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Wednesday 20 July 2011

A Flying car? What Hell Is Going On Here?

Terrafugia Transition
As children of an exciting technological age, we are living in a science fiction utopia. 

In the late 70’s scientists talked about mobile phones, home computers and technologies of the future. Fast forward to the second decade of the 21st century and we live in an era where using a mobile phone, SatNav and a computer is almost second nature, just like breathing and eating.

Even with 45 years under my belt, I never fail to be amazed at the technology that surrounds us and that makes up so much of our lives. Yet when you think about all of the everyday technologies that we interact with so naturally, it is easy to forget where we were twenty or thirty years ago. 

Although it is quite comical to see how scientists of yester-year talked about future Star Trek like technologies, what is truely fascinating is just how much this highlights how far we have come in such an exponentially little amount of time. The 21st Century has been witness to a treasure trove of new and innovative genius, which has advanced considerably to give us the kind of mind boggling science fiction-esq technologies like the iPhone, iPad, SatNav, every smaller computers - and don't even get me started on Augmented Reality!

The advances in technology don't just stop there. One only has to look at the military and galactical gap between where they were with early jet fighter machinery compared to Stealth technology and beyond.


So why is this so exciting and what's it got to do with cars? Well when I hear of a flying car being given the go ahead to don the skies in the country of our cousins across the water, then Biff Tannen isn't the only guy who's looking baffled and wondering what the hell is going on here. I also can't help but wonder how long it will be before the technology advances to the point where we're all just jumping in our cars, setting our route planner to check the traffic flow for SkyWay 21 on our iPhone, Smartphone, iPad, hand-held palm-top or SatNav and then casually flying off to the beach for the day.

If the history of our technological progress is anything to go by, it's not going to be that long.

We are increasingly living in tomorrows world, today.