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Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker,
Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change,
technology and the future.
In addition to speaking at conferences
worldwide, he also writes monthly columns for CIO Magazine and
Computerworld Canada.
His goal is always to question what we
think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities.
If you'd like permission to reprint any
of Peter's articles, please contact him directly.
You can contact him at
pdejager@technobility.com
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It
doesn’t matter where we look, old copies of Time, Popular Mechanics,
daily newspapers or even our favorite science fiction magazines. All their
many visions of the future included one particular element: the personal
flying car. Where is it? More importantly... Why isn’t it?
Yes, we have air travel, even more than most people believe or can
imagine. At any moment in time, there are more than 1,000,000 people in
the air. That’s a small city in flight. Yet it’s not the flying car
vision of the past. That vision was one of the personal flying car.
An advance that would replace the all too familiar automobile. It was of
the average citizen of the street, flying in ordered flowing streams to
work and the picking up the groceries. That hasn’t happened. Sadly(?),
it will never happen.
That’s
a strong statement, audacious, even pretentious, yet I believe it to be
true. The ‘flying car’ vision is an example of a “poorly coupled”
prediction. There’s no path from today that we can travel, to arrive at
this envisioned tomorrow. Between today and the tomorrow of our dreams,
lie insurmountable obstacles which are an integral part of who we are.
Most people would suggest the reason we don’t have flying cars has
something to do with technology. They’re only half right. Technology
only limits what is possible; human nature limits what we attempt.
Drive the main highways of a major city at the height of rush hour. Note
the irrational stop and go, the swerving, the rampant inattention to a
life and death activity, the growing trend of road rage, the madness of
hurtling steel leviathans, the honking of horns, and the unexpected rushes
of adrenaline. Now imagine this maelstrom a thousand feet above your
home... every hour - of every day.
“But!” the objections are shouted from the back row, “It doesn’t
have to be that way! Technology has solutions! Guidance and control
systems can solve all those problems. Anti-collision devices can make
accidents impossible.” Etc. etc.
Let’s assume the technologists are right. Let’s pretend for the sake
of argument that all of the above is true. Even with all this as a given,
will we ever see flying cars replace the automobile? Not a chance - for
several different reasons.
The first? No community would allow a flow stream over their backyard.
NIMBY (not in my backyard) would quickly change to NIMAS... Not in my air
space. Second? A flow stream would have to be placed over a
non-residential corridor... and it would have to be significantly wider
than existing highways. Flying cars a thousand feet up need an lot more
space for emergency landings than do Ford pickup trucks. Simple real
estate economics makes mass consumer use of personal flying cars
impossible.
There’s another mundane, yet insurmountable reason. How would we take
huge that step from being land bound to being airborne? Regardless of
assurances that flying your own car would be as safe as driving, how do we
get to the point where enough people believe this to be true, for us to
allow a single, never mind tens of thousands, of flying cars to swoop and
swerve like swallows downtown during normal business hours?
This is the “poor coupling” of the flying car prediction. Between the
reality of today and our vision of tomorrow, there is a chasm we have to
cross. One we can’t traverse with little steps. Those steps are not
technological ones, but ones of belief, trust and even a minimal level of
acceptance.
In science fiction, we’re allowed one, even two, suspensions of
disbelief. In real life, the first one you come across when analyzing a
prediction... destroys its validity.
© 2002, Peter de Jager. Reprinted
from - Voyageur Science Fiction Magazine
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