Slashdot Mirror
The Future That Hasn't Arrived
jonerik writes "MSNBC has this article on an exhibit starting this week at Philadelphia's Lost Highways Archive and Research Library. Entitled Radebaugh: The Future We Were Promised, the exhibit focuses on the artwork of the elusive A.C. Radebaugh, a commercial illustrator whose works promised us a glittering, shiny tomorrow from the '30s to the '50s; a helicopter in every garage, massive streamlined cars, vacations on Mars - in short, pretty much everything we didn't get. The exhibit collects examples from Radebaugh's portfolio, auto designs for Chrysler, DoSoto, and Dodge, ads, and 'Closer Than We Think!,' a syndicated weekly comic strip drawn by Radebaugh. I want my jetpack, dammit!"
I thought the future is always arriving... And the present keeps slipping into the past.
Huh?
Well, where is it? Someone have an answer???
Omigod ... you mean that vacation on Mars was just a brain implant? Quick, get me a JohnnyCab!
Where ARE the jet packs? Flying cars? All of the "future items we will not be able to live without!"?
What I can't understand is why mass-market car designs today have not achieved the kind of reduced drag that was gotten by the EV1 back in the 80's...
This seems like a no-brainer. But even the current crop of Hybrids like the Prius and Civic-Hybrid seem to have inefficient exteriors...
Ah yes, articles on the ultimate in vaporware. Do we have a vaporware icon?
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The future is down. A trouble ticket has beens submitted.
When we think of the future, we almost always think of technology. We think of starships and other things that are waaaaaay far off, so maybe the industrial revolution spurred this new way of thinking. Anyway, I'm justing typing randomly. I'll bet some historian will tell me I'm totally wrong.
We had one, but Apple patented it :-(
Well at least one thing might come true if China has its way. Mining the Moon
The story of China mining the moon was on slashdot a few days ago. China Wants to Mine the Moon
I guess life isn't immitating art hard enough.. unless you consider hollywood block busters art, bet bush loves those rocky movies.
Sigh. Damn your power /.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum".
"The future we were promised."
How can anyone promise a future that is certain? I mean, in almost any case there are more than 1 possible outcomes in a situation...
Next time you're driving around, note the number of cars driving like idiots, barely running, NOT running, and with dents.... ...now put them above your house.
You wanna keep them on the ground now don't you?
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
I am assuming the root of the matter is the disparity between what was predicted in art (science fiction) and what actually happened. I always felt there was too much of a preoccupation with space travel in the past. I guess this makes sense, given the Space Race took up a good amount of people's attention. However, there were two areas that were overlooked: The Internet and advancements in genetics. Both caught the forward-thinkers of the past by surprise.
There were many assumptions of huge talking robots, but not as many about the computers we have today. Our computers are not as powerful, but they're a commodity, available to everybody. Also, cloning was a pipe dream; something to happen in the year 2500 or whatever. And here we are, playing around with cloning cats.
It's not so bad, really, though I could use a good mail-order robobabe right about now.
No I'm not trolling.
Forget flying cars and vacationing on red planets, I'm still looking forward to when 640K isn't enough.
Oh, wait....
Posting as directed.
How dare you call Mr Radebaugh an anonymous coward!
Dude, Where's my flying car?
Maybe you should educate the morons of tomorrow so they'll stop believing the leaders of tomorrow. - Dogbert
Well, you're getting a glimpse of it today. After all, this story will probably be re-posted on ./'s front page again tomorrow. The only reason we can't say for sure is that ./ is governed by the reverse heisenberg uncertainty principle - ie: you'll never know either the (editor's) position or speed, since they're both indeterministic quantum states :-)
Since when Slashdot the master of the obvious?
Well, I are many of us are still recovering from the dot-com meltdown. Very traumatic events can take years to re-surface, so maybe it's time for all of us to reflect(again).
There was such a deluge of wishful thinking and optimism about how "tele-presense", for lack of a better term, would change the world. By now I expected to be raking in 6 figures while telecommuting from my mountain cabin in Alaska. All over my 100Mbps satellite internet connection.
Obviously I've had to endure my share of reality checks the last few years. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
You guys don't have jetpacks?
Seriously though, some of these grand inventions we are probably better off without. I would now like to sagely quote Some Guy, who once said "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should"
Well, one out of two ain't bad. (*)
(Now where'd I park my SUV? Oh yeah, on Nebraska...)
(*) "ain't" may be intended sarcastically. YMMV. Oh baby may it ever vary.
See "The Gernsbach Continuum" by William Gibson -- short story circa 1980, in which the streamlined technotronic future imagined by Hugo Gernsbach breaks into the real world. (The story appears in Gibson's excellent Burning Chrome collection.)
On a related theme, see Miami Modern. Excerpt:
"Perhaps nowhere was the postwar craving for the futuristic more evident than on Miami Beach where, during the 1950s and 1960s, wildly inventive hotel designs emerged to satiate the requirements of the prosperous new middle-class on vacation. Resort area architects attempted to realize through their buildings what we of a more cynical age now concede to be science fiction. These architects created a unique futuristic look in Miami Beach that became known as Miami Modern--MiMO."
Yet another related screed about hyper-modernist architecture, one of my favorite essays by Tom Wolfe: "Las Vegas (What?) Las Vegas (Can't hear You! Too noisy) Las Vegas!!!"
-kgj
Well, I are many of us are still recovering from the dot-com meltdown.
Should read,
Well, I'm sure there are many of us are still recovering from the dot-com meltdown.
And yes I did preview it, I just forgot how to read.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
With the pessimism? Sure, we don't have flying cars or jetpacks or vacations to Mars.
Instead, we have computers literally millions of times faster than anyone imagined we'd have. Read some old sci-fi, and notice how the authors tend to make reference to people plotting the navigations by hand because it'd be too complicated for a computer?
We've got our personal communicaters, in the way of cell phones. Hell, with cell phones with cameras and video screens on them, we've already got our Dick Tracy wrist geenees, too.
We can genetically modify animals.
And, perhaps most importantly of all for the writers of the early sci-fi, we haven't destroyed ourselves as a species yet.
So why all the bitching about flying cars?
The future got slashdotted!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Just dangle the carrot on the stick in front of the donkey and he'll keep on going. The fancy visions of the future are just that.
Illusional.
First off, companies have to invest in and develop such shiny stuff, and then the public has to lay down their hard earned cash. That is the biggest reason we don't all have jetpacks and personal helicopters.
On the upside, a lot of these fantastic visions do come to some level of fruition. When car companies make concept cars, some features may trickle down into production cars.
