If you are looking for a great reason to feel optimistic – another truly legitimate rationale for believing our world is undergoing remarkable and rapid transformations for the better – then consider the LifeBox.
The LifeBox is a deployable mini-building that provides the basic necessities of modern life: water, food, electricity, internet and a 3D printer. This single self-contained building, the size of a garden shed, can sustain and improve the lives of everyone nearby.
LifeBox uses both wind and solar energy to drive the entire unit along with public power outlets. Inside an atmospheric extractor and purifier creates several gallons of drinking water a day. As well, tanks housed within automated greenhouses grow Spirulina, a protein-rich, highly nutritious whole food. Of course, the entire unit doubles as a wifi-hotspot, connecting to the Internet as well as all nearby LifeBoxes.
The best part of the LifeBox concept is how the entire life-saving building can be constructed using nothing but local materials and a 3D printer, anywhere in the world. All it takes are the plans (which get updated from free sites on the web), access to a 3D printer, and the gumption to build your own.
Just imagine the impacts on global poverty and instability when, on every street corner in the worst slums or in even the most remote, despondent villages, these seemingly magic boxes – day in and day out – churn out the tools needed by those on the bottom rung to rise out of their dire circumstances.
This is exactly what our world craves! So much of the world’s conflict stems from societies living in desperate conditions, where people are at risk of starving to death every day. This desperation fuels the feelings that lead to violence, and it breeds the soldiers to carry it out.
When we could create a world where every single human has access to the most basic means of life – which will exist when everyone can get the things provided by a LifeBox, then we are set to see a world where wars get exposed as the unnecessary and unwanted travesty that they are. Peace can finally take hold of our world.
All the pieces are falling into place. Affordable, consumer-level 3D-printers are already on the market and producing incredible objects. Solar and wind generators are getting cheaper by the day. The Internet is forever expanding. And the need for a LifeBox on every corner is as urgent as ever.
The end goal is in sight. How long it takes to get the basic necessities of life to each person on earth really depends on us. 5 years? 10 years? If we pushed hard it could happen. But no matter what, the day when every single human can get access to what’s in a LifeBox is clearly within our future.
