When I was 5 years old I devised the idea of Eugenics to deal with the hungry and poor of Ethiopia. Luckily my mom told me that idea was horrible (hey, I was a kid, what did I know). In high school, I came up with an idea of government that my friend told me already existed: Communism. Now I’m older and I have better ideas, but they always seem to have already been done or invented. Here’s two of my original ideas that turns our are already being done. One new, one old:

Floating Island:

Since there are no parcels in the ocean, one could theoretically live on a boat. And if that boat had soil to grow food, one would never have to buy food. Combine this with the idea that many people throughout the world pay good money to visit beaches on tropical islands, and you come to the conclusion that Living on a floating island is the best idea in the world. I imagined that you’d have to grow it out of some type of moss, like how bogs are formed, then slowly add soil, beach grasses and then eventually to fruit trees. Swing up a hammock, bring a couple of squirrels aboard to continue the meat supply, and voila, permanent vacation. Or you could do it this way:

this man, Reishee Sowa of Puerto Aventuras, Mexico, apparently grew tired of trying to live self-sufficiently on dry land, and did what any of us would have done. He built his own island out of used pop bottles. 250,000 of them, plus some construction leftovers and bags of leaves, make up “his island,” though he’s quick to point out that it’s technically not an island by traditional standards.

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Or this one:

The Floating Islands of Uros are made from the Totora reed. These reeds are stacked one on top of the other until there is a platform. People live on these island as they float around hunting for fish, birds and more Totora reeds. Well at least that is the way it used to be. Today people still live on these islands, but tourism is the main source of livelihood. Even though the islands are very touristy, I still recommend a visit to them.

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Geodesic Tree House:

Looking up on my friend’s property one day, I noticed that the trees in his yard soared upwards to about 5 or 6 times taller than his house. “All that wasted space,” I thought. “Wouldn’t it be better if we lived in the trees?” Then I realized that columns we use to build our houses are made out of dead trees cut into teeny weeny pieces. Think of how useful an alive tree would be as a column. Then I thought that using geodesics to build in trees would free you from the 90 degree constraints of modern building: geodesics would fully utilize the 3D arena of tree dwelling. As I designed and crafted a couple versions of my idea, I found these:

Mitchell Joachim, part of the MIT Media Lab’s Smart Cities Group, along with ecological engineer Lara Greden and architect Javier Arbona, propose a home that is actually an ecosystem.
The Fab Tree Hab goes beyond sustainable housing and so-called green design — building with materials that have a low impact on the environment and human health.

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So that’s it. I’m not telling any more people any of my ideas until I actually get to finish one.