Flightless

I’m slowly coming to the emotionally wrenching realization that the Flying Car is just not going to happen. As a boy, movies and tv shows seemed to share a belief that the very next step in our evolution on earth would involve the personal flying vehicle. The supposition was advanced through an endless parade of future-gazing television and movie making.. From George Jetson to Marty McFly, all them shits was flyin’bee. Even worse: Ewoks and people from the planet Tatoine, we were told, apparently had flying cars even a long time ago, in a galaxy far away. More examples follow: Fifth Element, the Terminator, Octopussy, The Great Space Coaster, Flash Gordon…Taken together, the signs could not be denied: Big Hollywood money was all-in behind airborne personal transport. the lot of us - they seemed to be saying - would be soaring and landing of our own volition in the wild blue yonder of our definite future.

Instead, we got the internet. And then we got it again and again and again in all different shapes. Cell Phones, car stereos, books, and newspapers, all to be converted into pixel form and gifted to the masses at a fair price. Now we can surf the web while surfing, during surgical procedures, and in traffic court. Yet here we are, almost 20 years after the sending of my first email, and there my car sits: earthbound and missing a side view mirror. Suddenly my dreams of personal flying seem so dated and sad, I’m almost ashamed of having dreamed them in the first place. How could a popular culture that predicted individual airborne transport settle for almost two decades of inventions not only flightless, but also stationary and physically passive. Tablets, smart-phones, laptops, 3g, 4g, plasma, pc, home theater…An alarming number of technological advancements over the last twenty years have been things that either encourage their user’s motionlessness , or can be used to track that user when he does finally decide to get his ass up and do something.

If the 12 year old me had been given the choice between transport modeled after science fiction, or a device that magically allowed everybody to reach me no matter where I was, I probably wouldn’t even have wasted the breath required to answer back, because anybody asking such a question would have to be a total asshole, and - as such - undeserving of my reply. Any sane person would choose high altitude speed over the ability to stay in touch with people. Or so I would have thought. The last twenty years would seem to have proved otherwise.