Atrophy
Takis Zenetos discusses the network of the future city and the highly machine integrated lifestyle of its inhabitants in his article City of the Future. Zenetos proposes the usage of posture chairs, which carry out the essential processes for human survival while the body becomes secondary to the mind. Zenetos hypothesizes that every person will be outfitted with a device at birth and their bodies will slowly degenerate or fail to develop but their brains will remain the control center for every bodily function performed by the chair. He also suggests that the increasingly sedentary lifestyle will develop an increasingly leisure lifestyle with increased brain activity. People will actually gain more control over their environment through simulation and endless possibilities in social engagement. Thoughts dreams and aspirations can be materialized in an artificial environment, which imitate even the simplest of experiences. As humans increasingly lose control of their bodies by failing to use them independently of their posture chairs, activities like walking will become leisure activity rather than necessity. There is great fear that the loss of human control over one’s body will result in the diminishment of individual thought as humans float around in their chairs and processes are carried out for them. Their bodies will begin to run in an auto-piloted state giving up freedom to the chair and embracing the hierarchy of the mind over body. The Farallones Institute explains that many suburban individuals are currently losing much of the control over their environment by living in a rural setting but with a lifestyle similar to that of many urbanites. They maintain little control over their natural resources and fail to reach a level of autonomy that is certainly possible when living in such a setting with nature.