The next innovation?

Suma Performance said:

Did you say 2035? How about flying cars? already invented. You can see one at the Boeing museum of flight. Patents are out there (see one below for example). That's the new frontier that Uber and aerospace industry is investing. What do you guys think?

Landing the moon was considered impossible at one point...

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If we had these innovators designers engineers from the 50s today with today’s technology I bet we’d have flying cars. Today all these auto industry engineers want to make 200k a year designing four wheel drive boxes ( SUVs)

2035 is only 15 years away. How much have cars changed since 2005?

I think flying cars are the natural progression of us drivers becoming accustomed to networked, autonomous cars. Unfortunately, I don't expect the powers that be will allow us to fly ourselves, it'll all be automated, and sad.

Don't forget that countries are trying to ban new production of combustible engine cars. This means all electric. I believe Europe said no more new combustible engine automobiles by 2030.

The revolution to me will be a few related technologies/services. Networked driving... and services like Uber... electric vehicles are in there too. I have 4 cars and 99% of the time they sit unused. Maybe people could be content to call an Uber-like service that’d be an electric... come from a nearby charging station or from its last drop off... pick you up and drop you off unmanned. Couple evolutions of present tech... more energy dense batteries so packs can be smaller/lighter w/o compromising range... maintain fast charging but expand things like wireless trickle charging to be faster like what phones do now... and it takes humans completely out of the equation in a car needing intervention to just ferry people around from point A to B.

You could probably get by in the US w/1/10th or less the cars here now if you couple autonomous cars you don’t own but just pay to use and utilize the existing road and electrical infrastructure, on top of carpooling that lots of folks do now but would have to become more of a norm. Car ownership could really start to drop as people simply use a self driving car that picks them up vice owning one that spends most of its life in the driveway/garage.

I think that’ll be the revolution of cars/car ownership in the latter 1/2 of the 21st century. It will take time, and a generation or two of people who feel differently than I do about wanting my own car and there’ll certainly be a lot of folks who still own their own... I just think it’ll head that way. What that means for the car industry to sell far less cars? I don’t know... but I imagine we’ll see more companies die or get consolidated as the remaining companies fight to get a larger slice of a smaller pie.

We’ll see... we ought meet back up in the CivicX classic car forum in 2050 and see where things stand.

nick94 said:

2035 is only 15 years away. How much have cars changed since 2005?

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Some people just don't have that feel for how the time flies. In my opinion, the true measure of intelligence is the ability correctly predict the timing of the future. Certainly not some silly tests with circles and triangles.

An example of total failure in this regard is Jeff Bezos allegedly predicting in 2013 that Amazon would be delivering packages by drone in four to five years. And he is not just an average Joe the futurist, but the guy actually involved in planning it. Where are those drones with packages Jeff?

Flying cars were dreamed about almost as soon as there were cars.

Flying pinto from the 70s

Gruber said:

Some people just don't have that feel for how the time flies. In my opinion, the true measure of intelligence is the ability correctly predict the timing of the future. Certainly not some silly tests with circles and triangles.

An example of total failure in this regard is Jeff Bezos allegedly predicting in 2013 that Amazon would be delivering packages by drone in four to five years. And he is not just an average Joe the futurist, but the guy actually involved in planning it. Where are those drones with packages Jeff?

Flying cars were dreamed about almost as soon as there were cars.

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True... if you said Amazon would have had their own shipping infrastructure to where they could manage 1 to 2 day delivery using their own fleet of vehicles at the turn of the century when they were a book-ordering website... I’d of never believed it. That drone crap is the same as how people said just a few years back that an electric car would be the predominate selling somewhere in the 2020-2025 range. I still don’t see it but at 2050? Maybe. I think whole car ownership thing and it being a rite of passage to get a drivers license... a symbol of freedom... I think that’s going to change generationally (is that a word?). I’ve heard a lot of folks with teenaged children saying may of them just don’t care that much for getting their license or having a car at all. If we have a generation who don’t care about owning... or at least driving... I can see the budding self-driving aspect blowing up through the rest of the century to haul a bunch of non-drivers around.

Flying cars were always a pipe dream I think. Unless we could learn to defy gravity, it was never going to be a thing. Whatever shred of a dream I might have had died when Marty Mcflys floating Matel hoverboard got released as a Segway w/o a handlebar. Kids seems to get along with them somewhat ok... but 90% of their appeal is in watching old-people-riding-one-and-eating-shit YouTube videos.

I very clearly remember, probably 20 years ago, thinking self-driving cars would be here in 5 years or so. I also remember thinking about our tv's turning into computers and thinking that would happen sooner than it did and in different ways... I have my pc hooked up to my tv but the majority of folks just stream through it or a device of some sort. That being said we've recently changed out all the projectors in conference rooms at the place I work for big tv monitors, so I guess it's happening.