As a public, I don't think we typically want to change how we live drastically. Few people want to embrace something like the Kyoto accord to reduce pollution because it hits them in the wallet.
A lot of Dot.Bombs went this way because they were counting on investors and the public to embrace new technology because it was COOL and drastically would change how we manage our lives. Didn't work.
...here
-pyrrho
But we weren't "lied to" or "promised" something that didn't happen. It was just a wonderful utopian vision, and like all those, it never quite happens. Tragedy of the Commons, yada yada yada.
I just want the personal backyard oilfield I was promised in the Beverly Hillbillies.
make that SUPREME COMMANDER of the obvious (for those of you in love with SG1 as I am... think Thor) -AntonK
Here's a couple of links to cool historic planning maps for San Francisco and Los Angeles. The will to do these things didn't last long enough to finish though.
Another interesting "roads of future past" link is interregional highways, which shows what the interstate system was meant to look like in 1944, before it was called the interstate system.
I like my beverages with warning labels!
Perhaps copyrights and patents have made it impossible for us to cooperate on research and the open sharing of information. Perhaps regulations have made it impossible for us to use nuclear power, even though is it so much safer than even many solar technologies. And how about forcing everybody to pay for public education, perhaps this has set us up poor quality schools because there is no accountability. Or what about high taxes, and laws that pretty much force us to use dollars - that have made it impossible for people to accumulate wealth for R&D, education, and experiments unless they're already wealthy. Lets face it, the USA is not really that free, it is more free than many places, but it is not really that free - if it was I think we would all have alot more than we do now.
Art imitates art imitates art too. When I found this article a couple of days ago, I told my friend Winston Smith that I had located one of his major influences. He was so happy! He said that he had "thousands" of Radebaugh's illustrations sitting around that he'd painstakingly culled from old magazines and books (his source material), and was thrilled to find out that we'd found the creator of the famous flying cars, etc. He said he'd never been able to find or read a signature on any of the illos before.
I do believe I made his day. Maybe he'll thank me on the end page of his next book too!
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
.... is they focus on technology but forget one thing... Population... everyone conveniently forgets that the future holds TONS more people in it than now. What will that population want as far as technology goes? Futuristic cars? Pfft. Please, Houston/Dallas/LA, etc are parking lots as it is... imagine when there's twice as many people living there.
Know that empty lot next door? Wave bye bye.
That field of wildflowers? It's an apartment complex now.
I'd just like to see some fanciful futuristic art that depicts technology that looks like it was designed with a large population in mind.
It turns out that complex mechanical stuff is harder to design and mass-manufacture than formerly believed. So today's reality in terms of mechanically oriented consumer items in no way measures up to 1950s hopes.
At the same time, while 1950s soothsayers dreamt too big in regard to mechanical developments, they dreamt way too small in regard to communications developments. And, if given the choice, I'd much rather have email and web broadband access for $45/month than my own personal $20,000 helicopter. I suppose I'd rather fly to Mars than own a cell phone, but the technology behind a cell phone is in many ways more miraculous than anything that's been developed for affordable space flight.
The future we live in is in some respects a disappointment compared to 1950s hopes, but in other respects it's infinitely cooler than anyone could have dreamed of.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
(eerie music) In the year 2020!
All pages linked from Slashdot will be cached first in a local archive, and everyone will have their own personal Holo-CowboyNeal Assistant.
(eerie music) In the year 2020!
Promise - What we Got
EngSoc from Orwell's '1984' - Department of Homeland Security
Doublespeak, also from '1984' - Politically Correct Speech
Debate over Human Cloning from 'Brave New World' - Current debate over Human Cloning and Stem Cell Research.
All-Powerful CIA/FBI from 'Snow Crash' - Patriot Act enchanced federal bureaus.
I could go one for quite some time...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Anyone know of any future predictions that came true?
Found one!
F -8 &oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=vaporware
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UT
Funny that it was associated with an amiga site that is now dead.
The sooner corporate greed and lack of compassionate visionary leadership go the way of the steam engine, the better we all will be. And folks, that time will come soon, as world opinion on the oil war is proving. The Hydrogen Economy is the future. And flying cars will arrive soon too. Only one problem to solve on that, an affordable, effficient, safe and quiet engine. But humanking will do it, we always do!
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Well at least that seems to be the arrogant American answer.
I guess pride goeth before the fall, or is that pride causeth the fall.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Fresh off the boat on a H-1B, man!
Work all night in the serverfarm for the MAN!
One server, two server, three server -- CLUSTER!
Beautiful cluster of IIS servers,
Hide the deadly black tarantula!
Daylight come and me want to go home!
Good lord, most people can't handle driving in two dimensions. Give them a third and there will be anarchy. ;p
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
OTOH, exhibits like this speak to the great optimism of human nature. Though it took Europe five hundred years from the time of Marco Polo to the time that they colonized a new continent, we were in the mid 20th century certain that we could conquer the solar system in fifty years. The same holds true for helicopters, jet packs, and everything else.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Where's the picture of adequate website bandwidth? Based on the performance of this site, that's another dream that hasn't been fulfilled yet.
I want my jetpack, dammit!
And tens of thousands of children want just enough food so that today isn't the day they starve to death.
Think about it.
No grand future will ever arrive so long as large companies control our destinies. The space shuttle program was supposed to have been abandoned a decade ago, but boeing and lockheed(each making 500 million a year off the shuttle) have such a strong lobby that any plans for a replacement are doomed to failure.
What of fuel cells and alternative power sources?
As long as the oil companies are in power and have their CEO as president, nothing in the field of alternative energy sources has a chance of coming through for the next 20 years.
As long as people are making millions off current technology, and as long as the holders and controlers of that technology are in power, nothing will get done.
If the government would give Ford and GM some r&d money, you would be surprised how fast a fuel cell (or equivalent) automobile would appear.
Just look how long its taking our military to abandon large pieces of artillery and slow tanks in favor of a more mobile force. Things in place become immovable. Its basic physics.
The "Closer Than We Think" series is great.
The above-ground transparent pool for example. And this one reminds me of the segway.
Ever read Arthur C. Clarke's book, "1984: Spring"? It was a collection of essays on the future and what he thought it would turn out to be. Some of it was total bollocks, but - in the early eighties, nearly twenty years ago - he predicted the meteoric rise of the cellphone and the way it would revolutionise modern living.
Well, for most of you at least. I ain't got one yet...
-Mark
If only we did not spend so much money on the highways, the alternative transportation could have a chance...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Who exactly was going to "give" us these magical toys? The Government? Big corporations?
