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pseydtonneOne word: hovercars!
Since the time of the Great Depression, a majority of conjectures about the future used to involve flying or hovering cars. Then we got through the Twentieth Century and all we had to show for it were the Jetsons and hydrofoils.
Oh sure, we've made it faster to get from England to (the rest of) Europe. It turns out a better track and signal system (and shinier platforms at the grand cathedral of trains, Saint Pancras Station) are what it will really take to turn London and Paris into the terminii of the next BoWash. It's about time the UK (soon just to be England, Scotland, Wales and Friends But Never Again Lovers much like when the Beatles broke up) admitted 26 miles of swimmable sea are no longer a logistic nightmare. Still, it doesn't mean we all wouldn't like frickin' hovercars.
So yeah, ninety large and you'll soon have your own hovercar... maybe. I have this joke where I will dismiss an uppity person my senior by saying "when I was your age, we had hovercars!" I am glad this will soon be true instead of disappearing from us the way lunar vacations have. Let's face it: wouldn't a honeymoon on the actual Moon be stellar? You'd have every day and night under a canopy of stars and no weather problems. Granted, you'd be sick as a dog when you get home from the resumption of normal gravity but the nuptial sex in one-sixth G would never be forgotten.
Which news item would you rather ponder: hovercars, or crazed and soon-to-be-skullcrushed dictator of the former Rhodesia announcing wage hikes are illegal when inflation is at six thousand percent? Zimbabwe is soon going to immolate because he won't be paying the cops that keep him from being long pig fricassee. No one wants to think about that as we head into Labor Day weekend -- it's all hovercars now! Well, maybe![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dobrovolets and I will ponder Mugabe for you.
I'm fascinated by Zimbabwe. Then again I'm fascinated by North Korea in a completely CIA-sanctioned way: how long will it take the last James Bond villainreich to hit the self-destruct button, will it destroy Seoul in the process, what will we find that defies logic when that is over and how many frickin' tunnels are there underneath Pyongyang?
I read about North Korea the way Cronenberg and Ballard fans study car wrecks or other instances of the new flesh: it's a slow-down of an event that will zoom by when it happens but boy is it gonna happen! Maybe by then I can take my hovercar out to the Taeddong River and watch the wrecking crews topple the Juche Tower or that unsafe hotel near it.
-"it's inevitable!", Ps/d
Since the time of the Great Depression, a majority of conjectures about the future used to involve flying or hovering cars. Then we got through the Twentieth Century and all we had to show for it were the Jetsons and hydrofoils.
Oh sure, we've made it faster to get from England to (the rest of) Europe. It turns out a better track and signal system (and shinier platforms at the grand cathedral of trains, Saint Pancras Station) are what it will really take to turn London and Paris into the terminii of the next BoWash. It's about time the UK (soon just to be England, Scotland, Wales and Friends But Never Again Lovers much like when the Beatles broke up) admitted 26 miles of swimmable sea are no longer a logistic nightmare. Still, it doesn't mean we all wouldn't like frickin' hovercars.
So yeah, ninety large and you'll soon have your own hovercar... maybe. I have this joke where I will dismiss an uppity person my senior by saying "when I was your age, we had hovercars!" I am glad this will soon be true instead of disappearing from us the way lunar vacations have. Let's face it: wouldn't a honeymoon on the actual Moon be stellar? You'd have every day and night under a canopy of stars and no weather problems. Granted, you'd be sick as a dog when you get home from the resumption of normal gravity but the nuptial sex in one-sixth G would never be forgotten.
Which news item would you rather ponder: hovercars, or crazed and soon-to-be-skullcrushed dictator of the former Rhodesia announcing wage hikes are illegal when inflation is at six thousand percent? Zimbabwe is soon going to immolate because he won't be paying the cops that keep him from being long pig fricassee. No one wants to think about that as we head into Labor Day weekend -- it's all hovercars now! Well, maybe
dobrovolets and I will ponder Mugabe for you.I'm fascinated by Zimbabwe. Then again I'm fascinated by North Korea in a completely CIA-sanctioned way: how long will it take the last James Bond villainreich to hit the self-destruct button, will it destroy Seoul in the process, what will we find that defies logic when that is over and how many frickin' tunnels are there underneath Pyongyang?
I read about North Korea the way Cronenberg and Ballard fans study car wrecks or other instances of the new flesh: it's a slow-down of an event that will zoom by when it happens but boy is it gonna happen! Maybe by then I can take my hovercar out to the Taeddong River and watch the wrecking crews topple the Juche Tower or that unsafe hotel near it.
-"it's inevitable!", Ps/d
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Your hovercraft may be full of eels
Date: 2007-08-31 03:51 pm (UTC)http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/965174.html
no subject
Date: 2007-08-31 04:32 pm (UTC)So, why didn't the Beeb do its research on the guy before it posted?
no subject
Date: 2007-08-31 05:44 pm (UTC)[sarcasm]But since when was it the business of news media to report truth? I thought their job was to keep the public entertained?[/sarcasm]
The future's coming, it's just not distributed evenly...