Project AVATAR
Dare to Dream

By C.L.F. / Rayden Tron

Death, destruction, and loss aren't the only things that should be memorialized. Is there any doubt, any at all, that the Pentagon will be rebuilt? It would be deeply tragic and a dishonor to all who've died if we missed the opportunity to rebuild the Twin Towers in such a way that the "World's Tallest Building" title is brought back to New York where it BELONGS.

The current plan for mid-rises is banal, uninspiring, and unworthy of this great city. Plus, it is a waste of a site with accessible bedrock, critical for ultra-tall structures. On the practical side, with all the talk of replacing streets, concentrating the office space in two towers will free up the sites of the other buildings for other uses, including a memorial, residences, utility infrastructure, and the like.

But since you are an Arts Society, perhaps you would like to hear some other reasons to rebuild. Transcendent, The Benevolent Presence, The Guardians of the Future, these were some of the other things the Twin Towers were, plus they gave an aesthetic balance to the skyline, a counterweight to those other 1000' plus structures in Midtown, the Empire State and the Chrysler. The Twin Towers were an architectural implementation of minimalist sculpture, unique, precious.

As a small measure of how deeply we city folk respond to our built environment just recall how the presence of the Empire State Building gave this city strength and reassurance in its darkest hours. Resurrecting the Twin Towers will give this city hope, fire ambition and creativity, let us believe in our future and our selves again. A void of mediocre mid-rises will not, no matter how respectful the memorial is.

But the new Twin Towers can be so much more as well. The best memorial is a living one. Those of us who work in technology have a miracle we wish to deliver to the people of New York and the world. Covered in more detail on this website, Project AVATAR will utilize already-existing technologies to create an artificial intelligence building management and customer service system, bringing exponential boosts in safety, comfort, and efficiency. With minds based in software and silicon and their bodies the buildings themselves, the new Twin Towers can be the new Guardians of the Future. Equipped with passive and active defenses, along with extensive network connections to the world around them, they could be guardians of the city as well, always alert, always aware, always at our service. As physical and spiritual heirs of what has gone before them, they can serve as guardians of memory as well, up in the clouds and within their well-protected basement computer cores, where no pigeon could crap on it, and where no smooth operators could turn it into another cheap tourist trap.

This horrid event can be a turning point for our civilization, far more important than any one nation or any one generation. We can navel-gaze, or we can boldly get back on track, continue climbing upward. I offer my life in the service of the latter, making a better world. Already, we humans are making new life in spite of death. Let this conception lead to my labor pains, and I swear I'll see it through to a new form of life, and a better way of life.

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