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QC - The Movie

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Bearer:
Flying cars anyone? http://www.moller.com/

raoullefere:

--- Quote from: tomart on 06 Sep 2010, 09:59 ---[snip]
2.  I want one! Really!  But I don't matter, I don't have $100,000 or whatever it would cost.  
And I think there's probly other issues, like all the morons who'd crash em (drunk fliers!!) buzz their friends, etc etc.  You think road accidents & traffic jams are destructive, disruptive??  Wait til millions of dolts are late for work (rush hour would have new worlds of pain) or cutting each other off, trying to get into (or out of) sports stadia, ... boggling.

--- End quote ---
Yes. When I think about it with any degree of seriousness, I imagine that someone, somewhere, had an epiphany for a $10k flying car, then tried to drive into a medium-size city at 8 or so in the morning to do some legal work, translated what he saw into the hurtling horror his invention would make it, then turned around to go home and burn the plans as fast as he could.

As is, the idea they let John Travolta fly a jet is enough to terrify me in and of itself. Getting the crazy old bat elderly lady down the road from me up there, too, is the stuff of nightmares.

tomart:

--- Quote from: Carl-E on 05 Sep 2010, 22:53 ---Then where's my damned jet pack, already?  

--- End quote ---

In the GTA game San Andreas!   :-D  Seriously, after you get to the 3rd city (Las Vegas) there's a mission where your reward is your very own jet pack, and it's just about as cool as you'd think - put it on in the game, and you rise up and fly around the already cool SA sandbox-world.   :joy:

I was disappointed by not being able to carry my favorite heavy weapons up with me, to deal with those damned annoying police helicopters, but I bow to realism - the heaviest it lets you use up there are pistols.

I get your point, Carl -(see below)- I grew up on a farm in the middle of the last century - our water pipes froze in winter, we had like the last rotary phones in the US that you picked up and told a live operator the number you were calling, traveling salesman came around with things local stores didn't have, and when I went to college for computers, we had some old UNIVAC stuff with punched cards...   So when I wax effusive about flying my own GTA jet pack around, I'm seriously enthralled by the great tech advances.   :-D

And it's one of my favorite speculations - what people of one era would think of a future era's STUFF...    [The 1938 World's Fair made a film, "The World Of 1960" (I think was the title), and it's weirdly fascinating, public dirigible transportation, grooved highways, & more!]

Carl-E:
[sigh]

My point was again, missed.  Don't worry, I'm used to it...

It's the sheen that's not there.  All the new whizbang tech we have is cool, and amazing.  but it all developed naturally, nearly evolving before our eyes.  Those old "vision of the future" things were leaps and bounds past what we could do - dreamer's stuff.  What we have now is at that level, but taken completely for granted, because we wathced it evolve.  There's been no "quantum" leap forward! 

My first computer work was done with punchcards.  I used teletype terminals (with the 2 foot wide punch paper), and my thesis was written using a VT100 and a 1200 baud modem to hook up to the mainframe.  My first computer at work had a 10 MB hard drive, the biggest you could get.  I don't even want to talk about my first laptop...

Yes, iPads and smartphones are amazing.  But there are touchscreens everywhere, they're already mundane. 

I dunno, it's just the GOM in me, I guess! 

raoullefere:
I think I don't get you because the sheen is there for me. Example: I just started using Skype today, and it's astounding I can do that, and on a 5 year old machine, too. I'll add 'naturally' is a bit of a stretch, to me. 'Natural' development, my studies tell me, is 'ARGGGHH! It's different! Break it, burn him. Stick to the old, holy ways." A few people don't do this, however, and the thing passes around in secret for a few decades to a few centuries, and then it is quietly accepted because the people who have the matches are using it by then. But every once in a while you get these times where nearly every advance is accepted. We're living in one at the moment (although it may soon pass.)

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