Flying cars are not largely a technological problem, but a regulatory one. One that looks less likely to be solved anytime soon as long as most people still fear things that can fall out of the sky. I would add irrationally afraid, since people seem more than willing to assume the much greater risks of getting into a car every day. Even though tens and tens of thousands of people die in cars each year, the plane crashes still make the headlines... why is that?
If you want a flying car, go make one. You'll be breaking the law, most likely, if you succeed, but you can do it with todays technology. But I wouldn't wait for anyone to hand you one... The current air traffic control system is just simply not expandable to handle the sorts of air traffic that could result from a lot of people using flying cars. The proposals of one sort or another all seem to envision very complex systems of centralized ground control, which seem untenable for wide scale use. Imagine thousands of airplanes being centralling controlled by ground computers... bad bad bad idea.
Until the governement gets out of the way on legal use of the airspace, then most of us will have to stick to the ground.
Promises of the future? Well, they didn't predict the /. effect either apparently.
Also, I must admit that I'm glad there aren't things like jetpacks and flying cars. Dumbasses around here can barely handle the responsibility of driving a regular car (gee, let me call people on my cel while driving or hmm, just one 40 while driving). Can you imagine the mayhem that would ensue with one of these fuckers and flying car?
They're banned in San Francisco.
sulli
RTFJ.
We are barely moving towards environmentally safe cars. Think of the horrible traffic accidents in the air!
Looking at the available technologies (fuel cells,battery electric, and hybrids to name a few), there isn't a lot of choices right now on the market. One of the more interesting ones I saw were the bi-fueled vehicles, takes ethanol or gas and runs the same. Don't forget to check out GM's alternative vehicles in addition to Ford's. You can easily grab a Toyota Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid like I did.
--------
Free your mind.
Yesterland is a good place to see all the old, semi-forgotten attractions that seemed ahead of its time. Anyone remember those hovercraft bumper cars?.
Plus, Disney's got plenty of room to play around with right now. The old CircleVision attraction, the building right across from Star Tours, has been closed for a while and just sits there, probably only being used for storage. And whatever happened to those submarines in the lake?
Disney, take heed! Don't just devote an attraction to the newest technologies. The industry moves too fast these days to keep up. Instead, why not show mock-ups of these sorts of retro-tractions? I can think of a ton of cool interactive exhibits they could produce (think Jetsons), even with their cost-cutting mantra of recent. Now if only they'd bring back those RocketRods!
-Mr. Fusion
Look at the second picture in his portfolio (The Exhibit --> Portfolio) of the "subway" hanging above the highway. This is pretty similar to a monorail. Look at the vehicles in the picture, they all still have drivers and wheels. The "subway" has an air intake, meaning that it uses an engine to locomote, not electricity. The cars have honkin' big attenae, but that's a small oversight. All the car bodies are curved, not boxy; anyone noticed a trend in automobile design today? Heck, Radebaugh wasn't that far off...
Parable of the talents.
Parable of the mustard seed.
Only the filthy rich can afford to be so stupid.
Why do we think they should be running the country?
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Now in t-shirt form!
they lied to us
this was supposed to be the future
where is my jetpack,
where is my robotic companion,
where is my dinner in pill form,
where is my hydrogen fueled automobile,
where is my nuclear powered levitating house,
where is my cure for this disease
Heil Sig! -Rob
We have a lot of these inventions and predictions in use today. Sure, maybe not how they were invisioned in the past, but they were just guessing. What we have in use today is practical and functional
Who would have thought 30 years ago that we would be able to communicate en masse via a teletype machine and convey a message not only across distance but also time?. Who would have thought we could cook food in under a minute, or that we could record TV shows WHILE simultaneously watching another show? Or that we would have the signal beamed down from an orbiting satellite to our homes and offices? Or that we could store 6 hours of music on one little shiny plastic disc?
the jetpacks and the rocket cars made for good water cooler talk around the office, but none were too practical in everyday life.The past should be impressed with our future....provided we live long enough to have one....
You keep going until you die..."Me".
One great source for these views of the future are Reader's Digest from the 50s and 60s. I found about 23 years of them in my parents attic and they are absolutely fascinating. From flying cars (15 years from 1957)and cargo submarines, over expanding Boston harbor by careful use of hydrogen bombs, to living on Mars, pretty much every concept is covered. The most touching part is that _all_ the predictions have been wrong. Not half, not most, but as far as I can tell all. Nice pictures, though.
One of my prized posessions.
-- ac at work (or I'd amazon it for you).
damn /.ing
the way Bush is going...
Need news, and hot young chics? Try Us
This alive amiga site?
Did anybody predict that you could carry your phone in a pocket and send instant messages (SMS) to the people who are on the other side of the world? What about Internet?
This just shows how hard future prediction is. We overestimate progress in many field, but ignore completely some possibilities.
Can you check it for me?
I will hold it while you look.
I think it's so funny how there's a section of the population that finds it fashionable to talk trash on their own country. It's not just the U.S. that has these kinds of people. All countries do except for certain countries that cut off your tongue for speaking your mind.
What country would you rather live in?
What have you voted on in the last several years aside from Slashdot poles?
-Lucas
but after all the bad drivers die off the remaining ones will all be awesome pilots. Too bad all the cool stuff will have been destroyed by the bad ones. :(
i find this somewhat ironic to read this. i use a segway ht to get around to work and home. i was able to give up a car-- not only am i saving money (about $600 per month) but it doesn't use gas. no, i don't work for / with segway in any way at all. yes, i know the power comes from somewhere...
:-]
:-] a high speed wireless pocket pc phone edition and wear a casio camera watch. when the jetpacks come out, i'll try one of those too.
i wrote all this up here that explains it all (read it all before you start flaming, it has 99% of the answers you'll want):
http://www.bookofseg.com/90days/
the future is here, but you'll see from the replys that will quickly follow my post here...many people fear it or would rather ridicule someone who's trying new things than help move forward.
so go for it, flame on, it fuels the future for some us
cheers,
pt
and yes--i'm the same fellow who uses a roomba robot vaccuum, has a tiny vaio that says don't panic
Progress is dangerous. If I make a product that will kill one user in a million, and everyone in America buys one, I'll face two hundred and eighty wrongful death suits, class action suits, branding as a mass murderer, and ghod help me if one of those failures happens during sweeps week.
Flying is fairly simple, but the consequences of error are rather specatular.
Cars were invented before lawsuits were so widespread; this is part of the reason Ford isn't bankrupt from all the innocent bystanders crossing the street in front of their potentially lethal products.
But the tort system in America is biased towards the right to be stupid and my obligation to accomodate your stupidity regardless of what you're doing with my product. So no, I'm sure as hell not going to build you a flying car just so you can sue me when you fuck up.
