I’ve Seen the Future and It Is…Safe?
by Bill WillinghamThis is an awkward way to begin, but I must start off with two apologies. First I apologize for being too long absent from this site, due to many deadlines, too much travel to wonderful places, and a protracted bout with that deadly killer flu thing that is the current deadly killer flu thing going around. I intend not to stay away so long from now on.
Next I must apologize to the non-geek contingent of our readership. The essay which follows might not be your cup of tea Klingon blood wine. It hinges too much on a presumed knowledge of obscure science fictiony things that only those with a truly Jonah Goldbergian depth of geek arcana can fully appreciate. Then again, I might be underestimating the level to which the fantastical subdivision of pop culture has permeated the mainstream. You might grok this if you know at least two Vulcans other than Spock, who Tim Drake is (as opposed to Dick Grayson), what the Kzinti are, and where the word ‘grok’ came from. If not, you’re excused without penalty.
A day or two ago I happened across the online announcement of a wonderful new technological device that made me think, “That’s it. We’re finally in the future.” And then, almost as if the words were spoken aloud, I heard the voice of my friend (and excellent Science Fiction author) Chris Roberson in my head, scolding me with his oft-repeated, always cranky, litany: “It’s not the future until we have jetpacks and flying cars. They promised us jetpacks and flying cars! Where are they?” And I realized there’s no escaping this question, either from Chris or any of a myriad other sources. The future isn’t allowed to be here until we have our jetpacks and flying cars. And that’s just the minimum. Space stations, moon cities and personal household robots are also to be desired for a fully functioning future.
I pondered this dilemma. On the one hand we have this wonderful new device (the exact nature of the device isn’t important, but for the record it’s a full tabletop sized flat computer screen you can play Dungeons & Dragons on, just like they did in the Legion of Superheroes — which is definitely in the future, so far in fact that jetpacks and flying cars are already outmoded, having been replaced by Flight Rings), and we’re blessed (and/or cursed) with so many other technological wonders hardly even imagined by those who designed our future so long ago, but we don’t have the jetpacks and the flying cars. They’re our duel required tickets to the future, without which we simply aren’t allowed to enter. Lacking those, we’re confined to an eternal and frustrating now, no matter how exciting and interesting our now might become.
I pondered, and then despaired when a terrible realization hit me. We are in the future, Chris. We got our jetpacks and flying cars. We’ve had them for years. Whoever the ‘they’ are that promised us those things, they kept their promise. They delivered. Look at this:
The Moller M400 flying car. Coming soon to an abandoned warehouse near you.
It’s the Moller M400 Skycar. They built it and it works, designed to sell for something in the neighborhood of $90k when and if it ever goes on sale (I’ll predict right now that it won’t). They also have the M200G Volantor — a saucer shaped vehicle that flies ten feet above the earth at 50 mph.
These were debuted a few years ago, and they weren’t the first personal flying cars, and saucers, and jetpacks. Not by a long shot. They’ve been building them almost for as long as you and I have been alive.
So what’s the problem then. Where are they? Why haven’t we got one in every garage in the good old US of A? That’s the depressing part, my friend. We don’t have them, not because there isn’t (or wasn’t) any entrepreneur willing to make them available. We don’t have them because we rejected them. We collectively said, and continue to say, “No thanks.”
And why is that?
Because they’re not safe.
Dr. Paul Moller at the controls of the M200 X prototype of his flying car.
Sure, they’re safer than the first airplanes were in their infancy, even safer than modern airplanes are now, when not operated by a highly-trained pilot. They may even be safer than the first ground-confined motor cars. But airplanes and motor cars were invented and introduced to the public in a more adventurous age. Here’s the thing: we want more safety now than we did then. We expect it. Hell, we demand it. If cars and airplanes were introduced for the first time today I’ve no doubt that a vast hue and cry would go up about how dangerous they are. They’d never get government approval. They’d never be able to jump through all of the regulatory hoops any new product has to overcome today. The problem with jetpacks and flying cars is that they aren’t already 100% safe to all potential users. They don’t get, and never will get, the time to develop and perfect that we’ve given our airplanes and ground cars. We have our jetpacks and flying cars and we simply aren’t going to use them.
Which brings me to my next point. We are indeed in the future, but we’ve chosen a far different future than the one we originally imagined for ourselves.
In his Known Space series of novels and stories, the vastly talented and industrious science fiction author Larry Niven created a race of aliens called the Pierson’s Puppeteers. They’re an odd race that looks something like a set of two hand puppets (from which their name is derived) mounted on a distorted three-legged deer’s body. But their given name also does a sinister sort of double duty, since the Puppeteers are a race of manipulators. They manipulate and fiddle with the other races of Known Space, including humans, working behind the scenes, to direct our destinies. Why do they do this? Because they are a species of genetic and cultural cowards. More than anything else they are motivated by the desire, by the all-encompassing need, to be safe.
There are no sharp corners on the Puppeteer homeworld. There’s no possibility of a stray splinter or of tripping over a badly placed paving stone. All is designed to keep everyone safe from even the smallest possibility of harm. They build indestructible space ships and then refuse to make use of them, because space travel is far too dangerous. And they manipulate mankind and other races, causing us to fight devastating wars with each other, in order to weed out our more aggressive individuals — to keep themselves safer by gelding us barbaric types.
An old time jetpack, never fully developed and now relegated to the occasional performance at county fairs.
I’m afraid that’s who we’ve chosen to become, Chris, old buddy. We had our chance at a jetpack future but turned them down. We chose instead to be safe. We chose to become the Pierson’s Puppeteers. Look at the evidence, so much of which exists I couldn’t possibly begin to scratch the surface in listing all of the ways we’ve changed ourselves in my lifetime:
In my childhood I rode my bike everywhere, with my parent’s blessing, even 200 miles away to visit a married sister on the other side of the state. And the thought of wearing a helmet never occurred to me or my parents. Now a child even on a tricycle in his own yard damn well better be wearing a helmet, or his parents are guilty of child abuse. Manufacturers are sued nigh unto extinction every time one of their products is even tangentially involved in an accident, because their product isn’t safe enough. The greatest cost in manufacturing a ladder is to offset the cost of the inevitable lawsuits brought by those who hurt themselves using it. How dare ladders not be made 100% safe, no matter how it’s used or misused? The notion, that was alive and well in my youth, that life is risky and certain bad things are just going to happen from time to time, is a dead notion today. Now life must be safe, and anything that makes it unsafe must be done away with, or at least severely punished.
In the recent past it was a given that a man has a right to risk his own life and even be a damned fool about it if he so chose. That is a dying concept today. Now, every time something tragic happens as a result of adventurers doing adventurous things, such as a death or injury during a mountain climb, there follows the reflexive cry to outlaw said activity “for their own good.” Safety must be imposed on the foolish and daring for their own good.