Charles, I think you are right but with the caveat that as time goes on not only do kids not want to drive but the powers that be seem to be encouraging us to never leave the house. I noticed that starting when they started making big TVs and home theater stuff. Why go to the movies if you can have a better experience at home?

aighead said:

I very clearly remember, probably 20 years ago, thinking self-driving cars would be here in 5 years or so. I also remember thinking about our tv's turning into computers and thinking that would happen sooner than it did and in different ways... I have my pc hooked up to my tv but the majority of folks just stream through it or a device of some sort. That being said we've recently changed out all the projectors in conference rooms at the place I work for big tv monitors, so I guess it's happening.

Charles, I think you are right but with the caveat that as time goes on not only do kids not want to drive but the powers that be seem to be encouraging us to never leave the house. I noticed that starting when they started making big TVs and home theater stuff. Why go to the movies if you can have a better experience at home?

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Any before projectors you just had those overhead projectors where you put the plastic sheets on it and wrote on it... black boards probably aren’t a thing either. They probably use smart boards in schools. By the time I was college aged, they were all replaced with dry erase boards anyways. I guess chalk dust is fatal.

Arcades were actually a big part of my elementary school-aged fun. Every grocery store had a few games. A few dedicated arcades here and there and big sections at a few sports bars that were good for kids to come in and play games in the back room and the entry area in theaters. All gone... other than a few outliers like Dave and Busters. Same thing with consoles providing a 1080-4K gaming experience on a huge TV. I went to a sports bar 2 weeks back in my wife’s hometown we did a pre-wedding party at 17 years ago... and who I frequented a lot as a 10-18 year old.

There’s a lot of things that were touted as being ‘the future’ in the past that’s made it... though a lot of it come about slower than what folks were projecting. If you consider the developmental arc from the industrial
revolution to around the mid-20the century with the invention of the transistor and things of that sort... it’s amazing how far technology came.

My grandma passed a few years back, but was born right at the beginning of the 20th century and went to church from a mule drawn wagon... and saw cars... two world wars... jets... atom bombs... the space race (she lived in FL and we’d go see the shuttle launches from hay fields as a kid...)... the computer age. For someone like her, even if some things seemed to slow or stall... with science fiction never becoming a reality, the world completely changed in her 103 years. I don’t think a lot is going to change in a year... or 5. But by the time I’m not of and decrepit, this old world may be so different I’ll barely recognize it from what I remember from the ‘80s.

I was a huge arcade kid back in the day! We lived across the street from the mall and when I didn't have school I'd get over there early and wait, with the mall walkers, for the arcade to open, even if I didn't have any money I'd just go look at the arcade games. There was also a grocery store that had Pro Wrestling (with Starman!) that I'd wasted a bunch of money on. And yeah, I'm one of the ones who'd go to sports bars and play games there too! My family used to go out every Friday night and we'd do this junk. Very fond memories.

Charles, it sounds like we had some similar experiences! My great grandma was very mentally fit, the last time I talked to her, at 104. She told me stories of going to Chicago in the mob days to learn hairdressing, by herself, at like 16 years old. I can't imagine! Add prevalent electricity, super walmarts, phones, etc. to the mix. By the time we're old we'll have seen a ton of stuff too! We live in a fascinating time! And we've got Trump! Love him or hate him you can't say that he hasn't turned politics on its head around the world.

I think the technology is here or will be here soon. But one major issue is public safety, especially involving traffic in the air that 's FAA territory. When it comes to airspace, the vehicles, either drones or cars, they have to be certified to ensure it is safe to fly. Unfortunately, the regulations are behind the technologies.

But as @charleswrivers mentioned, when we look back in 2050, how much things have advanced? Will Civic have flying cars? Will we be able to fly from US to their Japan dealers for an oil change?

To be perfectly honest the way people drive on the roads would you really want flying cars?
Now Hoover cars could be a possibility or spheres as wheel with a electrical magnetic drive system ( like in the movie I-Robot)

Yes, the change does sneak up faster than anyone expects, but not in the way people dream it. Extrapolation of today usually goes nowhere as far as predicting the future goes.

In the fifties there were plans for libraries of the future where a network of pneumatic tubes connected to private houses, so you could press some buttons at home and have a book or a magazine blown into your living room. Actually, you can do it today, but not exactly this way.... Today, when doing research you can have practically any paper or patent ever written since the beginning of the world in front of you in a minute, without using paper, but if you want it on paper, you can do it too. Unthinkable 60+ years ago.

Predicting the future is a total failure, but back then it was mostly used to predict a bright future and the new, brave world. Now it's mostly used for political manipulation to predict doom and gloom and instigate fear in the masses.
The 1993 Rand McNally Newsweek "Almanac of World Facts" predicted the population of Nigeria in 2000 (just 7 years ahead) will increase by a factor of 5 to be 508 million. In reality it was only 122 million in 2000, and even today in 2020 it just crossed 200 million. All other predictions in this publication are just as bogus. It's not only a failure, it's a scam. Not worth the paper (or LED light) it's printed on.

"The future of futurology still looks bleak." The only way to know the future is to wait for it.