This is not my sandwich.
population growth, go rent Soliant Green.
I watched that movie again about a month ago, it scares the hell out of me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You touch on how art draws the viewer into the fantasy of the future. One has to note that this image sells. The populatiry of art is related to its volume, IMO. Take the popularity of Parrish in the 20's, for example.
So, I look upon the fantasy of art in an era as the "wanting" a population holds to some degree. Taking it a step further, they see these things as entirely possible, but not available "just yet". This is the same game played by (say) automakers when displaying their concept cars or just about every Omni magazine. It's a little lottery ticket for the masses of "what could be".
Overall, these things are fun, but rarely are they serious enough to chase. One may end up living the life of Moller
mug
Ever since I went to EPCOT (Experimental Prototype City Of Tomorrow) at Disneyworld, I've called it EPCOY - Experimental Prototype City Of Yesterday, due to most of the exhibits being sorely out of date.
What I would like to see would be what I call "Yesterday's Tomorrows" - a series of dioramas showing how each decade viewed the world of 2000 - from 1900 through 1990. Each diorama would show a view like the standard Popular Science cover. First, you'd show the image lit normally. Then the lights would dim, and several items that didn't come to pass would be highlighted, along with a voice-over about why they didn't happen. Finally, the voice over would ask you to look for the item that was "out of place" - the thing that the folks DIDN'T see coming (i.e. personal computer, cell phone, gengineered food, whatever). Then that item would be spotlighted. Then you'd move on to the next era.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Actually the same flying car from the 1950s is still around: http://www.moller.com/. It just hasn't been FAA certified yet.
Based on this, I have a new prediction to make: I predict that the future will never arrive, and that we will always be trapped in the present.
Adopted from "Tesla: Man out of time", by Margaret Cheney, 1981
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Did he say anything about Duke Nukem Forever?
And I like the "future" as seen from 1950 a lot more than i like the future as seen from any other era.
Look at original cover art for Isaac Asimov stories. Not the reprints. The originals. Domed cities. Flying cities. Monoliths beyond description.
And these images.
I like yesteryear's view of the future more than I like today, or today's view of the future.
~D
I always think it's interesting to see predictions of the future, and most often, they seem totally far fetched. My first thought when I see a prediction being thrown around for the future is the feasability of creating it as a standard. Sure, I have no doubt that our technical achievements in the next thirty years will be incredible, but will those technological innovations be useful as something in which everyone can have? (i.e. a PC or cell phone today).
:)~
Things like helicopters in every garage or flying cars, while certainly feasible from a development standpoint, but from an economic standpoint? Nah, I don't think such devices will ever be common for normal citizens. Predicting what the future will look like is a much more complicated question than only asking what new technologies will be developed.
Yeah, sure, IBM and who-knows-else is currently working on a 'wearable computer', but personally, I don't think most (if anyone) is ever going to use that particular incarnation of computer. Perhaps implanted computer chips or other integrated technologies, but I don't think that the future population will be full of such a thing.
So while it's fun to think about what new gadgets will be coming in the future, I seem to (for better or worse) take a more logical perspective on how the future shape up. But it's always fun to imagine, I suppose.
We have the Segway.
The jetsons promised a really cushy future where we all sit around in chairs that move us where we need to go (like a segway with a seat -- or a wheelchair?)
...and we have little to do most of the day because robots do it all for you.
...and a single salary supports a family of four!
A helicopter in every garage, massive streamlined cars, vacations on Mars...
MjM
"No war for you young man, until you learn to pronounce "nuclear"
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Where are my sexbots?
If people fly as bad as they drive then it would be a deathtrap. At least you can make roads and drivers have an incentive for driving on the road because most cars don't travel off road very well. Imagine some of these idiots flying out of approved lanes and doing all kinds of aerial acrobatics to shave a few minutes off their commute.
I've a book from my parents about live in the year 2000. It's from somewhere in the late fifties or early sixties and has a whole bunch of articles from then renowned people. At least most of them have impressive titles. ;-)
:-)
:-))
They wrote about almost everything: social stuff, controlling the weather, living in space, man like robots making all the domestic work and finding the final solutions for many environmental and energy problems.
They just missed one point: micro electronics, computers, internet and all the stuff that keeps most of the people here busy.
The only thing that comes near that, are robots. They are fascinated about robots. (They would like the first episode from the Animatrix.
They write lengthy about them doing all kinds of work, walking, speaking, grabing things, etc.
I'm just wondering: what did they think, the computing power behind that comes from? A room full of valves in every apartment to clean the floor and wash the dishes?
At the Smithsonian.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Hell, the United States on it's own produces enough food to feed a good chunk of the world. Just imagine if Russia and China put their minds to the problem.
No, starvation is a political tool used by dictators to keep the population weak and squelch dissent.
You want us to go straighten out Africa while we're waiting to finish off Iraq? Do you really think that and change that we would make would make a lasting improvement? Change comes from within. The best we can do is provide a supportive environment for people to come to the right decision.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Here's the thing: all those things that were promised did, indeed, come to exist. All of them.
We've got robot butlers, flying cars, rocket belts, daily shuttles to the moon (that don't blow up), cures for cancer and the common cold, cigarettes with vitamins and minerals instead of tar and nicotine, universal peace and brotherhood, slimming pills that really work (and aren't amphetamines) so that everyone looks good in their unisex leotards, teleportation, 3D TV, sex in a pill, and direct election of government officials. And we had the Internet by 1959. Actually, we sort of handed it down to you; what we've got now is... well, "virtual reality" is a crude description, but it's the closest that your unevolved "English" can come.
One other thing that we've got: big-ass cloaking devices. Next time you drive across Nebraska, or Montana... you know, those "empty" places that people started abandoning after WWII, for some reason... look off in the distance. You'll see a faint shimmering, which you'll probably tell yourself is just a "heat mirage".
Riiiiiiight.
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.
Flying Cars! Moon Base! It's only "ten years away."
Software Wars
It would seem that a rough underside is desirable *if* you have a downforce problem. This is not something your average commuter is worried about-- nobody lifts off, even at 80mph, on their way to work.
However, a smooth underside would seem to be beneficial for air resistance and thus to fuel economy. Honda's engineers and fluid dynamicists and whatnot agree, as their most efficient car (the Honda Insight) has a smooth underside to reduce drag.