Need any more examples? I’ve got a million of them. Space travel? Some still yearn for the adventure and romance of it, but we are a minority. Most think it’s a waste of resources that could be better used to make us more safe here at home. That’s why we got to the moon and stopped. That’s why Luna City doesn’t exist today. We could have had it if we wanted it bad enough. We have the technology. We just didn’t have the will.
We’ve shown ourselves all too often willing to trade freedom for safety. Regulate us, in case we make dangerous choices. Tax us so we don’t spend our wealth in foolish pursuits. Confine us in the group, the herd, just like Niven’s Puppeteers, ostracizing all adventurous individuals as dangerous and insane. MAKE US SAFE!
Oh how I could go on, Chris, listing so many ways in which the desire for safety has eclipsed all else, and infected every American endeavor. Even the current Global Warming hysteria. Granted, it’s a vast scam, perpetrated by hucksters who want power and money to flow into their clutches, aided and abetted by activist scientists who know very well where their grants come from, but the scam couldn’t work if it wasn’t fueled by a culture that more and more responds to the promise of increased safety as the acme of human existence.
In the future we don't get to hunt dinosaurs with jetpacks and bazookas.
So here we are, buddy, living in the future we selected. We had our chance at the jetpacks and flying cars. Turns out we had plenty of chances to embrace them. But we decided instead to become the Puppeteers of Larry Niven’s gifted (and unfortunately prescient) imagination. We can still watch Race Bannon and Johnny Quest hunt dinosaurs with jetpacks and bazookas in old cartoon shows, and still pretend we want to do the same, as long as we realize it’s only pretend, as long as we watch the adventures in the safety of our home.
But let me close with one cautionary note. In all of Niven’s stories set in Known Space there was ever only one interesting Puppeteer character, the one who was insane enough to have a sense of adventure and daring. We haven’t quite wiped out the human need for adventure, daring and a desire to face danger. Far from it. Some may argue that we can’t ever fully exorcise that from the human condition, and I pray that’s true. But I have no doubt that we’re on the terrible path to “safety above all else.” I have no doubt that too many of us, including the majority who seek political power over us, subscribe to the safety gospel (probably because safety and under-control are synonymous — freedom being such a messy thing). But the distinguished Mr. Niven has shown us, maybe unintentionally, one thing, if we’re prepared to see it: we can’t be both safe and interesting.
I vote for interesting.
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You missed two important Niven references for this story. The first is his short story Safe At Any Speed (a play on Nader's "Unsafe At Any Speed" about the Corvair) about a flying car so safe that it can keep the occupant alive for six months after being eaten by a giant bird on a far off planet. The other is Niven's statement (probably a paraphrase here) that anything doing in space is also a weapon. As 9/11 showed us, anything worth doing in the air is also a weapon. The force of a falling flying car or even the energy contained in a jet pack is one heck of a weapon for a aspiring suicide bomber. Is that a geeky enough response for you?
Welcome back, Bill. Johnny Quest had the coolest devices, like the hovercraft the bad guys had in one episode, or those jet packs. It's sad that we live in a time where the future is almost always some bleak thing to fear, according to our current storytellers in Hollywood.
Do they make these thing in a "Low-Rider" model? or "Pimp my fly"
Larry Niven has also opined on the lack of flying cars in this interview on Space.com, where he says:
"We should not have assumed that a political space station could be built. We'd have most of what we predicted of the conquest of space, if we hadn't ignored parasite control. The wealth (as in flying cars) predicted by Heinlein and his followers (including myself) was another matter. It all went to welfare programs."
"Vast numbers of people are microscopically better off for that, except that we all have less to aspire to."
"Here is where the predictions failed: We didn't take Cargo Cult mentality into account [that being] 'if somebody has something I don't, he must have stolen it.'"
Next, there is also a free market solution to the absence of jet packs problem, as this Mexican entrepreneur has been showing.
Finally, a company called Trek Aerospace has been experimenting with ducted fan personal flight systems with potential military applications.
Okay, now I'm depressed. I grew up watching "Jonny Quest" and dreaming of being an astronaut or an explorer or the like. And now I live in the Age of Safety First.
About 10-15 years ago I was at a small SF&F convention here in Houston listening to an engineer from NASA explain why the cost of building Space Station Freedom had spiraled out of control. The big expense was isolating the modules from one another so that the heat, vibration, or other environmental factors from one experiment didn't ruin another experiment in an adjacent module. The engineers had come up with a simple, inexpensive solution. Instead of connecting the modules, which would require all sorts of expensive hardware to isolate them, just place them unconnected in orbit near each other. The biggest drawback was that the astronauts would have to space walk to travel between modules and we all know how much astronauts hate to spacewalk.
Alas it was not to be because the bureaucrats said no. What was their complaint? All those space walks weren't safe. And so Space Station Freedom died under the crushing weight of its own budget.
"But the distinguished Mr. Niven has shown us, maybe unintentionally, one thing, if we’re prepared to see it: we can’t be both safe and interesting."
Hence Hipsters and the cannibalized crap-for-art we've suffered for however many long years now.
I admire your choice of "interesting," Mr. Willingham: it seems the best word and also adds a fresh dimension to the debate (and frankly if it had been "free" or "freedom" I would've screamed as it's lost a lot of meaning due to mind-numbed overuse). While I'm at it, consider me hooked for your run on JSA – I can't wait to see what you and Matt Sturges do with King Chimera, among other things.
Yes I would like to scream like Jeffery Sinclair did at the Vorlons and Shadows "go, we don't need you anymore," But as you pointed out we are being watched by Dennis' nemesis Margaret, for if we try to jump the dog on our bicycle PETA and our mom are there to stop it. Sadly the future looks like it's hero will be Weapon Brown, I'm stocking up on twinkies, batteries and a hand crank generator. Good luck, watch out for moveing trees.
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I'm not to big of a Sci-Fi fan, but I loved watching Jonny Quest. The hovercraft that you mentioned, that plane was cool looking too. Ahh watching it on the Boomerang channel brought back some great memories.
Two vulcans: Spock's dad and some vulcan girl in the helm, don't know the name of either. Grok is from Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein (also the author of Starship Troopers)! No idea on the Kzinti, but **two out of three ain't bad!!**. I'm trying to read this article..but I can't help it, I have to just geek out at your mention of Dungeons and Dragons!!
If you want a riot of laughs, try to find the song "People still play D & D" and play it at your next session or just to yourself..
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Get out of my head Bill. Really, I have been saying the same things for years even using the same examples and referencing Nivens Puppeteers as well. Geez guy either your in my head or I'm in yours. Could it be that people with similar inputs have similar outputs? That is a scary thought.
We have traded bit by bit security or safety for liberty. I mean if you stick your bare feet under a running lawn mower the results are predictable and the manufacturer should not be held responsible for anothers stupidity. That is the same mindset that wants to outlaw guns.
