From dystopia to technotopia, we’re always wondering what the future will look like. The blog Paleo-Future shows it just isn’t what it used to be. The future used to be much more fantastic, and frankly, much more fun-looking. For example, here’s a series of postcards from the early 1900’s envisioning the year 2000.
Depicted here is an average daily commute:
It begs the question: Why stop at electric cars when we could all have personal flying machines?
Personal solar-powered flying machines, of course!
Hi to Lindsay and Deborah,
Perhaps we have problems with air travel today. Electric cars and solar powered flight are good operational ideas that have been around for a long time. We could develop them, I suppose.
Thanks,
Steve
Travel: the new tobacco
The founder of Rough Guides now believes that our addiction to ‘binge flying’ is killing the planet
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/article/2007/may/06/travelnews.climatechange?print
Mark Ellingham, founder of the Rough Guides and the man who encouraged a generation of travellers to pack a rucksack and explore the world, has compared the damage done by tourism to the impact of the tobacco industry.
Ellingham now says travelling is so environmentally destructive that there is no such thing as a genuinely ethical holiday. He wants the industry to educate travellers about the damage their holidays do to the environment. The development he regrets most is the public’s appetite for what he calls ‘binge-flying’.
‘The tobacco industry fouled up the world while denying [it] as much as possible for as long as they could,’ said Ellingham. ‘If the travel industry rosily goes ahead as it is doing, ignoring the effect that carbon emissions from flying are having on climate change, we are putting ourselves in a very similar position to the tobacco industry’……………………………….
Amelia Hill, social affairs correspondent,
The Observer
Sunday May 6 2007
I want a flying car like the ones on Star Wars Episode II! (solar powered of course)