Did We Really Need Seven New Wonders?

freakxx writes "Seven new 'wonders of the world' have been announced today in a ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal. People throughout the world have voted actively to elect the new 7 out of 21 finalists. The final lineup is: Chichen Itza, Mexico; Christ Redeemer, Brazil; The Great Wall, China; Machu Picchu, Peru; Petra, Jordan; The Roman Colosseum, Italy; and The Taj Mahal, India. The Pyramids of Giza was the only candidate that used to be among the original seven wonders. Did we really need seven new wonders of the world? Why was this decided via a website poll (pdf) and SMS messages?"

Comments

because it's a publicilty stunt

[froggero1]

see topic...

Re:because it's a publicilty stunt

[AuMatar]

Why does there need to be additions? THe value of the list is as a perspective into the world of ancient Greece. There's no need for a modern list.

Re:because it's a publicilty stunt

[OutLawSuit]

I do think the list is pretty reasonable except for the Christ the Redeemer Statue. The thing that makes the statue really stand out is its location but it falls in line with other monuments like the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty which are arguably more impressive. I also have a problem with more modern creations being included on the last. Angkor Wat in Cambodia or even the Leaning Tower of Pisa seem much more appropriate for this list.

Re:because it's a publicilty stunt

[Kadin2048]

Yeah, the only thing the Redeemer statue demonstrates is that there are a lot of people in Brazil with cellphones.

The thing is only 77 years old. Give it a few more centuries and we'll talk. If you want interesting statues, the Easter Island heads were on the list of finalists, but apparently the Easter Islanders must've had trouble getting online.

Re:because it's a publicilty stunt

[TheWanderingHermit]

I'd agree to that. Why do there need to be additions? It's just a list. I want to see many of these "new" wonders some day, but just because Petra is on an arbitrary list and a group of people who knew about the poll doesn't make it any more of a wonder just as Angor Wat not being on the list doesn't make it any less of a wonder. It's just a a way some people found of making money under the guise of world unity. Even the first list isn't really necessary. It reminds me of the Book of Lists. All any list can be is just the opinion of one or more people (unless empirical objective measurements are used) and that book proved it with many lists a lot of people disagreed with. All the lists are arbitrary.

this is just a very big SCAM

[Frivas]

This was just a big worldwide scam... hoy many millions do they got with the SMS?? how big is their email database now? I bet that these mails will get a lot more spam...

These are pretty dumb

[Rix]

A giant dashboard jesus? Here's a more sensible list:

1. The internet
2. The electric grid (this really can be seen from space, the great wall can't, really)
3. Voyager probes
4. Global Positioning System
5. The Human Genome Project
6. Nuclear power
7. Cochlear implants

Re:These are pretty dumb

[mrjb]

When it comes to human accomplishment, the Jesus statue is comparatively pathetic. B

eing 38 m tall and built using 20th century technology, it's nowhere near as big an accomplishment as the 33m high colossus of Rhodes which was finished in 282 BC.

Even the statue of liberty (built in the 19th century and 46 meters tall) is a bigger accomplishment than the Brazilian statue.

I won't even start to compare it to the other six Wonders because it will fade into nothingness.

99% of people who voted never saw any of them

[timmarhy]

ignore it, there's no one in the world who can claim to "offically" represent this list. besides most people voting on the list would never have even seen any of them in the flesh. just another bogus list to ignore.

whatever

[misanthrope101]

Any list of wonders that excludes Angkor Wat is a waste of time.

How many are really wonders?

[jd]

I will start by defining what I mean by a "Wonder": Something that was arguably beyond the means or skills of the builders prior to construction, required some sort of inventiveness or innovation to make what was available enough, could not easily be reproduced by cultures technically far superior (a weekend wonder is not much of a wonder - it should still produce real shock and awe hundreds or thousands of years later), and should inspire wonder in the majority of people, without regard to culture or nationality.

A wall of mud/straw bricks, a rather basic statue? The Colosseum wasn't counted by the Greeks and Romans, because they didn't see it as particularly spectacular. Machu Picchu and Petra I can understand. Those are genuinely wonders, in my books. The difficulty in construction was more tan just a matter of patience and time - there were genuinely major technological problems that required solving.

Then consider the marvels of their use. The Great Wall was a showpiece - it had negligible defensive value and did far more to engender paranoia within the culture. Not particularly marvelous - politicians create such illusions to feed paranoid tendencies all the time. Petra was the trading capital of the world, even into Roman times. It was to ancient commerce what the major ports and stock exchanges combined are to modern commerce. And it was built by a bunch of nomads who were tired of trail rations, not some major advanced civilization.

When you look at the Ancient Wonders, you look at things that maxed out (or exceeded) the capabilities of those building it. There are several that are so staggering that people are still unsure if they ever existed. The fact that the upper Pyramid blocks were poured like concrete hardly diminishes them - it shows how much they had to push their engineers that they had to invent a whole entire branch of material science to just finish the damn thing.

"Christ the Redeemer" needed what? Some reinforced concrete and a layer of soapstone. A big construction, sure, worthy of being considered a great feat of sculpting, but hardly in the same league as requiring entire new sciences and technologies.

