will be able to see, in real settings, how these technolgies perform under true stresses. To see an outline of their goals, Pegasus has this page available for viewing.
The following video illustrates the sectors that will be developed.
As you can imagine, this is going to create a lot of jobs in the local economy as well. Enjoying construction as I do, I would find a lot to talk about at the dinner table were I able to participate. Hundreds of jobs will be created and the local communities in New Mexico will see a boom as businessmen and tech companies arrive in droves.
Green Tech Focus
Green solutions to challenges in city environments are going to benefit greatly by having this unique opportunity to trial systems under current development, as well as those that have not been implemented on a scale such as this before.
New Transporation Frontiers
Transportation issues will be addressed. Unmanned vehicles and innovative changes to the structures of our current people-moving systems will be introduced. Intelligent Transportation System technologies that are already making headway in European countries will have the chance to show what they can do in the desert Southwest.
Homeland Security is in on this as well. Any guesses as to what they will be up to?
Wireless Thrills and Chills
Wireless technologies for the next generation communications are going to see their geeks jumping for joy behind the data screens, seeing ideas coming to life. This is going to be 20 square miles and $1 billion dollars worth of excitement to see.
Meg Jones runs her own business from home and is an fascinated viewer of all things that take place on the world stage. She enjoys writing about them when the opportunity arises.