| Where's My Hovercraft? |
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In 1960, when I was seven years old, magazines like Popular Science and television programs like The Twilight Zone offered a vision of the future that included such amazing domestic aids as robot servants who would cook, clean, and, in a  pinch, serve as a fourth in bridge, “smart” pills that the little ones could ingest before school, so that they wouldn’t have to suffer the agony of prolonged study, and even the happy convenience of hovercrafts for Dad’s short but necessary trips to the monorail commuter station. As I understood it (at least in my seven year old imagination), I would live my adult life in a world that resembled the planet Krypton —except that it would be an American Krypton, with Coca Cola signs and other familiar logos on top of those weird, jutting, space age towers and minarets. Yesterday, I had lunch with a very pleasant couple who told me of remarkable new opportunities in manufacturing through the use of robotics. They were my wife’s business partners. (My wife is not a robot; she was actually born of real parents and she provides training expertise and curriculum design to various concerns.) The couple explained the profit sharing incentives for both the robotics company and the manufacturing entities utilizing this new labor saving technology. It all sounded pretty wonderful—and exciting. But about halfway through my coffee, I couldn’t help but wonder: Where’s my hovercraft? In many ways, the promise of the future, so eagerly accepted by children all over America (and encouraged, no doubt, by the inventions displayed at the 1964 World’s Fair), was less about the gadgets and more about the society where those gadgets would find enlightened operators. When I was seven, the wondrous technology of the “future” meant living in a world where people would transcend the ancient, scabrous claims of war, poverty, and injustice. It meant that people would probably walk around in those silver-colored, unisex outfits. It meant that some of us would set up easels on Mars and paint strange (yet oddly beautiful) alien landscapes. It meant the quiet but purposeful industry of a society dedicated to the “good” and the “beautiful.” It meant a lot of wind chime sounds. I don’t criticize the future we’ve come to inhabit. There’s only so much good or beautiful that a man can take before he wants to see some celebrity hauled off in cuffs. And wind chimes will put me right to sleep. But still: Where are the visions of the new future, the new enlightened society? Are those ideas too childish now for even children? Where’s my hovercraft? Donald Gallinger is the author of The Master Planets Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites               
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