Where *is* my flying car ?

Today, I came across the term which describes the style of art I have been unknowingly been obsessed with all my life, and it's called 'Googie' or 'Populuxe', or 'Raygun Gothic' (it depends on who you are talking to which decides which is the correct term).

I grew up watching 'Thunderbirds', 'Captain Scarlet','Forbidden Planet','Battle Beneath The Earth', and so on - all visions of the future as perceived by the people who came to adulthood during the 30s,40s,and 50s. These people created a 'future', or a vision of the 'future', in architecture, art, and design. (Think of the 'Seattle Space Needle',the Plymouth Fury Sport Coupe, and so on). A world of flying cars, jet packs, and hypersonic planes that could fly from New York to Tokyo in 2 hours or less).

What happened to that optimism, that excitement, that 'can-do' attitude ? Where *is* my jet pack ? Where *is* my flying car?
I face a future of global warming, an energy crisis, global terrorism, busted pension funds, and an almost guaranteed dystopic future - and what I want to know is, why ?

Today, 'fins and chrome', 'perspex', 'jet packs', and so on are perceived as some sort of naiive joke, a childish view of the 'future'.
The people of the late fifties and early sixties were galvanized by JFK's pledge to put a man on the moon, and return him safely to Earth. 25 billion dollars it cost - and at that time, 25 billion dollars was a lot of money. The UK is going to spend the same amount of money on building a sports centre to hold the Olympic Games in 2012.

Have I missed something?

When JFK pledged to put a man on the moon, 25 billion dollars was a *lot* of money. Today, it's the amount of money you can con the tax payer out of for a two week sporting event.

I don't know what the modern value of JFK's investment is, but I guess it's around 200 billion dollars (and that's just a guess).
What could we do with a 200 billion dollar investment today? I think JFK (had he lived) would have been overjoyed with his investment. When man first went in to space, the transistor wasn't even a dream. By the time the Apollo programme was cancelled, Intel had manufactured the worlds first microprocessor, and Intel chips are at the heart of all modern commerce. I would go as far as to say that the x86 is the hot rivet of the 21st century - millions of them are hammered into things every year, and they hold the steel plates of the information economy together.

What happened to that pioneering spirit? Where is the Apollo programme that I can buy into ? What is that next great step that mankind will make that I will be happy to sit up all night in front of the TV (ok, 3g cell phone) to see history being made?

Bush has pledged to take Man back to the moon, and on to Mars. Rather a hollow promise I think? NASA can't even bring the Space Shuttle from earth orbit back safely, let alone redevelop (because all the original scientists/engineers/etc are dead/retired/etc) a rocket that can take man back to the moon.

Have we, as a species, so completely sold out? Have we given up pushing the boundaries of what makes us different from mice, monkeys and the rest?

The Internet, a spin-off from the Cold War, is a medium so incredibly powerful, a global water-cooler for the exchange of ideas, dreams, and ambitions, is primarily a means of moving pornography from one side of the world to another. And who is complaining? Nobody. With the Internet at our beck and call, it is used for the most trivial of purposes, for porn, cheap phone calls, and advertising. Well, woo-hoo. The iPod and the iPhone. big deal. a tethered device engineered to extract dollars for back catalogue music from the dying record labels. PVRs and satellite TV - more tethered technologies to sell back catalogue TV episodes and adverts to the masses.

Is that it ? Have we reached our inspirational peak ? Is pay-per-click, or pay-per-stream, or 'acceptable exit strategy' the summit of man's achievements?

Well, I don't know about you, dear reader, but I think there's more to be done - there is more we can achieve other than shipping nudey flicks around the globe, or to stuffing adverts in RSS feeds - and I don't care about the resolution of the images or the relevance of the ads!

There is a man, who is as close to Isambard Kingdom Brunel as we are likely to get in our era, and his name is Burt Rutan. His company, Scaled Composites, won the Ansari X-Prize for putting a man into orbit on a shoe string budget. What could Mr. Rutan achieve with 25 billion dollars in investment behind him? Who knows?

Well, I'm not going to stop dreaming, thinking, or caring - but I'm just the little guy, the end product of a society that couldn't grasp the motivations and drive of JFK, or if they could, they just worked out how they could exploit it for their own petty personal ambitions - and for that I'm paying £1 for a litre of petrol for a car that still can't fly ...

[rewind]