I like the idea of seven new wonders, but they really should be wonders. They should highlight the true pinnacles of the human spirit. The list presented highlighted the pinnacle of what looks good on a postcard. Not exactly what I'd call wonders.

As for the question of whether they should have been decided by vote, I'd have split this up. I'd have given votes to people over the Internet/phone/whatever, but I'd have made some effort to limit it to one person one vote. I would THEN have given a panel of scientists/engineers an equal number of votes to represent the technological/scientific wonderfulness of each site. Finally, I'd have given another equal portion of votes to anthropologists, sociologists and cultural experts covering as many cultures and nations as possible.

The winning seven would then be decided by the merits of the awe in individuals, the awe in the achievement and the likely longevity and universality of that awe. Anything that can do well in all three categories is deserving of being called a Wonder. In practical terms, this means stepping through each list until you find seven that every group agrees is top. If you go more than a few percent without finding seven, you keep the winners so far, dump the rest of the list, and start with fresh achievements. And you keep going until you have achieved a universal agreement on the seven greatest Wonders.

Re:How many are really wonders?

[syylk]

You're restricting your horizon to engineering wonders.

The original wonders, actually, were compiled as a list of "must see" sites. Not necessarily because it was hard to build them. The statue of Zeus, for example, was a 12mt tall statue that was not by any means difficult to build. By the time it was built, there were many more taller statues. But it was something to see, as awe-inspiring was the Father of the Gods for the ancient greeks.

I'd call the original seven wonders exactly the same "tourist scam" as other slashdotters are pulling their hairs in shock.

So, you're correct when you say "it should still produce real shock and awe hundreds or thousands of years later [...] and should inspire wonder in the majority of people, without regard to culture or nationality". That's exactly what the present list (tries and) does.

The Cristo Redentor? Yes, a basic 38mt concrete statue. But built upon an almost vertical, 700m tall granite dome, reachable only with a twisting trail, or a tiny railroad, that overlooks a 10 million inhabitants city. Building the statue was trivial, even in 1930. Building the statue THERE was an engineering nightmare. Remember: there were NO helicopters in 1930. But the value of that piece of concrete is not the difficulty to build it. Is the image of a big guy "hugging" every citizen in the city from his tall pedestal. The statue can be seen from almost any part of the huge city, and the sense of "he's protecting me" is the awe you were referring to. Not just the trivial block of soapstone.

The Colosseum? Well, a stadium, give or take. Big as you want, but still just a fancy arena. The only engineering feat you can find there is the mechanic devices (mostly pulleys and leverages) that allowed access to the battlefield from the dungeon below. The picture changes a lot if you consider that - during the "technical life" of the Colosseum - an estimated 400'000 people died there. Check which entire metropolitanean area contain 400'000 people in US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States _metropolitan_statistical_areas_by_population Want to wipe Reno, Pensacola or Flint? Throw them in the Colosseum! Colosseum is the single place where most people died in the history of humanity. And mostly, for games!!! Aren't you impressed at the mere idea? How fucked up our human race is, with its blood thirst and desire to see the destruction of its own kin? Much more than by staring at the ruined marble block, I'm sure.

Oh, and Antipater wrote about such list in 140BC. The colosseum was built in 80AC. Unless Antipater was able to see 220 years in the future, I don't understand how he could have added it to the list. ;)

Gimmick.

[matt me]

This is a worthless gimmick conceived by someone out to make a buck - because the list will influence some tourists' destinations this summer (and I'd wager that some of those on the list paid there way up there) - and lapped up by popular media in the place of surfboarding ferrets. As if there are only 21 valuable places in the world (the shortlist), and an internet vote can provide an unbiased and definitive list of the seven 'greatest'.

There are thousands of fantastic places in the world. The UN's world heritage sites (660 cultural, 166 natural) are but a start at cataloguing and an attempt to protect them.

Re:Why lament it?

[Guppy06]

"Most of the original seven wonders are long gone. That's why this was needed."

Because nobody can appreciate the idea of building, say, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the Lighthouse at Alexandria using only ancient technology and materials without actually seeing them?

"Just a compilation from the Greco-Roman point of view."

The list itself was a Greek idea. Deal with it.

"This time this could have more international flavor."

If by "international" you mean "has access to SMS."

"This is also good exposure not just to the 7 winners, but to all the nominees."

Because it's possible to have heard of this cheesy marketing stunt but not to have heard of any of the ancient structures and modern tourist traps listed?

"Unless you think us Americans really ought to go to stay ignorant and go to Disneyland every year"

Oh, I'm sure if Disneyland needed any more marketing and appeared in the list offered, it would have made the finalists.

"(I give no money to that company)."

"I've never owned a Mickey Mouse watch" isn't enough to be able to safely claim that you've never patronized any business or subsidiary of the Disney corporation in any way.

Re:because it's dumb.

[StikyPad]

Makes sense. I'm not really sure why a 55m statue of Jesus would be more significant than, say, a 100m buddha not among the list of 21, or Chichen Itza over Borobudur, let alone Angkor, which dwarfs Chichen Itza in size, complexity, and (in my opinion) artistry.

Anyway, 7 wonders may have been appropriate back when there were only 7 wonders. Nowadays, any sort of classification should A) be a factor of 10 (why 7?) and B) be categorized by date, region, and type -- statue/building/etc.