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Sci-Fi Transportation Technology

The City of the Future 274

Posted by Zonk from the heads-up-display-sounds-good-to-me dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "One century ago, many Americans still had not seen a movie or ridden in an automobile. The New York World greeted its readers on January 1, 1908 with a stirring rumination about the past and future of America: 'We may have gyroscopic trains as broad as houses swinging at 200 miles an hour up steep grades and around dizzying curves,' the newspaper said. 'We may have aeroplanes winging the once inconquerable air. The tides that ebb and flow to waste may take the place of our spent coal and flash their strength by wire to every point of need.' Today the NY Times asked ten knowledgeable New Yorkers to imagine New York City a century from today. Their visions include archaeological excavations at the Fresh Kills landfill, the waterfront at Third Avenue and Seventh Avenue, a dome over Central Park, and a virtual reality grid superimposed over the city."
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The City of the Future More

The City of the Future

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  • Comp Sci prediction is a bit Orwellian (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) * on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:26PM (#21860184) Homepage
    From Ken Perlin, professor of computer science at New York University "... everyone's eyes will be implanted with tiny displays. All the information we need about the city will be accessible to us without conscious effort: where to go, what to buy ... how to hook up with friends."

    And not surprisingly, Robin Nagle from the New York City Department of Sanitation predicts "Sanitation workers ... will be heroes"

    On a lighter note for the holiday season, here are the Christmas Lights of the Future! ;-) [komar.org]

    • We are Borg. Resistance is futile ! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Macka ( 9388 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:53PM (#21860386)

      Ken Perlin will probably be close to the mark. 100 years from now you'll be able to get regular injections that contain millions of nano tech devices. These devices will travel through the blood to parts of the body they need to work on (e.g. the brain) and then construct interfaces that link wireless information networks directly into your consciousness.

      I don't think there will be implanted displays as such. Rather, you'll just received the information you request and the display will be superimposed on your eye sight via nano circuitry where the optic nerves connect to the brain. That way you can still 'see' the information you want without distractions by just closing your eyes. This scenario may sound far fetched, but it has a much greater chance of gaining traction in society if all it involves is a simple injection. No painful surgery, no mess, no fuss.

      • Funny, I think we will try nano-bots. The initial results on test animals will probably be too horrific to guarantee future funding, but it won't matter, because the knowledge of the human machine will outpace the need for such devices.
  • All that link leads to is a registration page.

    • Article Text (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      December 30, 2007
      The World of Tomorrow
      By JIM RASENBERGER

      ON Jan. 1, 1908 -- New Year's Day one century ago -- The New York World greeted readers with a stirring rumination about the past and future of America. The title of the article was simply "1808 -- 1908 -- 2008." The World began by marveling at how far America had come since 1808, then turned to the question of the future: "What will the year 2008 bring us? What marvels of development await the youth of tomorrow?"

      The essay's visions were not timid. "We

  • Trains? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by calebt3 ( 1098475 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:30PM (#21860220)

    We may have gyroscopic trains as broad as houses swinging at 200 miles an hour up steep grades and around dizzying curves
    This just shows how far we have come. Dan Quayle once said "The future will be better tomorrow." These days nobody would take the train idea seriously. Now the goal is teleportation.

  • As fun as these can be (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joe Tie. ( 567096 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:31PM (#21860226)
    I've come to really respect scientists who tell reporters to shove off when they ask about the world of the future. So much of future technology has to do with culture, and so little actual science, that it's like asking what color of clothing will be 'in' on 2106.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jamesh ( 87723 )

      that it's like asking what color of clothing will be 'in' on 2106.

      Grey. Haven't you seen _any_ sci fi movies???

      • that it's like asking what color of clothing will be 'in' on 2106.
        Grey. Haven't you seen _any_ sci fi movies???
        Yes, but 30 years ago the answer was "white, loose & flowing, with lots of cleavage (for both men and women)".

        I don't know about you, but personally I hope the future doesn't include a Disco-fied New New York...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jamesh ( 87723 )
          I think every generation has to have at least one period in their past that they can look back on and say "wtf were we thinking???"

          For me (born 1975) I have my own personal periods in my past that I think that about, but nothing yet I can share with the bulk of my generation...

  • A little late for this -- (Score:3, Funny)

    by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:31PM (#21860228) Journal
    New York in 100 years? It will continue to be a maximum security prison [imdb.com].

  • Paleo-Future (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jalefkowit ( 101585 ) <(jason) (at) (jasonlefkowitz.com)> on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:37PM (#21860276) Homepage

    This has nothing to do with TFA per se, but if you're into this stuff you should check out the excellent blog Paleo-Future [blogspot.com], which is dedicated to "the future that never was" -- how people in various times over the last 140 years or so have thought the future would look.