Great article, loved it.
I loved the story Unsafe at any Speed, but this essay was already twice as long as they want them to be. I didn't miss it, I just couldn't include it — or the wreck we are on the road to making out of the world's best healthcare system under the rubric that it isn't safe enough for everyone — or far too many other examples of a culture taking the wrong path for the wrong reasons.
The Kzinti were one of Nivens' creations; a race of militaristic cat people. They actually appeared in an episode of "Star Trek: The Animated Series" that was based on one of Niven's stories.
> You might grok this if you know at least two Vulcans other than Spock
Sarek, Saavik, T'pau, Tuvok, Valeris
> who Tim Drake is
Robin III
> (as opposed to Dick Grayson)
Robin I, Nightwing, and now currently Batman
> what the Kzinti are
Larry Niven's Known Space
> and where the word ‘grok’ came from
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Anson Heinlein.
/sigh/
Is it a bad sign that I got each and every reference you made in your essay? (yes, including LoSH).
My first name is George, so, of course, I wanted to BE George Jetson when I grew up. What a disappointment.
The problem is, as I see it, a phenomenon I callously call, "The Shysterized Mind." A shysterized mind is one that buys into the shysteristic notion that if something bad happens to you, you should get money: There are no accidents, everything is an incident, and whoever is to blame – most of the time a scapegoat anymore – ought to pay. So, the people to blame – the ones directly responsible for us not having our jetpacks and flying cars – are lawyers and the people who buy into the legalistic snake oil that they sell. It really is exactly that simple.
D'oh!
I should have looked at the byline more closely…. how could I have not noticed the creator of one of my favorite Vertigo titles, Fables?
If I may say so, things are going to CHANGE over the course of this century. Ever wonder whether humanity will ever find the "excuse" to spend enough money to colonize the rest of the solar system, and the closest Earth-like planets? If science is the goal, why not just send robotic probes? Why send people?
I believe over the next couple of decades we're going to see the establishment of a global totalitarian super-state. Later, perhaps well into the second half of this century, there will be a secret project to develop the technology to get a number of people off the planet and living on other words – an engineered environment on Mars or Titan, or on a habitable planet tens of light years distant. The motivation won't be science, or exploration, or profit, or eco-catastrophe. It will be FREEDOM. Sooner or later, part of humanity will have to leave the planet to escape an out-of-control Nanny State turned totalitarian, and re-secure the blessings of Liberty.
And "Unsafe at Any Speed" is the final story in the Known Space timeline because, as Niven pointed out, when things get that safe, there are no longer any interesting stories to tell.
I'm still waiting for auto-gyros to rule….
I've always considered Down In Flames the final story in the Known Space timeline.
The Soft Weapon, which became the animated Star Trek episode The Slaver Weapon, with Spock playing the role of the Puppeteer in the original story.
Hey, when you start off your article with a reference to the Kzinti, it invites people to scream and leap when they reply.
Unleash the Jacobian Squirrels of Doom! Send forth the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys! And where the ()&*)*(& is T'Pol when you need her?
Two Vulcans beside Spock: T'Pring ("Amok Time", Original Series) and Tuvok (ST: Voyager)
Tim Drake: Robin after Jason Todd and before Batman's bastard (literal and figurative) son, Damian al Ghul. Currently using the identity Red Robin.
The Kzinti: Alien feline race created by Larry Niven and used in his "Known Space"/"Ringworld" stories.
"Grok": Martian ceremony of sharing emotions described by Robert Heinlein in "Stranger In a Strange Land."
OK, what do I get?
Dr. Quest and Race…the second same sex couple in cartoons…behind Peppermint Patty and Marcy, of course! ;-D
Cooties. A Code Red wedgie. And no nookie for the rest of your life.
Geek Alert!!! Geek Alert!!! Geek Alert!!!
don't know which is more sad: no safe jetpacks, or that we're too fat to use them?
Actually, that was Sheridan who said that. Jeffery Sinclair had gone on to other things by that time: "Valen" comes to mind..
I know who the Kzinti are, and I worship Larry Niven.
I'm a pilot, I've flown gliders too, and I'm willing to take any controllable risk if it's enough fun. But the Moller Skycar is suicidally crazy. At least in a helicopter you can autorotate. You lift yourself off the ground on fans and you better have an ejection seat or you're just stupid. The flying bedstead in the 1960s that they used to train for Apollo landings was essentially the same device as the skycar, and it had one, and Neil Armstrong would be dead if it didn't.
Flying cars are as stupid unattainable idea, unless someone figures out a way for you to survive mechanical failures. ANYTHING goes wrong with that thing and you can't eject, you're going to die. That's not brave, it's stupid.
Mr WIllingham, I am a huge Fan, Detective Chimps monologue in Shadowpact #6 is still a favorite, and every time I read any of your far too rare postings here I am always left wondering one thing. How the hell did you ever make it in a field as inherently lefty as Comics? However you did it, I am glad you did.
Hey, wait a minute!
Cell phones like the iPhone are marching inexorably toward becoming "tricorders". The already know where you are, can map their way out, show you a compass to follow, communicate, sense temperature, download weather, etc. etc…
There are geosourced HVAC systems that can maintain home environments at a perfect 73 degrees no matter what the weather is…
Your TV can now hang on a wall in a frame for a picture…and talk to a satellite for programming…
Sewing machines can sew by themselves, as long as you provide material and thread for them, (for the time being)…
The computer I'm writing this on can find information almost anywhere in the world…and run three or four Space Shuttles at the same time…
Why no jetpacks or flying cars? Even Avery Brooks (Captain Sisko, Deep Space Nine), posed that question, albeit for IBM:
GRAVITY
You can engineer out serious injury for most cars, and motorcycles are still being used, so the "safety" issue is a bit moot:
But EVERYONE, from lawyer to dishwasher, has to answer that pesky Law of Gravity. And until you can keep a vehicle floating in midair even after it breaks, it ain't gonna happen, pardner…
The Kzinti were one of Nivens' creations; a race of militaristic cat people.
Reminds me of the Kilrathi from the old Wing Commander games.
You need to read Heinlein. You will understand the genesis of most modern sci-fi. Stranger in a Strange Land is a good place to start.
Being a fair to middlin' geek, I am a bit disappointed in the flying car nay-sayers. Risk is part of human nature, and accepting that is to be a dude in a world of sheep. Then on the other hand, I ride a Sportster with a foot clutch/hand shift, with full size dresser floorboards, so when i am racing it the only solid point of contact with the bike is my throttle hand.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Race had a girlfriend named Jade. And Bannon kind of had one too, in an episode as I recall
Strikeforce: Morituri wasn't bleak
? Seriously, I agree, though I think the future shown in the retcon of Star Trek isn't bleak. Even the lighting and white walls on the bridge is cheery and hopeful. We need more Paul Levitz era LoSH.