In particular, note where the article states "Another important aerodynamic detail that greatly contributes to the Insight body's low coefficient of drag is the careful management of underbody airflow." And the numbers they quote for power required to push the car through the air are equally revealing-- "In comparison, the Honda Civic Hatchback, with roughly the same 1.9 square-meter frontal area as the Insight, has a Cd of 0.36, and needs around 32 percent more power to operate at the same speed as the Insight. "
So there you have it. Without the smooth underside, rear-wheel covers, and a tapered back-end-- you need 32% more power to push a car with roughly the same frontal area. I'm not sure I'd say "A rough undersurface of the car is actually desirable" without qualifying it by adding "for a race car, but not for a normal automobile."
What's this cool new site, "dotslash" that I've been hearing about? I heard it was stuff that matters, news for nerds.
Makes me wonder ...
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
-- JFK
RIP.
Imagine it ...
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Looking through the Syndicated section I see a total lack of concern for safety. Mailmen with rocket pack but no helmets or flight suits. Space hospitals with no failsafe systems. etc... Amazing.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
It's kind of funny, we just watched a video yesterday, and this morning about the history of the automobile, and the impact of it, in our Social Impact of Technologies class.
One of the things that they showed, was the actual display, of this "future" that A.C. Radebaugh invisioned. City cores were never backed up with traffic (if you think traffic is bad downtown now, you should have seen it back in the 30's), and the highways were built ontop of each other, all going in the same direction, so that traffic flowed freely, instead of having traffic jams. Also, highways at this time, were very rare, which makes this vision even more impressive.
If anyone is in the Philly area, it'd be something to check out, that's for sure.
Very true, to which i would like to add one thing: The Future Is Now. The infrastructure and technology is there to allow someone to develop jetpacks or flying cars if they decided to do it.
I think we are so surrounded by new developments that we tend to ignore the most important ones because we are searching for that wow factor. If we sit down with an objective, lets say, starting a business, it is relatively simple to put ideas in motion and successfully manage the operation without even having to physically meet or talk to another person. Not only can you put the ideas in motion you don't even have to utter any words to make these things happen. All that is required are certain keystrokes, in a certain sequence and bang, you've changed the world. I only realised this after starting an independant record label. Everything from making the music on a standard PC and home studio , promoting and making contacts, ordering and pressing the CDs, to distributing them throughout the world was done without even leaving my PC. I'm not talking about small time contacts either, but being able to personally e-mail the heads of several major record labels with an idea. All this has happened in the span of three months of inital conception of the idea. It has even got to the point where I have the opportunity to quit my current tech job and move overseas and do this full-time in an untapped market where our particular music is the most profitable.
All this in three months. The technology is there, the future is now.
// The fastest Alt-Tab in the West
It depends: what are you willing to do to get one?
Your attitude is doubleplus ungood. The moderators will give you some free reeducation.
Also in vogue back then were nuclear powered aircraft and spacecraft, check any AAAJ journal form mid 50's to early 60's. Fortunatley none of these concepts ever went into production, or airplane accidents would all be there own Chernobyl. Guess it was just wishful thinking. MM
I actually rather liked the hats - even the suits. I think we're all a little worse off for not wearing hats as much... well, everyone but the Rogaine people (who are behind the shadowy effort to make people wear fewer hats in the first place).
So, everyone - try on a hat! You might like it more than you think, and in todays morgue-cold offices closing off a major source of heat loss will make you warmer than you thought you could be!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... the cancellation of the ice capades.
I think this essay by the great Bertrand Russell not only outlines the historical point you have made, but why the cult of efficiency and productivity which infects our society is so destructive and devisive.
Perhaps you read it, but for those out there who have not quite realized that the promise of technology, more free time, has not materialized, please read this essay.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
In a helicopter, you have four things you have to control - the cyclic for amount of lift (analogous to throttle), antitorque pedals for the spin, and the cyclic for both pitch and yaw.
On a car, you generally only have to worry about the throttle and the steering wheel.
So yes, it's three dimensions as opposed to two, but it's four degrees of freedom as opposed to two.
Add to that that the controls on a helicopter are very tightly interrelated. In a car, hitting the gas generally just makes you go faster (assuming you don't slide the car). On a helicopter, changing the cyclic can change the speed of the helicopter in three directions, depending on its orientation. It will also tend to make the helicopter rotate unless you counter the change in cyclic with an according change in the antitorque pedals.
Add to that that the behavior of a helicopter is a bit different depending on if you're in a hover or if you're moving (as well as the direction in which you're moving).
Add to that that the helicopter isn't stuck firmly to anything the way a car is, and most people would have a hard time with hovercraft, where you only have to worry about constant sliding in two dimensions.
Add to that that most helicopters' controls are super-sensitive.
Add to that that the behavior of a helicopter also changes as you get close to the ground (say, if you're landing or taking off).
Making me think that a helicopter in every garage would really be a great solution to the world population problem.
When people predict the future, it's normally based around the unstated expectation that current trends will more or less continue.
The first half of the 20th century saw a huge development of means of transportation, and people extrapolated from that. As it turned out, that development soon hit some natural limits, and other, completely unforeseen fields as computing, information communication and bio engineering picked up the slack.
And if we expect those fields to continue the next 50 years, chances are we're wrong. Or, then again, not.
I seem to remember a story about a soceity that grew seperate, with everyone departed from the crowded cities, living via telecommunication.
Problem was the extroverts went fscking nuts.
Moral: Kill that asshole who won't shut up.
or not.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
"We were promised flying cars!" Maaann, I miss Avery Brooks. I wish someone would cast him in a good science fiction show - one without all of the gawddamn warfare.
I'd just like to see some fanciful futuristic art that depicts technology that looks like it was designed with a large population in mind.
One place where you can see this kind of art is looking at turn of the century urban planning. Imagine if the whole of the US was designed with the foresight used to plan New York City in 1890?
All of the subways were constructed a long time before they were truly needed. Most of the area at the north end of Central Park was composed of farm land when the park was initially designed in 1859. Anyway, I have always believed urban planning is a lost art.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
I think that in certain respects what really occured was a domination of introverted technologies. The _personal_ computer for instance. Yes, now with the World Wide Web we can connect with one another - but do we really? A great many technologies that have taken off are largely introverted in nature; even when they seem to make it easier for us to communicate.
Genetic engineering is another inward facing technology. I'm not saying it won't open doors to us, but it largely focused on exploring inward frontiers. This is a very personal technology - one which with augment or change us in very intimate ways.
With extroverted technology (exploring boundaries outside ourselves and immediate surroundings) taking a back seat, what do you expect to happen. Personal transport hasn't evolved too much in the last 20 years. Cars today aren't so much different than they were - and when was the Concorde designed and built? How about the Shuttle?
This probably has a lot to do with market forces. It's a lot easier to build and sell small personal things - not to mention more profitable.