    • Re:Paleo-Future (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sgt_doom ( 655561 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @07:17PM (#21860534)
      People far more prescient than myself have stated (and correctly so) many times over the years that the inherent problem with even contemplating the future is the problem of human greed and avarice. The General Motors Futurama Exhibit at the 1964 World's Fair (held in NYC) had many pragmatic predictions, which certainly should have come to past.

      Alas, vile greedheads interfered. As those lowbrows who are forever exclaiming about, "...if they can put a man on the moon...." Of course, they murdered the man behind that project (JFK), which killed many a future prediction and dream. Therein lies the problem.

      Urban transportation in America, a pathetic pipe dream in most places - but it could have been realized many, many years ago. As that House Select Committee Investigation, back in 1974, demonstrated, General Motors, Firestone and Sun Oil conspired to curtail any valid and optimal urban and exurban transportation systems throughout America as they wish to sell tires, large vehicles running on gas (buses) and oil.

      Can anyone seriously ponder any predictions of the future given the imbeciles currently being elected as president? Given the criminals being currently elected to VP? SecDef? SecState?

      • If you don't take human nature into account, you are bad at it. That's like developing this great economic system where everybody gets everything they need-- let's call it Communism! Of course, it has no compatibility whatsoever with the human race, but it sure looks good on paper, huh?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by s20451 ( 410424 )
        Summary of post: "Wouldn't it be great if humanity was replaced by an army of robots under my command? Then nobody would disagree with my nutty ideas."

  • Just a bit down on the future, aren't they? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by arthurh3535 ( 447288 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:46PM (#21860340)
    New York will be under water, owned for foreigners and be infested with alligators with huge advertisements covering entire buildings with lights.<br><br>I don't think we can really 'predict' the future, of course. We might have truly artificial intelligence, brain-machine interfaces and very advanced cybernetics along with genetic engineering *really* advancing. Nuclear power is going to be really used and not just feared... and we'll have new problems that we can only dimly see like losses of personal freedoms due to corporate greed, an out of touch government and seemingly out of control costs.
    • I don't think we can really 'predict' the future, of course.

            I thought the New York World did a pretty good job of it back in 1908.

        rd

  • Energy crisis (Score:5, Interesting)

    by little1973 ( 467075 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:47PM (#21860348)
    Most probably the population of Earth will be greatly reduced due to the shortage of energy. That means hundreds of millions people will die unless something miraculous happens. Do not forget that our civilization depends on cheap energy and energy will be much more expensive in the future.
    • For more info read Olduvai theory [wikipedia.org].

      And to clarify things those hundreds of millions of people will die in a short period of time (a few years)
      and of course not during a 100-year-period.

      • Already wrong (Score:4, Interesting)

        by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @07:57PM (#21860846) Journal
        Technology is the wild card that throws predictions to the wind. It's what differentiates modern civilization from the ancient Greeks, Romans, Sumerians, and every other now-dead civilization.

        The cheapest form of Energy widely available today is coal, providing the majority of electrical power in the United States. It produces power as cheaply as $0.05 per watt, a rate that has now been matched by Solar power. [slashdot.org] Nicely enough, solar power is at its peak right at the same time that energy use is at its peak, (during hot, sunny days!) so the usual complaints about "peak load" are largely mitigated.

        Combine that with our improved efficiencies of everything from lights to household heating, and the effect is magnified.

        I predict that energy will be cheaper in 2050 per KWH than today. Nonetheless, technologies that save power will be in far greater use than they are today, simply because the cost of being efficient is also dropping. We're moving from an economy of scarcity to an economy of plenty, and one of the first industries to be hit by this is the recording industry.

        Technology is advancing, and is continuing to advance, driven by the combination of cheap resources, a highly refined economic / capital investment system, and a generally well-educated population. Now, the interconnectedness of internet-based technologies takes the whole dynamic of education and technology and kicks it into hyperdrive.

        There will be many challenges, of that I am certain. But I'm equally certain that we'll face the challenges faster than they accumulate. Technology continues to advance the power of the able, and meet the needs of the weak.
        • Thanks to the nanotechnology revolution, things that would have been far-fetched today in terms of energy production would be commonplace as early as 20 years from now.

          Imagine by 2028 every stand-alone house or condominium complex having large-scale electric solar cell arrays on the roof, with excess energy storage using carbon-nanotube supercapacitor "battery packs." Because all the solar power generation is connected by distributed power generation, any excess of power generated during the daytime can be

    • Re:Energy crisis (Score:5, Informative)

      by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @07:51PM (#21860808)

      Dude, there's no shortage of energy and I say that as a fully paid up peak oil convert.