They were just beards! The relationships were shams from the beginning!
No city or municipality would legalize flying cars or jetpacks, and no company would ensure them, and no-one manufacturing them would risk the lawsuits that would inevitably come from misuse/accidents when someone flew them into powerlines. Which sucks, because I really want both.
I started getting back issues of Morituri due to Wizard's glowing review. The comic's tone was mixed.
The comic would seem to be pessimistic because of an alien-ravaged Earth and super soldiers (Morituri) whose powers would kill them within a year. However, this was balanced out by the Morituri living life to its fullest and doing their duty rather than having a pity party. In short, the title characters' idealism gave the book a surprising amount of hope.
So, bleak isn't a fair label for Morituri.
I can think of a pretty simple argument against jetpacks — they'd roast you buttocks when you start them up!
First of all, I Read S:M 20 years ago, so my memory may not be perfect. I did like it, I even read Electric Undertow and was waiting for the promised sequels. That said, I was not referring to the characters themselves, but the setting itself. Bleak settings offer the best background for heroic characters. Fighting against overwhelming evil and willing to sacrifice your own life for freedom are admirable qualities, but the future itself is bleak unlike the early Legion of Superheroes. I also realize James didn't originate the setting, Peter B. Gillis did. For James it could have been a big break into working for the "Big Guys".
My crack about S:M was more for comedic effect rather than to make a point. My main point was that the new Star Trek doesn't show a bleak future, and that we need more hopeful futures.
You fiend! I bet you don't wear a helmet, either!!
Sorry to burst the bubble, fellow gadget geeks, but …
1. Moller has been peddling that Sky Car 'Air ware' ( as the computer guys call it ) for about the past 20 years, you occasionally see reruns of articles about it in Pop. Mech. and Mech. Illus. I first became suspicious of it when the specs said that he was running Wankel engines with a total of 1200 horse power, and yet it was returning about 20 mpg. ( Wankel engines are notorious gas hogs, and a 1200 h.p. Rolls Royce Merlin will be lucky to get 10 mpg.)
2. The reason for no progress on a space or moon station is quite simple – $20k/lb. to get something into orbit. Until Orion is revived ( Ha! High risk nuclear or fusion external pulse units!) or someone manages to get high powered lasers out of gov't/military control for a laser boost system, that ain't hap'nin neither.
Live long and prosper, Bill.
Your phrase reminds me of our personal combat instructor back in Police Academy. "To the Pure of Heart, everything is a weapon."
As my brother said when viewing a modern playground with its cushioning covering every surface, "We lived in filth and played on concrete. Even atomic war didn't kill us. Now our grandchildren are so soft they're going to die just like Douglas Adams predicted — of a plague caused by improperly sanitized telephones."
As Craig says, the Mohler Air Car does have a slight aroma of mothballs and old mummy stories about it, but it does make for a good story line. I'm a little dubious about having 100,000 500-1000 lb objects commuting over LA in the morning, to say nothing of the dust stirred up as they take off and land from every open spot in the basin. But it's still a fun idea.
What I want is a really big engineering challenge for mankind: Ringworld. Oughta take us about a thousand years (that's the marketing dept estimate – remember the pi^2 factor), but when we're done we'll have room for about a trillion sentients. And we should be too busy building it to fight, except for the usual department politics…
For now maybe I'll start a little genetic engineering project on my pint-sized kzinti. Hmmm, perhaps a little growth hormone and an extra big dose of CoQ10 in the Meow Mix…
Overall I agree with the article. However, honestly, I wouldn't trust 90% of people with a flying car. Most people on the roads have enough trouble with forward, backwards, and turning, while keeping track of a fraction of what's going on around them on a horizontal plane Adding up and down would be a deal-breaker.
Which is part of the reason you need pretty hefty licensure to fly an airplane.
Bill,
You are spot on. The massive increase in the nanny state over the last 20 years has been alarming and it seems to be accelerating. What is funny is that the people arguing for better 'safety' don't seem to realize that their liberties are just as at stake. It's like the Twilight Zone episode "The Box" (I refuse to consider that movie) they only see the $1m dollars and the abstract notion of someone dieing. They fail to account that their is someone else contemplating the same opportunity.
Plus, we have already seen a real world demonstration of what would happen with Jetpacks or Skycars: The Segway. What is an ingenious inter-city transportation device has been all but rendered to warehouse or police use because everyone was afraid of being run over or people misusing them. Instead they regulated them into oblivion. It would be the same, only worse with the packs and cars.
The Segway didn't go anywhere because it was lame.
Yeah, I get all the referents. And I've read my "As a color, a shade of purple-grey".
It's a shame that the 'safety at any cost' cocoon conundrum has seemingly ended America's extraterrestrial exploration at this early stage, and, bizarrely, right at a point when our population is at it's greatest. The fact is, we've so many people alive right now that the value of any given single human life is worth less than it's comparative, say, 50 years ago; and worth a fractional percent of a living human a few thousand years ago. We should be throwing people at the planets! Colonizing Mars and mining the asteroids, never mind the all-too-important 'safety' net. We've people to spare. I would leave out tomorrow if the opportunity existed!
I'm thinking China and India will reach out and surpass our (Euroculture's) pathetic explorative boundaries soon enough. Godspeed to them. Cities in flight, and all of that.
You are absolutely correct. Sigh.
We were also promised food pills. Anyone sorry we missed out on that?
I agree with the general gist of the column (go to a modern playground and you just get depressed at how risk-averse they are), but I've got some quibbles:
As a counterexample, I have three letters: ATV. Those things are what one of my old profs used to call "Darwinian accelerators," but you can still get them (and people do).
Jet packs are cool, but the reason they've gone nowhere is that you can only fly them for a minute or two. Make one you can use for an hour at a time, and I guarantee you'll have people getting them.
Flying cars are likewise cool in concept, but I've had cars die while driving. I got out, called AAA, and got it taken care of. If I'm 1000 feet up and my car dies, I'm going to be dying with it shortly thereafter. Think me a coward if you will, but I'm not wild about that.
Plus, given the idiots who currently man the highways, if flying cars ever become a reality, I'm going into the titanium umbrella business.
What I don't get is why we don't have personal hovercraft. They're still pretty cool, they don't have to worry about gravity (since they're barely off the ground), would probably be safer than cars (no problems from potholes or ice and snow), and they'd save wear and tear on the roads. It's a no brainer, people!
LOL that's funny I never thought of it like that!! Didn't Peppermint Patty have the hots for Charlie Brown, or were they just friends w/o benefits?
Here, here.
