You are taking too narrow a view of the book. Think of all the apocalyptic stories that leave just a few survivors. How much of our current infrastructure could those survivors rely on. And also, think of it as a guidepost to making ourselves even more enduring. If we can figure out how to make those things that break down without us work even more without us, that frees people up to go do even more interesting things than, say, pumping water out of the subways day in and day out.

Rat's Reading - http://reading.kingrat.biz/

It's tough to see from this blurb just how un-philosophic the book is. It may be a marketing mistake, because the book isn't trying to posit any big answers about existence -it's simply looking at the undramatized possibilities. I saw an interview with the author, and his study is a scientific look at earth's systems. He went to old Mayan cities, to the DMZ between N. and S. Korea, and to some major cities to talk with engineers and architects about the real possibilities. It's an amazing way of viewing our world, because it demonstrates the massive energy we must expend just to keep things the way we like them. NYC is a great chapter -I had no idea how complex and manicured every aspect of the city is. The whole island used to be extremely hilly, and they bulldozed it to build the grid, which leaves it very vulnerable to underground waterways and all kinds of problems.

Anyway, take another look -it's not sci-fi, it's just sci.

I think you're misunderstanding me. I'd be the last person to claim there was something like a universal meaning to things. I'm extremely non-religious since religion has always to me seemed like a way of dodging the real issues. While I agree that even though life will go on with or without us (thankfully!) life may not necessarily be "life". In fact, it probably won't be "life", and from a human observer's perspective it won't "be" at all. The concept of "life" exists in relation to the concept of being human, and while this may sound like extreme hair-splitting, it has some extreme consequences when it comes to how we interact with our environment in such diverse fields as astrobiology, cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology.

What I was trying to explain was that the whole concept of the "world" as the "world" is a human invention. Taking the hard point of view, matter wouldn't be matter without us calling it "matter". This relativist view of logic and its relationship to reality, or rather the perception of reality as it is the only link to reality we posses (as in one of the presumptions of solipsism), is something that characterizes a lot of my thinking about the world.

Regarding that cat in the box, here's an explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dingers_Cat