To mark the successful flight of the X-43a, NASA’s latest jet, the BBC are running an online vote on the subject. Apparently, “hundreds of people sent in their own ideas for how we should all be getting around in years to come.” Hundreds of people? and these are the best ten?
1. “Double decker motorbikes.” Ridiculous, especially the claim that “A family of four could comfortably travel on a two-storey machine, but still zip through congested roads, without having to hang on like a motorcycle display team.” Just saying it doesn’t make it true, Martyn. Where’s your evidence? Where are the schematics? I don’t like this entry, but I like you, Martyn. You’re a dreamer. And God knows we need dreamers.
2. “Computer-controlled cars.” Alright Martin. Dull but competent.
(At this stage I wonder what it is about Martins that make them so popular in this transport brainstorm)
3. “Screened, lockable cubicles on trains.” Thanks Trish, you get back to your Daily Mail in your lockable cubicle. Well done for turning a pleasant piece of conjecture into a bilious attack on the rest of the human race.
4. “Robotic trousers like the ones shown in Wallace and Grommett’s The Wrong Trousers.” I don’t know what it is about this that annoys me so much. Perhaps the fact that he says “trousers” twice. This ought to be a funny entry but it so plainly isn’t. It’s like saying “Silly walks like those demonstrated in the Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks sketch in which John Cleese performs a silly walk.”
5. “Travel tubes. These would be around a metre wide and would suck you up into the network once you’ve selected a destination.” This is plainly cribbed from Futurama, but at least Chris has embellished it a bit with his swaggering account of lunchtime drinking which has an undertone of desperation.
6. “I am still waiting for the rocket powered skateboard that I should have got on 1 January, 2000.” Nice one Max - a wry humour at work here, subtly satirising this kind of survey.
7. “Star Trek type transporters.” Shame on you, Susan, although on second reading, the sentiment about dinner with your mother eventually won me over.
8. “I’d like to see horses return to our streets. Here’s hoping we run out of oil soon.” The image is interesting Tom, but your execution is poor. You go from a wistful nostalgia to a sweeping Luddite manifesto in the blink of an eye. I think running out of oil will mean slightly more of a change than reverting to horse and cart. Try packs of marauding man-sized cockroaches, or three-armed cannibals. Try spiders with hooves.
9. “Luggage conveyor belts.” Alright Richard, but your claim that “these could travel at some speed” is vague and unsupported.
10. Here’s the humdinger. “In my vision of the distant future, I would like to see more use of telekinesis. People could harness the power of their minds (some part of the 90% we don’t use) to dematerialise their molecular structure, and transport it via loopholes in time, to the required destination.” More use of telekinesis? The 90% of our minds we don’t use? “Dematerialise their molecular structure and transport it via loopholes in time?” Jon, you are my hero. And you get my vote.
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