What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008? (Nov, 1968)
IT’S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 mi. away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.
The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round. Traffic is heavy, typically, but there’s no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There hasn’t been an accident since the system was inaugurated. Suddenly your TV phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case. The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate’s office, 200 mi. away. He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device. He wishes you good luck at the coming meeting and signs off.
Ninety minutes after leaving your home, you slide beneath the dome of your destination city. Your car decelerates and heads for an outer-core office building where you’ll meet your colleagues. After you get out, the vehicle parks itself in a convenient municipal garage to await your return. Private cars are banned inside most city cores. Moving sidewalks and electrams carry the public from one location to another.
With the U.S. population having soared to 350 million, 2008 transportation is among the most important factors keeping the economy running smoothly. Giant transportation hubs called modemixers are located anywhere from 15 to 50 mi. outside all major urban centers. Tube trains, pushed through bores by compressed air, make the trip between modemixer and central city in 10 to 15 minutes.
A major feature of most modemixers is the launching pad from which 200-passenger rockets blast off for other continents. For less well-heeled travelers there are SST and hypersonic planes that carry 200 to 300 passengers at speeds up to 4,000 mph. Short trips— between cities less than 1,000 mi. apart—are handled by slower jumbo jets.
Wow! And only eight months to wait until this wonderful future arrives.
I suppose '68-'72 was around when optimism about our wonderful technological future peaked....
whee, I just paid bills, transferred money around, and made a call to clear up a bill. I love when I can get my life stuff done at work.
I'm really weirdly sensitive to clutter, it makes me feel a bit like being hangry. Nervous and annoyed and snappish.
This is so me.
Kathy, I'm very sorry to hear about your co-worker.
Wow! And only eight months to wait until this wonderful future arrives.
I suppose '68-'72 was around when optimism about our wonderful technological future peaked....
Almost everyone thought nuclear fission was going to provide safe, clean electricity too cheap to meter. If the "electricity too cheap to meter" thing had come through, a lot of things would have been very very different. Given the premise, a lot of the projections we laugh at today were not that absurd.
What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008? (Nov, 1968)
That reminds me of this shirt.
Can someone explain to me how the Detroit mayor believes he'll be exonerated from perjury charges?
[link]
As I understand it, he and his former chief of staff gave sworn testimony that they weren't having a sexual affair. Then text messages were found indicating that they were having an affair. The mayor has apologized to the city and his family, which, as far as I can tell, equals him admitting that he had the affair.
How will he wiggle out of a perjury charge?
Well, if Clay Davis can get off...
Allyson, what happened to hiring Colin's brothers?
I dunno. I'd happily pay them, but that also means renting a truck for the weekend, plus a handtruck, and I don't know that I can drive a truck.
And then I have to worry about them hurting themselves trying to get that armoire up the stairs.
It just sounds easier to me to hire a mover, get it all done in a couple hours, in one trip. I can move everything I can lift into the place at the asscrack o' dawn, and then have movers take the heavy shit.
I want it all in on a Saturday, so I can at least have my bed back together and have the kitchen unpacked before work on the following Monday.
Books and decorative crap can wait.
I do need to go to IKEA and get blinds for the windows, I don't think there are any there.
Gah. I sound insane. I feel insane. This was maybe not a good time to quit smoking.
Can someone explain to me how the Detroit mayor believes he'll be exonerated from perjury charges?
Uh...nope.
As I understand it, he and his former chief of staff gave sworn testimony that they weren't having a sexual affair. Then text messages were found indicating that they were having an affair. The mayor has apologized to the city and his family, which, as far as I can tell, equals him admitting that he had the affair.
Uh ...yep. Also settled a huge law suit with former police officers for their help in covering it up.
How will he wiggle out of a perjury charge?
By ascending to a large snake only to be thwarted by a small blonde in a leather jacket. AFAIK, this is the only way out for bad mayors.
it is always a good time to quit smoking. GO YOU!!
the moving stuff will work out, if you don't get everything you need for decorating before the move, you can do it in the weeks after - make your list of the absolutely positively needs to be done stuff and figure out how they are going to happen first.
