The publication of Anasazi-35 has stimulated some interesting conversations, so I think that it deserves a little more attention. I’m posting several exegetical articles, covering different aspects of the story. Previously I talked about the technology and about the economy. Today, I’m going to talk about the part that most readers thought was surreal and nonsensical, the cop office.
In the story, Sunset MacClaine has been beat up and left to sit in a holding cell over night. Then they bring her up to the detective floor of the building, where the office is just a walking track.
The design is an offshoot of my thoughts about the sedentary American lifestyle. The model American drives to work in the morning, then sits at a desk for eight hours, then drives home, then sits watching TV. On the weekend it’s a lot of sitting around drinking. There’s occasionally a push to go to the gym, but the twenty minutes at the gym hardly overcomes the bulk of daily routine which involves little or no physical activity.
My own daily habits incorporate a bicycle as my primary transportation and a day-job that requires me to walk up to five miles per shift (I’ve used one of those pedometer things to confirm it — although the downside of working in a bakery is the vast amount of pie in my diet). For people who are lucky enough to not have a blue-collar job, there’s not much to be done.
Unless, and here I put on my speculative fiction hat, what if mobile technology frees people from their desks? Then they can fill out spreadsheets, make calls, take meetings, and surf the web or play minesweeper, all the while ergonomically replicating the physical activity of our first nomadic biped ancestors.
I was feeling pretty cocky about how smart I was, but then it turns out that the bastards at the Mayo clinic (particularly Dr. James Levine) have beat me to it. Their office of the future design incorporates a walking track that’s virtually identical to what I envisioned.
Drat.