I'd like nothing better than the chance say "Goodbye and thanks for all the fish", hop aboard a creaky Firefly class transport at some Luna city warren, and misbehave in the outer frontier but at the rate we're going, humanity is on track to pass boringly into the night stuck in a comfy and UN-free gravity well with no sharp edges; made extinct nonetheless by Paxilon, an unlucky sneeze, atomic suicide or any one of the billion ways an indifferent universe can slop us back into God's primordial soup pot.
What ever happened to Giant Leaps? Adventure? Risk? Triumph? Life?
…Snorted up a million lawyers' noses and recycled into a Statist malaise of insipid opiates distributed equally to the masses by our very own puppeteers. That's where.
I'm really not all that cynical but…Sci-fi brought my hopes and expectations up.
There must be someone I can sue for that.
;^)
I'd be all for food pills as long as they made one that re-hydrates into a medium rare grilled steak with buttered corn-on-the-cob and mashed potatoes on the side.
[...] original post here: I’ve Seen the Future and It Is…Safe? This entry is filed under America – Blogs, Big Hollywood. You can follow any responses to this [...]
This commentary is saddening especially in light of QA_NJ's two comments above which I will summarize because it bears repeating: One, terrorists could use flying cars. Two, the wealth we should have had to build this fantastic future was squandered on welfare programs.
The conclusion that I draw from the article, which pines for the jetpacks and adventure, and QA_NJ's sobering counterpoint, is that we cannot expect a dynamic, pioneering society to grow out of a system in which we reject human freedom. Society may have those that want a pioneering future, but their voices are drowned out. Instead the status quo is perpetuated by the statist and his allies in the media and in Hollywood. Society is moving in the direction of the Nanny State. Yes my friends, Nanny Statists are on the march, as depressing as that should sound to most of you.. Which means less personal freedom and mobility. The flying car is the last thing the statist wants. Internationalists fear it too. A flying car is a beacon of FREEDOM the whole world could not ignore!! Every man in bondage and oppression would cry out for one, and not care about whether it can autorotate! And so my fellow geeks, my freedom loving bloggers, we see yet another reason why we need to win against the left.
To those who repeatedly point out the dangers in the design of these flying cars, or how it's too expensive to get to the moon — reminder: government is a large part of the problem. Really it's the Government-media complex. Ironic how they call themselves progressives.. We will never see flying cars, spaceships, settlements on the moon, or anything other than misery and squalor, if the so-called "progressives" have their way.
I'm more worried about the distracted driver on the ground than I am engine failure. Modern airplanes are already vastly safer than automobiles, and regular maintenance is always a must with aircraft.
As a fellow Reaganite I instinctively agree with your optimism, but the point of the article was to say that technological advancements have not made jetpacks and other devices popular. We're not concerned with tricorder-like iPhones although you make a good point.
What I don't get is why we don't have personal hovercraft. They're still pretty cool, they don't have to worry about gravity (since they're barely off the ground), would probably be safer than cars (no problems from potholes or ice and snow), and they'd save wear and tear on the roads. It's a no brainer, people!
I don't know… what kind of gas mileage would they get?
I don't buy that. Why not keep them separate as he proposed but connect them with a light weight skeleton? That way the "space walk" can be within a skeletal framework without excessive risk. You don't have to be an engineer to figure that out. Maybe the problem is too much thinking to solve a simple problem.
Pills are no fun unless they rehydrate. I don't imagine it would be much fun having nothing to chew before you swallowed.
As a 99th percentile Nerd ( http://www.nerdtests.com/ft_nq.php ) I appreciate your points above. That said, I am still waiting for the moon bases, the Pan Am shuttle flights to orbiting space stations, and an immediate excavation project in the Tycho basin up in the southern lunar highlands (will we find Duncan MacLeod there, I wonder…). Also, I'm surprised you didn't mention the solar energy panels discussed in The High Frontier, although I personally believe it would be more economical to create lunar geothermal stations and then beam the energy to geostationary relay satellites for distribution to Earth ( http://www.chronwatch-america.com/forum/viewtopic... ).
Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam!
So are you going to do a bit on the Mach-Einstein Conjecture? (or why cars floating on air may be in your future)
Here is a start:
http://www.ecnmag.com/blog-maching-einstein-10210...
What I was trying to point out was that some things come in their own time, and no amount of "risk", either pro or con, factors into the process…
The cases I cite, (iPhones, LCD HDTV, digital control sewing machines; particularly the personal embroidery machine, the personal computer, etc.), occur because the NEED for the tool matched the ABILITY to create that tool…
There will come a time very soon that your car won't need you to drive it. Mercedes, Saab, etc. are already reaching for that with lane drift control, safety braking (for when you follow too closely or become distracted), and fuel control, (already available in commercial trucks, with a governor). Just a few more things need to be worked out, and your daily commute will be by autopilot, while you read the paper, talk on your iPhone, and drink your coffee. Amtrak will be completely useless at that point, and will have to be completely subsidized by the Government, (like that isn't happening now).
Don't get me wrong. Jetpacks have been a fave of mine since "Thunderball", but the tech and fuel source as it is now, precludes that being mainstream. Same for the "flying car".
Get me an antigrav system that will keep a machine aloft without thrust, that doesn't fail catastrophically, and SLOWLY allows decent when malfunctioning, and you will be "rich beyond the dreams of avarice…"
Jeez. I just tagged off with "Bones" McCoy from Star Trek: the Voyage Home…
When I would visit my father (recently deceased) and go out to lunch, we would always drive through a nice suburban neighborhood on the way. Every so often, we would pass by a big green open area. I asked my Dad once why these areas hadn't been covered with houses like those that surrounded them. He explained that there was a law or regulation that so much green space had to be left open when an area was developed. (cont.)
Obviously, the purpose of this rule was to give adult residents a place to walk and enjoy a little bit of nature and the kids who grew up in the houses around it somewhere to play. However, when I was a child such places would have amenities like swing sets, slides and jungle gyms for my contemporaries and myself to use. No more, now these open spaces have nothing in them but trees and grass. Why? Because the cost of the liability insurance to the homeowner's association if they did provide such play equipment would be so great that it isn't worth it. Too much chance that somebody's little darling will fall off a swing and scrape his widdle knee and sue for and collect a million dollar judgment. So these nice green spaces stay empty of anything fun–and also of any kids who now have no reason to go there. And so a little more of the joy is squeezed out of modern childhood, all in the service of the great God Safety.
Which is why ive always had issue with what schools consider weapons and not. Dull 1.5 inch pocket knife = weapon. Yeat a really sharp 6 inch pencil isn't… yeah right, I got wounds to prove otherwise. Any object is a tool and any tool is a weapon when used for such purpose. P.S. to the geeks ive named my iphone Kzin's Honor.
Actually Moller has be scamming people for closer to 40 years. Why the FTC hasn't put him in jail by now is beyond me.