      We're surrounded by energy. Once natural oil production starts to slide (and I can believe that'll happen in 0-5 years, if not before) we can and probably will replace it with coal-to-liquids technology, which is crap for global warming but does solve the problem of powering our food trucks.

      It's an open question what will happen after that. Our investment in petroleum based propulsion is gigantic. It's lockin on a far bigger scale than Windows ever was. Even relatively minor changes like ethanol have problems with things like pipeline incompatability. Bigger changes like going to all-electric cars are thrown around without thinking through the costs.

      Personally, I wouldn't be surprised at all if in 2108 we're still using cars powered by petroleum. Not petroleum that we suck out of the ground with hi-tech straws of course. That'll probably end in the next 50 years. Probably, either petroleum manufactured from biomass [ls9.com] or extracted directly from the air and water [newscientist.com] (CO from the air, H from electrolysis, CO + H == syngas, input to the fischer-trope process). Petrol is amazingly energy dense, easy to transport and we have very hundreds of millions (billions?) of vehicles deployed that use it already ..... carbon-neutral renewable petroleum? What's not to like?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by KnowledgeKeeper ( 1026242 )
      Most probably the population of Earth will be greatly reduced due to the shortage of energy.

      I concur. But, the problem isn't just energy. Thinking of peak oil? What about peak metals Copper is already getting pretty thin. Not only that, the copper for our today's use has to be 99.95% pure [basemetals.com]. Zinc is on the list, too. The estimate is that there is 26% of Earth's copper bound in non-recyclable state (ie. landfills) and about 19% for zinc. Some estimates [sciam.com] mention total depletion in 100yrs [scienceagogo.com].

      I guess we're l
    • Most probably the population of Earth will be greatly reduced due to the shortage of energy. That means hundreds of millions people will die unless something miraculous happens. Do not forget that our civilization depends on cheap energy and energy will be much more expensive in the future.

      Cheap and expensive are relative terms. We will have plenty of energy at a little higher rate than being paid now, in other words a little higher than bottled water or Gatorade.
  • No. The New York City of tomorrow is here right now. Most of the building that will be here then are built already. More then you may think were already there in 1908. New York is physically highly resistant to change. There will be some differences yes. Fresh Kills is well on the way to being a major park. (No really) If anything the radical changes will be occurring in Hoboken and Jersey City. They are the natural extensions of the city and with the Access to Regions Core project, future PATH tunne
  • None of them predicted a radioactive hole in the water.

    • Here's how it works: You get the experts together, opine on the "100 years in the future" scenario, and then you know positively what won't happen.

  • Will the "action" be here? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:52PM (#21860380)
    While I agree that New York will definitely be standing 100 years from today, I doubt that the "action" among world cities will be in New York. Think about finance and entertainment.

    Having visited Shanghai just last month and I must say I was very very impressed. Traffic lights, the weather, the transport system were all on track to be more modern as compared to what we have here in New York.

    Sadly, the status quo here in New York will not change anytime soon, and that will seal our fate mainly because of corruption.

  • Also (Score:3, Insightful)

    by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:58PM (#21860410) Journal
    The RIAA tracks your DNA and listens to everything you hear through implanted microphones, extracting micropayments wirelessly for everything you hear.

    • The RIAA tracks your DNA and listens to everything you hear through implanted microphones, extracting micropayments wirelessly for everything you hear.

      And remember

    • In 2108 the "DRM war" will have resulted in a messy, inconclusive draw with neither "side" obviously winning.

      Music will be completely DRM free, and mostly sold by artists themselves direct from their websites using whatever the codec-de-jure is. URLs to simple "how to pay" files will be embedded using stenography into the audio itself, imperceptible to the human ear but easily decoded by peoples web-phones whether they are heard on the radio, in clubs, live, at a friends house etc. Paying for music won't

  • The real NYC (Score:2, Insightful)

    by NASA NERD ( 1207184 )
    its not gonna be all that shiny and new. it probably gonna be pretty dirty. Trust me, i live in New York. Also, the story said some "knowledgeable" and intelligent New Yorkers, and not many intelligent people go to School of the Future (the brains are at The Salk School of Science!)

  • Very good multimedia presentation of what New York will look like in the near and far future if we would just leave it alone.

    http://www.worldwithoutus.com/multimedia.html [worldwithoutus.com]

  • A forgotten city (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dorpus ( 636554 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @07:47PM (#21860780)
    Will it become a place where Latin American and African Christians live in tense coexistence with Moslems, while absentee landlords from Asia own everything? Will whites become so rare that New Yorkers will stare in fascination at white people? Jews will have long since have converted to Buddhism or intermarried with others, that they are a regarded as a mysterious ancient people like the Druids or Manicheans. The world's economic center of gravity will have long since shifted South and East, so New York will be a historical curiosity like Philadelphia or Pittsburgh today. (In their time, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were the apex of American culture and technology.) At the request of France's Islamic government, the Statue of Liberty will be replaced with a statue of Sayyid Qutb, every schoolkid will take museum trips to the "Palestinian Holocaust Museum", Chinese financiers will turn Central Park into a replica of the Forbidden City, while trendy New Yorkers will receive cosmetic gene therapy to look more Arab, African, or Hispanic.

