Friday, January 30, 2009

A Flying What?

In Let’s Go! I tried to encompass several future transportation possibilities that included both the ideas of personal flight and large distances covered. I used the line, near the end, “Will we circle the stars like we now drive our cars?”

So it’s kinda fun that I just saw this article thanks to Nathan Bransford’s blog:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/22/flying-car.html

Yes, flying cars! Gotta get me one of them! Okay, later, when they are fully idiot-proofed by people not wearing white lab coats and have come down in price. Har!

Seeing this technology makes me think of my grandmothers. Why? Because I wonder what it must have been like to be born into the tail end of a horse- and train-based transportation society and then living to see automobiles and airplanes everywhere. Maybe one day I’ll have a pretty good idea.

I’ve already seen huge technological changes for computers (bulging black-and-green screens you used by memorizing Basic codes) and phones (remember rotary dials?), and good lord I’m old enough to have experienced life before microwave oven!

So I may yet live to see a huge shift in transportation technology. That would be pretty cool. Cause the evolution so far, from driving in the parentals’ Cordoba to joining the masses in a minivan, hasn’t been all that impressive.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In a recent review by Naomi Lakritz (from the Saskatoon Star Phoenix) of the book The Gift of Wings by Mary Rubio, an incident about Lucy Maud Montgomery's husband, Ewan, learning to drive was recounted: "He had trouble remembering that the car was not a horse, and if he needed to stop quickly, his first impulse was always to yank backwards on the steering wheel, as if he were holding the horse's reins, and yell 'Whoa! Whoa!'"

Stay warm!

Liz