OK, just as a side note, why has no one mentioned the contribution of BigHollywood's own frequent contributor Gary Graham as Vulcan Ambassador Soval on Star Trek Enterprise?
Paraphrased: "For my next trick, I'll make my pencil disappear!"
Or that fight in The Bourne Identity: Knife vs Bic Disposable Pen.
Or this comic: http://xkcd.com/651/
(This one is just plain cool: http://xkcd.com/652/ )
The true weapon is the user. Pointy things, explodey things, projectile-y things–they're just tools.
Since Bill addressed his flying car lament to me, I figured I owed him a response.
(For those who don't know me personally–which would likely be just about everyone–a quick note about where to place me on the political spectrum. I am what was termed by my father's generation a "pinko." Worse yet, I'm a secular humanist pinko. But I'm also a huge geek, and got every one of Bill's references at the beginning of the piece.)
Oh, how I wish I had a flying car and a jetpack. And I share a lot of Bill's concerns about the "nanny state" aspects of modern culture, but I'm not as quick to dismiss it entirely as pernicious. (As a parent of a five year old daughter, the question of how much danger to allow her to put herself in is a constant struggle for me. I don't want to see her hurt unnecessarily, but at the same time I don't want her to grow up cossetted and cushioned against *all* of life's ill. Check out Michael Chabon's excellent essay "Manhood for Amateurs" for some thoughts on this: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22891)
The problem with flying cars as I see it, though, isn't so much the danger it poses to the driver, but the danger it poses to everyone *else*.
If an idiot kid gets behind the wheel of a car and barrels down my street at far above the posted speed limit, it might have disastrous, even tragic, effects. He could hit another car, he could hit a pedestrian, could get in a wreck and kill and injure not only himself but other innocents. Sure, he has to be licensed to drive, but there is still risk to the rest of us, but as a society it's a risk that we've come to accept as a trade-off for the convenience and luxury of the single-passenger car.
The problem with the flying car is that the danger posed by unsafe and inexperienced operators is magnified many times over. A thoughtless kid behind the wheel of a ground car could hit a pedestrian, or rear-end a school bus, or any number of other ills, but he's not likely to destroy my house and everyone in it. An inexperienced "driver" of a flying car? A heavy projectile filled with inflammable propellant hitting my roof at high speeds might just do that. Until flying cars can be made safe (there's that pernicious word again) not only to the people onboard but to all of the people on the *ground*, I'm content to live without them.
Jet packs, now, are another matter, or at least pose a less significant threat to all of us on the ground. I think the problem *there* is that the physics just don't seem to work. Like everyone in my generation, I grew up with images of the Rocket Belt, and figured that I'd be able to soar through the air in one *long* before I reached my current age. But the problem with things like the Rocket Belt is that that are (a) prohibitively expensive to operate, and (b) extremely limited in application. I could buy one now, if I had the means, and go out in the desert and fly in a small circle for a minute or two before the tiny fuel tank was exhausted, but that doesn't put me any closer to strapping on a jetpack and flying from here down to the corner store. Even if I could make it there, I wouldn't have the fuel to make it *back*.
Who knows? Maybe some genius will come along and figure out how to rewrite the gravitational constant on the fly, and we all can float safely through the clouds with flight rings like the Legion of Super-Heroes used to hand out to its members. (Heck, they even gave the *rejects* flying belts.) And if we should happen to collide with the ground, we'd do no more damage than a mylar helium balloon blown over from the birthday part of the kid next door. But in the meantime, while still worrying about the possibly pernicious ills of the nanny state, I'm happy that there's someone out there keeping big hunks of flaming metal death from plummeting out of the skies onto my head.
Tim Drake is either the second or the third Robin. (I forget which.)
Grok is from Stranger from a Strange Land. That Heinlein best-seller is not his best. In the 60s, i'm sure it was an interesting philosophy, but it turns out in the 40 years sicne it was written, free sex has not created world peace and goodwill to man.
I was sort of waiting for that.
There are 3 stages of development
1) it works and it is cray unsafe (power lawnmower)
2) add safety equipment due to complaints of unskilled users. it doesn't work
3) an engineered comprimise that works pretty well and is pretty safe
point 2
products tend to advance through these stages faster without government inference
e.g. the personal computor
So safety is a retarding factor but the real reason flying cars and jet packs haven't taken off is utility as mentioned above but also, they just aren't that much of an improvement. So you got a flying car, cool, but is it really that much of an improvement over the terrestrial car? It is not like moving from a horse to a motorized vehicle, where there was convenience, lower maintenance and operating effort and increase in speed. They flying car still has to use the highway as it disrupts the area below it, it still needs licensing as it is dangerous if in appropriately used, it still needs gas stations, repair shops and a garage.
The Segway was cool but it was premised on a large motorized device being operated among pedestrians. Perhaps safe in its design but a real threat if used with inattention by someone who feels safe on their steel vehicle but disregards the impact the vehicle can have on the pedestrian.
As for space travel, where is the benefit? It is time to open space exploration up to the private sector and remove government funding from the picture. Then if some investors wish to undertake an exploration to find a new spice route or riches of gold, then have at it. But now that we've proven we can, there just isn't any reason for tax dollars to fund exploration.
"Pimp my fly" works as a door to a lot of dirty jokes
On one hand I want flying cars. On the other hand, I also know how badly everyone drives grounded cars, then I think we're better off not moving in that direction. Then again, I'm hopeful that if we ended up having vehicles like that, that they'd make it VERY difficult to get a license to fly something like that. but even then again, the dmv is run by the gov't, so there's basically no chance of that happening. every other moron would just walk into the dmv, like usual, and after waiting the mandatory 6 hours in line, they'll walk up, get their picture taken, and go outside to fly away in their jetson-mobile. it'd seriously look like it's raining fire in the sky because of all the idiots crashing their flying cars.
so yes, in a scenario that hasn't even happened yet, I'm deciding that the federal government is at fault. and if you disagree with me, then you're probably a racist.
Sorry, the Moller skycar does NOT work.
I grok this.
Boys are ritalined into a semi-comatose state just for being everything the safety drones are trying to stamp out.
If Heinlein were still alive….what an advocate for freedom, personal responsibility and sense of adventure.
Now all we get is this vampire drek calling itself sci-fi.
Heh, I've quoted that recently with:
Trainer: "This mace can repel up to 30 attackers."
Recruit: "What if you are attacked by more than 30 people?"
Trainer: "Well, then, I guess you deserved it."
heh.
My only gripe about the flying car: "We've got idiots who can barely manage 2 dimensions, even before cell phones, 3D is just going to compound the problem and may take some of the smarter ones with them."
!foot clutch/hand shift…aka "Suicide Clutch"…you are a braver man than I, i suppose.
That said, I wonder if that sportster has been up to 135mph like my Kawasaki KZ 1100 has?