Check out the photos of Nixon!!!
http://www.losthighways.org/nixon_exhibit.html
This is just the Gernsback Continuum effect. Just ignore it, and it will fade out, like a bad dream...
Check Here for a nifty shirt expressing very similar feelings:
"they lied to us
I really like - thinking of ordering. Full disclosure: in no way affiliated with the money on this one.this was supposed to be the future
where is my jetpack,
where is my robotic companion,
where is my dinner in pill form,
where is my hydrogen fueled automobile,
where is my nuclear powered levitating house,
where is my cure for this disease"
For instance, I predict that this Saturday I will sleep until noon, get up, eat some lunch, watch TV most of the day and fall asleep around ten. I'm pretty sure I'll be doing this in 50 years as well. See, the key to predicting the future is: aim low.
Amen!
Would you want to live in the future of 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Sure they had a moon colony, but they also had a Cold War and no Google.
I see the biggest shift from the old visions of the future as the increase in chaos and decentralization. 2001 showed a Bell System videophone. Today we have anarchic WiFi hotspots. The flying cars would have been built by General Motors if they'd made it big. Instead today we have networks of volunteers self-assembling to create complex and useful products like Linux and Apache.
Check out yesterdays forecast weathermap
Sounds like the concept presented in William Gibson's short story, "The Gernsback Continuum," only their exhibit was called "the future that never was" or something like that.
Those are valid points of course, but if you're dreaming about everybody having an helicopter in the future, you can for the same price also dream about intelligent fly-by-wire, collision avoidance, GPS guidance. You might not even have to "drive" it, just program the destination (using voice recognition of course). It seems like the threshold for most of these scenarios was "it could conceivably be done", no feasibility studies there (and that's what makes them so cool in a sense, they're like the car homer designed in the Simpson, the "Homer")
Well, it has, in absolute terms, but not in relative terms. The problem is that human psychology makes us view things using relative metrics instead of absolute ones. If you earn a 20% raise this year, but all your friends earn 100% raises, do you feel richer or poorer compared to last year?
If you want to have a 1950s comfortable standard of living regarding possessions, health care, entertainment, food, etc. you can do so by working far fewer hours than a 1950s human had to. But if you want a 2000s standard of living... ah, then you still have to work, or otherwise procure income. But at least work tends to be less menial and physically taxing than it did in the 1950s, on the average at least.
It's a question of whether you measure standard of living by absolute standards or relative ones. No matter what the technology level, it will be always true (in capitalist societies, anyway) that someone who works hard will, on the average, earn more than someone who works little at the same level of technology. So of course the idle will never win ... in relative terms. But if you view things in absolute terms, the idle American today can live far more comfortably than the average hard-working American in the 1950s. (The same is even true of the third world; a citizen of country X today has a more comfortable existence than a citizen of X in the 1950s, in almost all cases - calorie intake has more or less doubled, for instance, and life expectancy extended by a decade or more. Again, in relative terms the poor countries of 2000 will be behind the rich countries of 2000, but they can certainly be comparable with the rich countries of 1950 in many absolute, objective metrics.).
Nevertheless, I do agree with you on one point - there is more to life than the rat race. But you are free at any time to downshift and live a comfortable and leisuirely life, and viewed in absolute terms one has far more capability to do so now than in the past. It's only the relative viewpoint which seems to suggest that one cannot "afford" to be idle.
Terry
Talking of future predictions. I've had a bugger of a time finding websites with all those old 50's articles. I remember around 2000 there were lots of them and newspapers were reprinting them etc. I think even slashdot had a story on it, but i cant find that or much stuff on future predictions from the past. Where can i find them? (apart from that site in the story which was mostly pictures)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
So from the 20s, we were promised helicopters in every garage, jet packs, flying cars, etc.
So during the dot-com era, we were promised several different things too, but nowadays, it looks like they all got integrated into other services (ie webvan, paymybills.com, etc.) I wonder if 20, 30, 40 years from now, whether we can look back to this period of time, and see "crazy ideas" that were proposed, but never delivered?
They used to think people would be using all kinds of energy weapons by now. Star Trek and other "space age" TV series are useful for seeing this idea and other 1960s/70s conceptions of future warfare and human interaction.
.45 caliber pistol, patented in 1902. 100 years later, it's still one of the most popular models you can buy, it's preferred by the best operators in special operations, and it's still just as deadly as the original. Sure there's body armor, and it's better than any personal armor of the last 500 years, but you can still die if you get shot in the vest. The biggest advance I've seen yet is Metal Storm, an electrically fired machinegun that acts like a bigass shotgun (check the videos!). The Army is looking at using this technology as an IFF-enabled landmine supplement that can move with the forces it protects and not accidentally blow up friendly units, among other uses. But this won't help the people with a million conventional mines in their backyards.
They also used to think that murder, shootings, and violence in general would be eliminated in the more sensitive, more loving, more civilized future world.
There are still fights with clubs, swords, knives, and other low-tech weapons, and there are still murders. As just one example, the effectiveness of guns has hardly improved in this century. Witness the M1911
Unlike the government-issue advances, ordinary people killing each other remains the same as it has always been for the simple reason that the human body is still as vulnerable as it has always been-- such a fragile creature in some ways. Knives and bayonets are still issued to Army troops, the Army has been using the same rifle for almost 40 years, and people are stabbed every day.
"There will always be killing. This is how things are, in our world." -- memorable words spoken by a Somali militiaman in Black Hawk Down. He's right. But we ought never lose sight of ways to improve ordinary people's lives. Note the large amount of economic and agricultural aid doled out to developing countries each year (I know, it doesn't all make it to the needy, but it's a start).
I guess the point is, if a tool works well, there's little reason to rock the boat unless someone (a corporation) knows it can probably profit if it makes something better. As for human nature, if I could say one thing to the Creator, it would not be a request for future technology today, it would be a request to save me from the war, plague, and famine inside me.
"When and if Flying Saucers are real... National oil seals will protect their bearings."
n te nt_graphics/rad_ads/rad_ad_UFO.jpg
http://www.losthighways.org/rad_graphics/rad_co
I remember reading old articles that predicted automation would mean a shorter workweek for the american worker. We'd be able to work three days and have a 4 day weekend. Wonder what ever happened to that? Oh yea, maximum profit -- that's what.
This space for rent.
Its a big disappointment, for me. The disappointment is not the technology, its that almost no one is interested in it or knows how to use it. And our leaders don't want to give up control to allow our technology leaders (no, not the CEOs of technology companies) to completely automate the system. It will take decades to develope robotic technology that we're capable of building today. And here I thought the whole point of computers and networks and stuff was to cut down on the paperwork. We're so stoopid.
