I sincerely hope we will never care. That in the US, our mentality gets past this infantile fetish for powertools and convenience. It's a vestige of high modern

I sincerely hope we will never care. That in the US, our mentality gets past this infantile fetish for powertools and convenience. It's a vestige of high modernism, an adolescent ideology that life must be mediated by technology. Scraping food of a plate in the trash beget flushing food down the drain through a garbage disposer. Athletics beget motorsports. It crystalized in the 50s, oddly a decade where adults began to watch cartoons like the Jetsons, like children. Jetpacks are the perfect example. It conflates the ability to fly anywhere anytime with freedom. It is a toddler fantasy. Similar to how cars for personal transport have not increased freedom, but instead delivered obesity, fossil fuel dependence, and a polluted, and threatening public realm. The aspirational city life of the future will be one of sophistication and maturity. It will be the an improved version of the city life of the pre-industrial age. Where the only sound is the chatter of passerbys and their footsteps. At night, it is quiet. Everything degenerate (human waste, cars, metros, ...) will be pushed underground. The sky will be as pristine as in the wilderness. In other words, it will be an environment where flying a jetpack is sociopathic. This is not a personal fantasy. This kind of urban environment is where people with means are moving to _today_. It is the main program of every European city. The US is slow to shake these destructive 50s ideals of transportation. But it is happening. Hopeful to see it in my lifetime still.