(pleasures of Cali's Highways at 6:30 AM on a Sunday…woohoo. Escondido to SD if 5minutes flat)
Agreed, Wankels never will go over 25MPG w/o some serious tinkering and a system to get oil to the apex seals w/o mixing w/ fuel (ever conqured that? dunno).
1200HP would be easily do-able with a 3 rotor and serious balancing and blueprinting, 4-rotor, no problem except for the weight.
Don Garlitz may have been the first man to break 300MPH, but Shirly Muldowny did it first in her pink dragster with a 6-rotor wankel, IIRC. The thrust per gear change was a nice saw-tooth pattern, none of the all over the board like pistons.
That's why RX's are so fast: light engine, easy power gains, build for turbo charging (hence race and street porting it first and cheaply and do the one piece racing seals) and yeah it only has 4 spark plugs, but has 3 combustion chambers (hence cheaper insurance because it is classified as a 4 banger…heh)
Tho, I still agree with the comic who said "Let's just take the safety labels off everything and the problem will solve itself"…heh.
Sounds like the story of how we needed a writing implement that worked in zero-g. Spent all kinds of money developing the "space pen."
Conversely, the Russians simply used pencils.
Which were rather obviously inspired by the Kzinti. . . .
Or so I thought at the time. Still seem to be
Sybock – Spock's brother (seen in Star Trek 5), Sarek – his dad, Saavik, played by two acresses – Kirstie Alley in STII, and someone else in STIII.
Those are from the movies, We also have Tuvok from ST:Voyager. I can't remember waht'shername from Eneterprise, but she was hot.
I'm still waiting for that beautiful, spinning space station from 2001: A Space Odyssey. What have we got now? The ISS – a cramped, sloppy little shotgun shack of a station where highly-trained, highly-paid pilots and PhD's spend their time schlepping junk from one compartment to another, packing stuff and unpacking other stuff, and generally acting like a bunch of stevedores. Or at least that's what it looks like on the NASA Channel. Of course, NASA has done all it can lately to suck most of the excitement out of space exploration. I don't understand why there's a waiting list to visit that thing.
Right. Look at airplanes: Expensive to buy, expensive to insure, expensive to operate, and for the most part their every move while in the air is strictly controlled from the ground. Ever since the dawn of aviation, various people have promised "a plane in every garage." Never happened. The only times flying was affordable were a) when civil aviation was lightly regulated, b) when fuel was cheap, and c) when there was an abundance of cheap war surplus aircraft on the market. Now the FAA rules with an iron hand (and it will certainly regulate any "flying cars" that manage to get seriously airborne), gas is not cheap, and war surplus aircraft cost millions or billions of dollars each.
A "flying car" is just an airplane. It will be subject to the same economic, civil and political restrictions that other airplanes are. And even if a practical flying car were somehow adopted, it would only make our current horrendous traffic problems 3- rather than 2-dimensional. Not sure that's a good idea.
was thinking the exact same thing!
Diane,
I think I love you. Will you marry me?
We seem to have a similar sense of humor, so I'm not surprised lol
Mr Willingham
Good to see that there are a few conservative comic book writers in a medium which is unfortunately dominated (like most corners of pop culture) by raving liberals. Especially enjoying your run on the JSA. I'm looking forward to the team being stripped back to its basics as you suggested in a recent Newsarama interview (and perhaps a Blackest Night crossover?) Anyways keep up the good work.
Not surprising at all.
Thanks, I stand corrected, may you be always be grey.
This does hit close to home for me. I mean, at a certain age, I went out to play with my friends with ZERO adult supervision, other than the knowledge that my mom would pop her head out once in a while just to make sure we were okay.
Now, parents go everywhere with their kids and they are always under a watchful eye. Granted, I don't have much of a backyard (Yay, California! NOT!) and my "front yard" is a mini-cul de sac of six houses in a detached condo community, which means cars come and go from time to time. And my kids are 7 and 5 1/2. Now at 7, I played without supervision on my dead end street. But 5 1/2 may be too young. But who knows.
I don't want to be a helicopter parent, but it's like we somehow got programmed to be anyway. I mean, on the one hand you want them to be safe, but on the other you want them to explore and learn independence. In the end, it's a fine line.
But I do agree that we have sacrificed freedom over safety and I think in the long run that is a bad thing.
The coveted No Prize(bonus points to whomever can ID that ref true believers)
Her name was T'Pol (played by the smokin' Jolene Blalock) and she is by far the hottest Trek babe ever!
Other ENT Vulcans includes Ambassador Soval, played by the well-known (in these parts) Gary Graham, T'Pau, T'Les (T'Pol's mom, played by Joanna Cassidy), Kov, Tolaris (the bastard), Koss, V'Lar…
The sporty tops at 120, even with the updated rev limiter. I do however, have a flat slide mikuni waiting in the wings………
actually, i have as much time wearing a lid as not, the advantages of riding for 40 some years. i wear a lid most always nowadays. i have a scorpion full face, purchased at the home office in california, last time i was through there. and a 3/4 of questionable origin, that i wear most of the time.
Well, but that's the thing. WE didn't say that flying cars are unsafe. The FAA says that they're not safe. The government says it's not safe. And it's not even the part of the government that we vote for; the guy who made the decision that flying cars aren't safe sits in a windowless office on K street, and the closest he ever gets to having his name on a ballot is that his boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss is appointed by the President.
The executive-branch bureacracy is the new royal dynasty. These people wield power over America that the President only imagines in his wildest dreams. And there are only two ways for a civil servant to involuntarily lose his job: 1) die, or 2) get caught in the act of looking at porn on the internet.
Glad you protect the cranium. What is a scorpion? Is that a style or the brand name? The 3/4 is the just-barely-lega one, right? (as if you could not tell, I know little about 'cycle ridin.')
it's a brand, see here
http://scorpionusa.com/
a full face is just that, it covers all of your head, face and all.
a 3/4 covers your head and ears, but not your face.
the barely legal one is called a beanie around these parts, and would be useful if you could fall directly on the top of your gourd, which is to say not so useful.
The flip side of freedom is trust. To have freedom we have to trust our fellow citizens. To have democracy we must trust them to make good choices. To have the freedom to bear arms we must trust them to use them responsibly.
If your first thought on hearing about a flying car is "morons will crash into things" then you don't trust your fellow citizens. Sorry, you're not cut out for freedom. Anyone who uses the term "sheeple" to refer to his fellow Americans isn't a free man — he's nothing but a slave hoping to be an overseer.
Some mentioned human 3D capabilities and equality, but as a flight and scuba instructor it’s the combination mixed with political correctness that stops progress.
