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You don't get hovercars just from too-cheap-to-meter electricity. If energy cost were the main obstacle, upper-income people would already have hovercars, becau
by philipkglass 9y ago
You don't get hovercars just from too-cheap-to-meter electricity. If energy cost were the main obstacle, upper-income people would already have hovercars, because spending 4x more on fuel than people driving wheeled vehicles would be fine for them.
Some 1968 futurology predictions seem like they might have come to pass had energy remained as relatively cheap as it was in 1968. Others of them were frankly ridiculous regardless of the price of energy. According to the Amazon review, disintegrator rays and anti-gravity belts were a couple of the predicted developments from "Toward the Year 2018." There was no scientific phenomenon known in 1968 by which either of these could be implemented. It's like the predictors reasoned "science fiction was prescient in predicting artificial satellites and travel to the moon, therefore its other popular tropes will eventually come to pass too."
There's a lot still to explain about the universe: dark matter, baryon asymmetry, dark energy... But I'm not convinced that new insights into these problems, if/when they arrive, will unlock significant new technological capabilities, any more than the discovery of neutron stars led to new superhard/superdense materials for human use. I think it's quite likely that humans never tame a more energetic primary energy source than nuclear fusion[1], nor send messages or vessels faster than light, nor manipulate gravity with the facility that we manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum. The engineering permitted by classical and quantum mechanics, modulo additional limits imposed by relativity, is vast. But it can't deliver everything that science fiction imagines. Inertial compensators, gravity manipulation, tractor beams, teleporters, disintegration rays, time travel, FTL: nope, probably not.
[1] Storage and use of antimatter for compact power sources seems like it may be eventually plausible, but it would function more as a super-energetic "battery" charged by other primary energy sources.
- goatlover 9y agoThat's one answer to the Fermi paradox.
- ben_w 9y ago> If energy cost were the main obstacle, upper-income people would already have hovercars, because spending 4x more on fuel than people driving wheeled vehicles would be fine for them. They do, they’re just called “helicopters”.
- varjag 9y agoIt isn't like helicopters were unknown in 1968.
- nine_k 9y agoWhen I walk down the streets of NYC, I keep seeing private helicopters flying to and fro, along with police helicopters. I don't think it was the case in 1968 yet. Also, small personal radio-controlled helicopters with cameras, often seen in SF from 1960-70s, are a thing for many years now, known as "drones".
- varjag 9y agoIn 1968, the USA used helicopters in lieu of light trucks all over Vietnam, thousands upon thousands. Getting an heli ride was a mundane experience for a conscripted grunt. If anything the practice scaled down a lot since due to proliferation of MANPADs. But point is, a helicopter was not something mind blowing or novel on the scale of a flying car. Nor would an RC model shatter anyone's imagination then, another common thing. If anything, a non-controlled, autonomous or semi autonomous drones that are appearing now would be far more impressive.
- nine_k 9y agoSure, the military had lots of helicopters. Also, portable radios, intercontinental aircraft, and space rockets. These were not a relatively affordable part of daily life, though. Now if I'm in a crunch, and the roads / subways get clogged down for some reason (not a rare event), I can theoretically quickly get from my office to JFK airport on a helicopter for $100 (more like $30 from 1968), if I share the flight with 3 other people. Also, for the same money I can get a half-decent RC quadcopter with a homing ability and a camera that spies from 1968 would kill for. No flying cars, though. Blame air safety regulations.