2010-07-08 » The Future

Flying Taxi

It seems like many people’s vision of the future has included flying cars for some time now. For some reason though it seems flying cars are still not that close to reality. The problem, I think, is not with the technology but rather with people. There are several companies working on flying cars and in fact there are working vehicles. Getting these released to the public and in widespread use seems like a disaster waiting to happen. At least until people aren’t allowed to drive them. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll already know what I think about cars, and I think that people can be trusted even less to drive flying cars. Unless they’re Korben Dallas.

I’ve been thinking about this recently due to the giant oil spill that seems to have been caused by a combination of incompetence, corner-cutting and operating near (or beyond) the limits of current human capability.

I think in general, the future seems full of things that could be very powerful but also potentially dangerous for people to be involved with. Beyond flying cars, these include (off the top of my head):

  • Genetic Manipulation (bio-weapons: on purpose or accidental)
  • Life extension (you think it’s crowded now?)
  • Attempts to correct climate change
  • Nanotech (think Grey goo)
  • Commercialized Space (oops, dropped asteroids on NYC)
  • Surveillance everywhere (1984!)
  • DRM / Intellectual Property (you can’t think that!)

I could go on, but the point I’m trying to make is that the thing all of these technologies have in common is that they’re generally things that are considered by someone to be a good idea, but each of them has potential to cause a lot of problems. I can personally see good reasons to pursue almost all of these (except the last one). I even think work on most of them will lead to really good things. I’m just worried because I see so many people running things who seem to be criminally incompetent.

Maybe I tend to have too little faith in humanity.

Maybe others have too much.

Either way, I expect the future will be interesting!