Many more people are totally incapable of functioning in the 3D world of flying or diving than most realize. The successful businessman who buys an airplane, scores a 92 on his PPL written, and after countless instructors and 80 hours in his own airplane still can’t solo. It would damage his self esteem to admit he as an individual is incapable of flying, so he promptly declares all pilots dangerous risk takers. The student diver who “demands” he be allowed to go on an advanced dive even though he doesn’t have 5,000 dives under his weightbelt. The mindset of many like JFK Jr who figure if a qualified instrument rated pilot can do something they should also be able to because they’re the smart ones – even if not properly trained or inherently incapable.
Reducing the future to the lowest common denominator is what it’s all about – and the lowest is pretty low, but equal.
Not Orion. NERVA. I'm not sure which angered me more at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's "What Next?" Exhibit, the NERVA display which showed working prototypes of NERVA that were dropped because, uh, it's nuclear or the exhibit that asked whether we had a right to disturb the pristine environment of Mars. I had to fight very hard on that last one to avoid screaming, "IT'S A DEAD PLANET! WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SAVE IT FOR?"
If you want to get really depressed, look at what's involved with seriously getting outside of the inner planets with manned spaceflight or, worse, beyond the solar system. It's not just the air, water, and food problem, though Biosphere 2 shows how complicated maintaining an ecosystem really is. Without gravity or a serious replacement, our bones start to dissolve and our muscles atrophy. Then there is the cosmic ray or solar flare problem, which could either mean a quick death or a slow painful one. One could start to think that God or the universe seriously wants to keep humans confined to this one planet or possibly just the inner solar system.
I truely believe the only solution to the problem of deep exploration is to build the ships in space. I hope that the ISS is a precursor to such a facility. By building in space, size and shape restrictions are removed and different materials can be used that aren't feasible for earth takeoff because of density and weight. I want to believe that in my lifetime we will see moon bases and human exploration past the moon, but with current attitudes and government interference I see it slipping away.
Kewl! Safe riding to you!
Lawsuits. Lawsuits kill fun.
IIRC, it's something Marvel Comics used to "award" readers who wrote comments to them.
Heh – I would love to watch the carnage as people try tried to get their personal hovercraft into tight parking spots at the local shopping mall. (From a well-removed vantage point that is.)
If you don't believe this go work for the government. They recently created an organization called VPP. Their current mission (and they have chosen to accept it) is to go to every workplace on our site and write a Job Hazard Analysis for every possible task a worker can perform. So now we have a JHA for making coffee in the morning. Trouble is we get in and are too asleep to take notice.
How much is it that "we" as individuals have chosen safety at all costs? Is it not more that government/the nanny state has chosen it for us because it gives all these public employees something to do? In which case cut government down to 10% of GNP & we get back the fun in life.
Re: Flying Car Operation. Note that Moller's plan involves AUTONOMOUS operation of the vehicle. You don't "fly" anything; you push the button saying "go here" and the car takes off, flies there, and lands all on its own.
[...] all you fans who’ve been obsessed by this a troubling question, Bill Willingham explains why we’ll never have the jetpack future portrayed on pulp magazine [...]
ok – I am commenting before finishing reading the comments – a dangerous thing, but you've inspired me to live on the edge!!!
Other Sci FI/Fantasy authors addressed our need for safety – Mercedes Lackey or Anne McCaffrey had a group go colonize, and it was the one who was stifling in the conformist society who went, the man whose kid talked too loud and got them fined because he was too boyish. In the Pegasus books McCaffrey has people living in a similar situation that Asimov's Elijah & Daneel books lived in – overly-polite, scaredy-cat sardines. Asimov's earth-dwellers were looked down upon by those who had gone out into space – only to become narrow-minded themselves, and then were saved by the robot who discovered the Zeroth Law of Robotics and poisoned earth to make man go and explore…
I love scifi/fantasy… but haven't read all of the stuff referenced by y'all … goody, new books!!!
Yeah, the turning radius on those things has to suck.
You got it.
It was actually an award for pointing out story errors and such and if you pointed out an error that was legit Stan "the man" Lee would award you the coveted Marvel No Prize.
Though I'd never received one as I understand it you would actually get an envelope in the mail from Marvel Comics that bore in large print that the envelope contained the No Prize and if you were to open it you would find it was just that an empty envelope.
IIRC the No Prize went by the wayside sometime in the 80's about the time that Stan stepped down from the day to day operation at Marvel.
I knew all the references, as did others commenting. My own theory, which propbably goes hand-in-hand with the safety thing.
Civilizations and/or species strive towards stasis.
Every tale of utopia is static. Things today are the same as yesterday as they will be tomorrow. Paradise is portrayed that way, is all versions. Valhalla, Christian heaven or Islamic paradise, all never changing. China's dynasties established stasis for thousands of years. The caste system of India enforces stasis. Where you are born is where you will stay.
The last few centuries of rapid change in living standards may be coming to an end by collective choice. Or, here in the U.S., by elitist choice. The elites know what is best for us. They say so, and many listen.
It is far easier for people today to live vicariously through the adventures of others. Zillions of people follow Hollywood stars and their lifestyles, fascinated by their pecadillo's. Most of the zillions of followers would themselves not live that way, even if given the choice. Just one example.
In the future we don't get to hunt dinosaurs with jet-packs and bazookas.
Obviously. That would be the past. From your point of view, anyway.
I don't want the jetpacks we've got now because they're useless. One minute in the air? What's the point? Buck Rogers could fly for hours; I want _his_ jetpack, even though it would be dangerous.
As for flying cars, they sound like an improvement that would not improve. We already have fast unsafe transportation, called cars; why gild the lily? Never mind the midair collisions and mechanical failures; what about midair traffic control? Midair traffic jams? Midair speeding and drunkenness? Midair cops? Safety aside, the flying car is just not practical as a mass-transit system. They'd probably have to be computer-controlled from the ground; how dull!
Not all people are risk-averse. Extreme sports, the military, firefighters; but jetpacks and aircars haven't caught on with those groups either. I say these technologies are still not ready to go.
This analysis is…Brilliant plain and simple. I cant go into here the depths to which I have worked on this problem and others. Suffice it to say I am an an Engineer and have worked on the flying car and the Electric car my entire life and you have completely nailed it. Can I make something right now that will fix all Americas problems? Without a doubt. Can I make it and pass the multitude of hurdles that have been put up to stop me requiring that I be absolutely perfect? Never. It is so discouraging that anything further that I come up with is pretty much going to be done in China or somewhere with less regulation.
"In order to Innovate I have to go to China". If that isn't Ironic I don't know what is.
You know you are making yourself the butt of a joke and don't even know it. The entire point of the article is that "OH MY GOD THAT"S DANGEROUS", when followed out to its logical end, will essentially confine us to a gel beds manipulating avatars a la "Surrogates". There is no end to it. A completely safe society will never happen.
The world that you enjoy now was built by courageous men and women that took risks and yes died so that future generations could have better lives.
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