The Bibliotheque Nationale de France has an online exhibition of a vision of
the world in the year 2000 - published in the year 1910. It's interesting to see what the artist got right, and what he got wrong. Air-Sea Rescue - but also radium fireplaces. He correctly predicted that electric power would replace human labour - but he didn't foresee that the biggest impact would be from automating thought rather than muscle.
He also didn't see that the fashions of 1910 would not be
a la mode in 2000. But it's an appealing vision... I'm still hoping for my personal monoplane to get me to work.
Interesting map showing what the earth will look like in 250M years: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070922.html
ReplyDeleteMartin,
ReplyDeleteOnce the prices come down a bit and they finally release this thing, you may want to consider getting one of these car planes made by an MIT startup. I think they are supposed to start at $150,000 and release will be sometime in 2009.
http://www.terrafugia.com/landing.html
The price of small planes has come down quite a bit though to under $100,000 now so my husband tells me (he's taking pilot lessons), and they take regular car gas, have electronic instrumentation and a parachute for the whole plane.
The disadvantage of the small planes over the car plane though is that you still need to park them in a air hanger where as the car plane folds into a car and can be parked in a regular garage so I understand.