Ideas of the Future- Transportation
The future has always been a very peculiar subject to imagine,
especially the topic of transportation. Between 1920 and 2013 there have been
some strange ideas of transportation for the future, with unrealistic
expectations of hover cars and space ships. Ideas of aeroplanes, flying
bicycles, some even imagined by 2000 that we would be able to press a button,
step onto a platform and suddenly appear at our destination. Some ideas of the
future were improbable and unlikely whereas others were able to be accurate in
their predictions of the future.
When people of the past thought about the future of
transportation, flying vehicles usually came to mind. During 1920 a New York
Times reporter believed that in 100 years from 1920 the world will have
invented, after the use of hover cars which apparently by then will have become
vehicles of the past, the flying bicycle. ‘This new bicycle will enable
everyone to traverse the air at will, far from the earth’. He also believed
that pneumatic railways and flying cars and many other means of quick transit
will be so developed that the question of time will enter. Unfortunately these
ideas are far from our reality but we still have another 7 years of hope left.
Throughout 1960 ideas were still progressing towards the future of transportation for 2013, beginning in this decade with plans of a Robotic Railroads. The futurist illustrator Arthur Radebaugh, believed in a revolutionary world with robot driven trains, 'Future trains will be fully automatic, with robots that can regulate their own speed and control their own movement to meet the most precise schedules.' Unluckily for him, his ambition was not accurate. We are currently still operating trains by human control but we are also using computer systems to help the flow of trains. There is no use of robots for our train systems yet and it would seem like that is not going to change any time soon.
Ideas of transportation for 2013 kept coming when, also during the
60's, increasingly realistic ideas were being developed. In 1966 William Roman,
Chairman of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, had an ambition
that in the year 2013 aeroplanes will become the most commonly used form of
transportation for long distance travel, 'They'll be able to take-off and carry
many people and I think they're going to prove to be the answer to what some
thought the helicopter would be able to produce for us in the past'. He was
correct about the use of aeroplanes becoming the answer to greater distance of
travel for large quantities of people. This idea was extremely accurate
thinking for their future and continued the development of ideas for the future
of transportation.
In our modern day we continuously wonder
about what the future will hold for us in 2050 in the the form of transportation. According to
Futurist Speaker Thomas Frey, 'In the future, automotive companies will focus
on fully automated vehicles where people can “punch in” or “speak” the place
they want to go to and the vehicle will automatically take them there. The
arrival of fully automated navigation systems for ground-based vehicles will
set the stage for fully automated navigation systems for flying vehicles.' We cannot
be sure about his prediction for the moment but I am hoping for a future full
of new, easy and helpful ways of travel. I don't see humanity sending people to
live on the moon by using personal rocket ships or hover cars. I think that the
future will not drastically change in the use of transportation but with any
luck we may live in a world where travelling from country to country is even
faster and easier.
There was a continues developments of ideas throughout 1920 to 2013 for the future of transportation. After seeing the previous predictions of the future and then
witnessing reality, most of the estimates of transportation have been extremely farfetched. Our present days
transportation, has not lived up to the pasts predictions, meaning that our
expectations should be limited to be realistic for our future. The future holds anything and everything, and the development of ideas between 1920 to 2013 have been fairly unrealistic and for the most part haven't come true. The development of ideas for our future in 2050 are equally as unrealistic but we just wont know until then.
Lauren Crouch
