Movies and cartoons lied to us! By the 21st century we were supposed to be wearing metallic spacesuits and travelling with jetpacks! ( BTW how did the Rocketeer avoid burning his butt off? ).
Do you think that we will ever be as optimistic about the future as we were before we swapped Buck Rogers for Blade Runner?
It’s In That Garage Someplace, Right Next To My Flying Car.
CSA
You don’t have a jetpack? I thought everyone had one.
I have several. The older ones are a bit dicey, and I have to wear my metalic spacesuit while flying to avoid burning my legs, but the newer one is great. I use it to avoid all the roundabouts they’re building in my area.
Up, up and away!
I still like the old manual jetpacks better than the automatic ones!
:=) You’ll have your jet pack and anything else at least by 2045 when singularity will occur (Time April,2011) making “all technology so rapid and profound” human history as we know it will cease to exist. Perhaps even by 2023 when technological development is given over to technology it self as the “computer” passes the brain power of humans.
As a math person I’ve been following the idea for many years, and find the argument persuasive enough to consider.
So forget about the jet packs, you may be “wormhole-ing” your way around to any where. anytime w/o need of “burning” yourself up. Or, at the very least, doing it in your mind in such a convincing fashion it may not be relative that do it physically.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is ahead of his time.
I cheaped out and bought the bottom of the line Jetpack. Is it possible to adapt it to the antilock airbrakes that come standard on the higher trimline Jetpacks?
personally I like my antigravity belt better.
When I first visited Germany and took the trains there, it reminded me of the future that was once promised to be here by the 21st century-- remember the monorail in Disney’s Tomorrowland? Same with the TGV in France which goes so fast it seems like flying.
What happened to the future? It went to Western Europe.
I’ve wondered the same thing. But those old SF writers who talked about jetpacks never even dreamed of the things computers can do today. There is an old Heinlein book called Spaceman Jones where they describe how the computer in the starship works, and it is so primitive it is completely laughable. (Although that doesn’t destroy my pleasure in rereading it from time to time.)
But good news! Our President wants to spend billions, nay, trillions to pay for the new high speed rail lines of your dreams!
Of course we’ll be optimistic again! The optimism of the 1950s caved in to pessimism of the 1970s, which made way for the optimism of the 1990s that bowed out for the pessimism we live through now. The good times come, the good times go. We’ll be ecstatic by the start of the new decade. It takes time to really get your groove on.
Tee hee!
C^3’s back, with his utterly predictable train-crush.
In spite of some of the negative things said re: C^3, I appreciate the humorous attributes of his naivete. If I knew where he lived, I’d mail him a “Thomas the Tank” plush for kicks.
C’mon, I’m counting on another “train-ism” today!
MJoe,
Naivete? The Germans, the French and the Japanese don’t think a functioning public transit system is naive. They think “Can-do” the way Americans once did, back when equal rights and winning the Cold War was considered “naivete”. Maybe you should try to be more positive about America and less mocking for a change.
Cars Can Cancer:
Are you familiar with the fact that France, Germany, and Japan put together are quite a bit smaller than the U.S.? We have a functioning public transit system, it just doesn't involve trains. Now beat it on down the line. Go on, git!Forget about monorail. I just spent a couple of weeks riding on the mono-cable, and it only costed about $65/day. That should give you an idea what unsubsidized public transportation would have to cost in order to be economically viable.
It is always fun to watch an old film to see computers that fill up the room! I have to admit that the old Honeywell computers with reel to reel tapes were visually appealing - just look at the Italian Traffic Control in “The Italian Job” ( the real one , not the Marky Mark knockoff! )
Even the “future” computers are laughsome. Fr’instance the thing that Mr Spock looks into looks like a mutoscope machine from the boardwalk at Atlantic City.( I had to look that one up. We call them “What the Butler Saw” machines! )