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Ines Montani provides a counterpoint [1]. She doesn't address flying cars specifically, but she says: We didn’t build a machine to operate a broom – we built v
by xenocyon 6y ago
Ines Montani provides a counterpoint [1]. She doesn't address flying cars specifically, but she says:
We didn’t build a machine to operate a broom – we built vacuum cleaners. We didn’t engineer wings for firefighters – we built fire extinguisher drones. We also didn’t create robot personal shoppers – we built online stores.
A flying car is perhaps similarly a rather old-fashioned idea of what a futuristic utopia should look like.
[1] https://ines.io/blog/wired-brain-ai-powered-future https://ines.io/blog/wired-brain-ai-powered-future
- howlgarnish 6y agoThe part that struck me is this: > The major value in a flying car (as with supersonic) would not be in taking the same trips you do now, only a bit faster. Instead, it would be in taking the trips you don’t take now, because they’re too inconvenient. A flying car would shrink your world, expanding the radius of what you would consider for a commute, a shopping trip, a visit to friends, a business meeting, or a weekend vacation. [...] increasing the effective radius for each of those trips increases the effective area open to you quadratically (doubling your travel radius means four times as many destinations). This very same effect happened on a small scale in the last ten years, when Uber/ride-sharing unlocked journeys that would have been impractical for many with regular taxis. Affordable flying cars would do the same, but with a much bigger sphere of impact.