I’m now convinced that the nation of Qatar is diving headlong into a Blade Runner-esque future in which skyscrapers try to sell you shaving cream and everyone is probably a robot. Look at this.
Qatar’s Artificial World Cup Cloud Thing Is Completely Insane
(Image via Pies)
Qatar is hosting the 2022 World Cup, and in an apparent effort to assuage concerns that Qatar is too hot for soccer, designs have been drawn up for a giant solar-powered panel that would hover over the stadium and provide shade -- in effect, a cloud.
This is at least an 9.2 on the neat-o scale, but if this actually comes to fruition, I won’t be able to watch any soccer. I’ll just stare at it, slack-jawed, and know that I have someone broken the boundaries of the present and ended up in the future. How close is the world of sports to a dystopian future nightmare? Let’s take a look:
LEVEL 1 (ACHIEVED): Inflatable ball.
LEVEL 2 (ACHIEVED): Poking a hole in the bottom of the peach basket so you don’t have to get up on a ladder and take the ball out whenever someone scores.
LEVEL 3 (ACHIEVED): Playing sports indoors.
LEVEL 4 (ACHIEVED): Maintaining an ice rink indoors.
LEVEL 5 (ACHIEVED): Head coach communicates to a guy in an office via headset.
LEVEL 6 (ACHIEVED): Retractable dome.
LEVEL 7 (ACHIEVED): Steroids.
LEVEL 8 (ACHIEVED): Reebok Pumps, solving the hyper-specific but very real problem of your shoe being too tight, but only in the top-of-your-foot area.
LEVEL 9 (ACHIEVED): CGI-powered first-down stripe on television broadcasts.
LEVEL 10 (ACHIEVED): Jimmer Fredette.
LEVEL 11 (IN PROGRESS): Artificial “cloud” that hovers over sporting events to provide shade.
LEVEL 12. Concussion-proof football helmets.
LEVEL 13. Self-corking baseball bats.
LEVEL 14. The “ball” becomes an abstract concept, represented instead by a round glowing hologram.
LEVEL 15. Referees are replaced by Twitter crowdsourcing.
LEVEL 16. Sports are played inside computers, figuratively.
LEVEL 17. Sports are played inside computers, literally, with men shrunk down to the size of ants and made to play on the surface of a motherboard.
LEVEL 18. Society develops such a sophisticated level of interconnectivity that players’ social worths would be so irreparably damaged by flopping that they would no longer do so.
LEVEL 19. Sports are out-moded in favor of the non-competitive recreational activity of launching hydrogen bombs into space and blowing up planets.
LEVEL 20. Sports are re-introduced as a contest to see who can blow up the most planets.
LEVEL 21. Hoverboards.
LEVEL 22. FUTURESPORT.
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