When you get your jetpack will you be able to use all your other crap whilst you are landing and taking off?
no.
And two years ago, I was supposed to be able to take a vacation to the moon -- on PanAm!
Styles change. Some stick around for a long time; the classic business suit made a lot of sense in Northern European weather before adequate central heating, though the tie was primarily silly decoration. Coal miners in the 1850s and 1950s pretty much dressed the same - something arbitrary made of cloth covered with lots of black soot.
I'm so happy to be a Beta....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
i wanna flying car shown in star war movie years ago.
Now I feel ripped off. In fact, we have all been ripped off. If this future was promised, there must have at least been an implied contract. Can you say "class action lawsuit?"
(Sadly, this attraction is closed most of the time; it's only reopened during the busy summer season.)
-Mr. Fusion
Well, it has, in absolute terms, but not in relative terms. The problem is that human psychology makes us view things using relative metrics instead of absolute ones. If you earn a 20% raise this year, but all your friends earn 100% raises, do you feel richer or poorer compared to last year?
Don't insult me with your first year of college economics discussion. You didn't read the essay. It is not a discussion of materialistic wealth, it is a discussion of time. 200 years ago, farmers did not work 50 hour weeks, commutting 2 hours a day to work. Outside of the planting and harvest times, leisure was the rule. Time could be spent working on the house, hunting, or enjoying other productive activties at your own pace.
If you want to have a 1950s comfortable standard of living regarding possessions, health care, entertainment, food, etc. you can do so by working far fewer hours than a 1950s human had to. But if you want a 2000s standard of living... ah, then you still have to work, or otherwise procure income. But at least work tends to be less menial and physically taxing than it did in the 1950s, on the average at least.
If you believe that you are living in a dreamworld. Today, the average salary barely gets you an apartment anywhere in the US, save the most backwards of places. In the 1950's, the average salary easily got you a house, a car, and your wife didn't have to work. You have little knowledge of the averages of which you speak. I have no love for the 1950's, but those people had it easy. I will never be able to afford a house, two cars, and 3 kids by the time I am 32. I make well above the average salary.
It's a question of whether you measure standard of living by absolute standards or relative ones.
We are discussing an absolute standard. Human beings have a finite lifespan, only slightly higher than it was 100 years ago, without adjusting for infant mortality. (Lifespan averages are heavily skewed when many die at a young age).
The reality is today people have less time to themselves than they did in 100 years ago. People are now forced to go to school for 12 years, then to college for 4 years. Grad school even more. Not even touching on jobs, 12 years of compulsory education alone robs men of their most productive years. That is in fact, what it was designed to do. But thats another story.
THe simplist way to determine this however, which Mr. Russell discusses, is to look at leisure. Leisure today is a passive affair. People simply do not have the time for anything proactive. But I am not going to discuss that here. If you can't read an 8 page essay, written by one of the 20th century's greatest thinkiers... Well, you can continue to make your shallow observations on standards.
The reality is, your obsession with standards, is proof that you are a product of this very system Russell is condemning. We are discussing a fundamentally human problem, not a materialistic one. This is not an economics class.
This is a philosophical question, and your ridiculous inclusion of concepts such as metrics proves you are not only ignorant of the author of which I spoke, but of the most basic questions of philosophy.
I will give you a hint. None of the world's great philosophers discuss one's work as being at all relevant to life. Deal with it.
Nevertheless, I do agree with you on one point - there is more to life than the rat race. But you are free at any time to downshift and live a comfortable and leisuirely life, and viewed in absolute terms one has far more capability to do so now than in the past. It's only the relative viewpoint which seems to suggest that one cannot "afford" to be idle.
No, you are unfortunately quite wrong. You also prove once again you haven't read the essay you ignorant fuckwad. Have you ever wondered, for a moment, what truly is the essence of human civilization? Leisure is not about taking a vacation, it is about freeing men to write music, paint a picture, write poetry, practice the violin, or countless other pursuits. Its about freeing dilitantes like yourself from the academic cage so you can study without the dictates of some professor.
It is also about not having to choose between these things and other human activities, like raising a family.
All of the things that matter in our world, are born of leisure. Without leisure, there would be no Mozart, no Michaelangelo, no Olmstead, or countless other artists.
Anyway, don't be a fucking tool. If someone posts an interesting link, read it or not. Don't criticize in the most ignorant way possible, basing your entirely simplistic academic argument on a completely erroneous assumption. Perhaps you have never read any of Bertran Russell's works. That would make you lazy. But anyone with a college education should realize he was a philosopher, not an economist.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
ok but i love this link . . . We drives some bitchin' tractors!
Next came the era of production. In 1880, most things were still made by hand. Over the next 60 years, all those neat techniques for making stuff in huge volumes at low cost were developed.
Things were still simple then. You can get a set of Audel's Manuals from about 1940, and they'll tell you how to fix almost everything then manufactured, from an engine to a radio. One shelf of books. There were very few complex things in the world of 1940. About the most complex devices in existence were telephone central offices and railroad signalling systems. Both were viewed with awe.
Since 1940, the complexity of everything has gone up by several orders of magnitude. This has had enormous implications for society. For example, up until about 1940, there were more smart people than society needed. Today, there's a shortage of smart people. As Business Week once put it, "It has been a long time since American industry needed a strong back and a weak mind." Society in the developed world has been completely restructured around this fact, so thoroughly that few realize that it's a recent change in human history.
What's next? It's hard to even guess. A big question is whether we've hit a wall in a few key areas, like energy production, space travel, and strong AI. We haven't had a new primary energy source in 30 years. Space travel hasn't progressed in 30 years. Strong AI seems further away than it did 30 years ago. Most of the classic futuristic ideas like robots and spaceships are hung up on one or more of those unsolved problems.
We'll see progress in the life sciences, but short of a redesign of humanity, all that's likely to come of it is that old people live a few years longer, on average. If we could create a new race of longer-lived,healthier, improved humans, they'd have substantially different DNA, and would be a new species. If you thought race was a problem, wait until we have more than one intelligent species on the planet.
I'd say this is more an argument against the world's great philosophers than against life. In any case, if my work isn't even relevant to life, why should theirs be?
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
No, its based on the assumption (possibly correct) that everything will get worse. The people (the few saved ones) work and die, in the dirt, while the heathens become more and more evil, and everybody dies. Then Jesus comes back, bitch slaps the sinners to hell, and takes all the good little boys back to loaf in heaven.
What bugs me about the futurists of the past, is when they predicted that all the work would be done by machines. And now it's come true, to a certain extent. As a result, unemployment is soaring, and job security is plummetting. What made them think that the people who paid for the machines would give all their profits away to their layed off workforce?
