Calculemus!

We are optimists, so we are looking around for a vast and preferably dry plateau. We take plans seriously, which is why we sometimes act in accordance with the young Leibniz’s maxim: Calculemus! 

There are about 7.7 billion people like us living on Earth. Sooner or later, we shall ask them about the five most important books in their lives. Well over a billion will certainly answer that they have encountered nothing of the kind. And given that reading is becoming an elite and anachronistic occupation, perhaps as many as half will answer that way before we manage to ask the question. Taking into account the time that will pass, population growth and its geographical and cultural distribution, let us assume that four billion people have held more than five books. We are optimists: what will happen if they all agree to donate their most important books? A small, cheaply produced paperback weighs about 150 grams. Where are we to put at least three million tonnes of books? Or rather ten million, assuming that a book weighs half a kilogram. The Empire State Building (we like architecture;) weighs more than 360,000 tonnes. We shall need space for 27.777777[7] similar towers. We are optimistic, because ‘the Empire State Building was constructed in just 410 days, in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s’. We still have time. 

Above

Destruction ‘Pruit-Igoe’, urban housing complex in St Louis, 15 July 1972. This date is considered the symbolic end of the CIAM era.

Below

Plan Voisin for New York