Always In The Future

The media have a bias of a kind. That is heralding the imminent arrival of the flying car. Reporters lap up hype from developers and publish again and again about the evanescent vehicles fated always to be in the future. Not only is the technology of a fly-drive machine difficult, but if an inventor is successful in building one, it will only be a start. Left unanswered is how these vehicles can wing from point to point safely without getting in the way of airplanes, where they can land especially in crowded urban settings, where they can take off without noise complaints from neighbors and fears for their children and animals and more. While the media are careful to note that dozens of attempts have already been made to develop one and they have all so far failed, they are only too willing to give a current inventor a break. Maybe this time.  But envision a world in which hundreds of people are buzzing to and from work in an unregulated sky and you have a case for federal and state action. What an inventor needs to do is to develop along with the vehicle a methodology for safe aerial transport — lanes and stoplights, if you will, that don’t exist now. Only then will the technology that belongs to the future become practical for the present.