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
I have ... but the ultimate answer to the meaning of life requires hard work. :)
(Seriously, though, I think it's only natural that people are collectively working longer and harder than ever, as we speed towards the Singularity. There'll be an eternity of leisure time waiting on the other side, IMVHO.)
--
Power to the Peaceful
I remember reading in Asimov that robots can listen and understand speech, (not even going to go through the three rules, we are ever further from those) but was for a long while not fast enough to actually synthesize speech.
Only except that the exact opposite happened; On the old-end we got sound-blaster and the Dr. whoever that was able to talk back to you; on the weird-end the cookie monster (virus; erm, sort of) that will squeeze out "I wanna cookie" from your PC speaker, and on the new-and-fancy-end we got OS-X that will SING out your text a la church choir. (actually the OSX thing is really cool. give it a try sometimes)
But computers are not the nearest in understanding what we tell them. (or, they are not letting us know that they know, for the conspirists out there)
As for destroying ourselves, I dunno, maybe we havn't *got there* yet, supposedly, but how do you know that we are not terminally heading for that direction? And of course the pessimist can argue that we are all morally corrupt, etc. leaving that alone for now.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Lots of technically aware people milling around in with lots of spare time, chatting. Look no further than your local job centre!
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Jetsons? Hardly. We've yet to reach the Jeffersons.
Ever get passed by a truck while driving a Volkswagen Beetle on the interstate? That's where lifting becomes a problem.
Physics hasn't gotten that far yet. Not in terms of
storable energy ( how much power is storable in a
battery? What is the energy density? Is the release
controllable?) nor in terms of gravity/force-fields
( no antigravity, no force-fields, no impulse
engines, no warp-drive) --- and NO FORESEEABLE WAY TO DO THESE THINGS!
Our advances so far are based on electrons,
positive and negative charges, and our ability to
manipulate them. We do not have the ability to
do these things with forces other than
electromagnetics/electrostatics..... If you think
so, then you are a Luddite living in the
"Wheel of Time" novels.....in your head.
Circular argument! Of course this is something the average consumer doesn't have to worry about. The reason nobody does lift off is precisely *because* everybody's car has a rough underside.
Anyway, I don't think any car would actually fly. I do think it helps with maintaining traction, however. At high speed, traction is important for maintaining both forward momentum and for steering/braking/acceleration control.
As a little kid in the '60s I saw the last of this brand of futurism when it was still taken seriously. It's actually dates back to the early 1900s, and came to a head in the pre-war optimism of the 1939-40 New York Wolrds Fair.
Some awesome video (from film) of that is available online here,
http://archive.org/movies/prelinger.php, or more precisely here.
-- Boycott Shell
As I said, because it's cold inside everywhere you go. What's wrong with wearing a hat inside? That's just the sort of outdated thinking that made people stop wearing hats in the first place.
I can understand your being stuck in the past with everyone else, but if you try hard enough you can break free from the herd and share in the glorious future of hats! If you can't then only a cold, hatless existence awaits you - but only you can make that choice.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wow, I didn't even know it was "trash talking". I guess I don't watch enough professional wrestling.
Maybe that's because no country is perfect.
What country would you rather live in?
My research is still not complete, but I'm working on it.
What have you voted on in the last several years aside from Slashdot poles?
Well just yesterday I voted against anchovies and for jalapeños on the pizza for a lunch meeting, but I don't see how that's relevant. In fact I don't see how the prior question is relevant either. I'm not anti-American, only anti-arrogance.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Guide: And, although it looks complicated it is so well-designed, even a child could fly it.
Lisa: Can I fly it?
Guide: Of course you can not.
-- Boycott Shell
What are you talking about, just today on slashdot I read that we went to the moon 40 years ago and nobody else has since. We must be way ahead.
2003-1969=34
-- Boycott Shell
That's silly. It's not a circular argument-- they don't take off because they weigh a lot, not because they lack smooth undersides. Go to a Honda dealership and test drive an Insight. Take it up to its maximum speed, and do it on a hill just for some added kick. You will not take off.
Consumer cars, even ones with all-aluminum bodies and reduced weight engines and components like the Insight are too heavy to leave the road.
I'm sorry I wasn't more explicit. Consumer cars don't have to worry about lifting off because the lift-to-weight ratio in a normal car is not high enough to matter. Race cars do not have 5 seats and a large trunk with a spare tire and a jack, or a stereo, AC, heater, headlights, interior wood trim, cushy suspension, 8 glass windows, or a heavy steel frame and body. It's not just because the bottom's rough that cars don't fly into the air all the time. It's because they're heavy and not travelling at 230mph.
Now, you are correct about doing it for added traction. People who take their cars out to drag race are interested in having *additional* downforce, since your force of friction is directly proportional to the downforce, and your engine is so big that drag means nothing to you. But still, nobody except crazy high-end cars is actually worried about leaving the road.
Ferdinand Porsche figured that out 50 years ago.
The Beetle has a smooth underside, and he figured out that yes, you can get a car going 60 mph with only 20 hp. Such cars are still being driven by many today (only by the grace of exemptions from emissions regulations) - and they get 36 mpg highway.
Since you can probably buy one for under $1k US these days, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to buy the Honda at aroudn $20k.
Not to mention, that when the Honda breaks down, good luck finding anyone who can fix it - and good luck paying for it.
When the Beetle breaks, your average unshowered deadhead can overhaul your carb for you.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Modded as Flaimbait? What the hell? Maybe Benzapp didn't use warm and fuzzy language, but he's dead on point.
If you believe that you are living in a dreamworld. Today, the average salary barely gets you an apartment anywhere in the US, save the most backwards of places. In the 1950's, the average salary easily got you a house, a car, and your wife didn't have to work. You have little knowledge of the averages of which you speak. I have no love for the 1950's, but those people had it easy. I will never be able to afford a house, two cars, and 3 kids by the time I am 32. I make well above the average salary.
Truth.
Maybe it's not a truth that is comfortable to hear, but it's reality folks.
If you want to have a 1950s comfortable standard of living regarding possessions, health care, entertainment, food, etc. you can do so by working far fewer hours than a 1950s human had to.
Did you take the time to figure the % of salary that a home, car, health care, entertainment, food, etc... was in 1950 compared to 2003? I think you'll be sadly surprised to find that a home in 1950 was affordable, as was a car. Today, homes are out of the reach of the majority of Americans, as are a good majority of cars and the ever-popular SUV.
The fact is we work harder and longer today to afford less, than our parents worked in the 50s to afford more.