    • Or, in other words...

      Vote Ron Paul 2008: When the fleet-footed ones come, will you be ready?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by moosesocks ( 264553 )
      1) The parent poster needs to chill out, and drop the racist undertones before I have to invoke Godwin's Law.

      2) A truly "global" society probably will cause most of the major races will blend together. Because of the current population distribution, and the way in which skin pigmentation genes work, this will probably result in the end of your beloved aryan race. All in all, we'll sunburn less easily..... and that's about it. It'll take hundreds of years, and really.... who cares?

      3) If the economic cent

  • Escape from New York (Score:3, Funny)

    by LordHuggington ( 1210226 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @07:55PM (#21860832) Homepage
    I expect a huge statue to be erected in honor of Snake Plisken in the New York of the future. Fictitious character or not, it's the only decent thing to do.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by DarrenBaker ( 322210 )
      Hell yes.

      And the carved quote would read, "President of what?" or possibly, "What did you do to me asshole?"
  • Futurama? New New York? Ain't youse guys been watchin' it?

  • Some "futures" that DID come to pass (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @08:46PM (#21861124) Homepage
    1) A moderately frequent detail in science-fiction stories was lights that would automatically turn themselves on when someone entered a room and turn themselves off when there was nobody in it.

    I remember thinking this was utter nonsense, because, based on the price of photocells, relays, iconoscope tubes, or whatever it would have taken to do this circa 1950 or 1960, it didn't seem within the range of credibility that this would be economically feasible... especially given the low cost of electricity (and the expectation that nuclear power plants would soon make electricity "too cheap to meter.")

    2) Google is not really equivalent to Isaac Asimov's Multivac, but it is a recognizable approximation. You do type in questions... in natural language if you like, Google is smart enough to ignore the extra words!--and it does draw on a huge worldwide base of human knowledge and present "answers" in direct, human readable form.

    3) Flat TV you can hang on a wall. For a good five decades, Popular Science and the like were trumpeting invention after invention that was going to make it possible to have "flat TV you can hang on a wall." (One was a very shallow CRT, only a few inches deep, with an electron gun that fired in from the side and electromagnetic fields that deflected the beam toward the phosphor...) This hung fire for so long I thought I would never see it in my lifetime.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MichaelSmith ( 789609 )
      4) High density solid state storage: 8 gigs on a SD card the size of my thumbnail

      5) Mobile phones. Talk to anyone from just about anywhere, whenever you want

      6) LED lighting. Christmas lights this year were totally over the top. The lights you can attach to your person or your home are no longer limited by light globe technology or cost

      re 2) The web really goes beyond anything projected for IT in the past. Few writers envisaged a situation where anybody could publish pretty much any media from pretty much an
      • "2) The web really goes beyond anything projected for IT in the past. Few writers envisaged a situation where anybody could publish pretty much any media from pretty much anywhere and have any other person access it. Consider teenagers and myspace as a simple example. The forecasts from 1950 talked about ordering more milk from the supermarket computer, but nothing as emergent as what we have today."

        I think H. G. Wells' 1938 book World Brain had a few flashes of partial anticipation of the Internet in gener

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jonwil ( 467024 )
        Ironically being able to order groceries from home and have them home delivered is one of the things that the internet is still yet to do in a way that replaces the alternatives.
  • I agree that we will probably see at some point a virtual world overlaid on the real one. You will wear something that let's you see the virtual layer, and by so doing allow the virtual layer to see you. People will be able to walk through the city from their computers (or whatever they have) and interact with other virtual people or with real life people who are wearing the device that lets them see the virtual world.

    Everybody will absolutely be connected to everything at all times. You think the cel

  • NYC in 100 years will be similar but different (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ralph Spoilsport ( 673134 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @09:29PM (#21861404) Journal
    It will still be a huge city, but a much poorer city. Think something more like Rio or Lagos. there will be very rich areas, but many incredibley poor areas. The sky scrapers will be largely empty, as no one is willing to climb more than 10 stories. The trains will have stopped running some 10 years earlier. The exurbs in Jersey were plowed back into farmland in the 2070s, and the Satellite cities are filled with industrial mire. Many of the residents will have left to Pennsylvania and Maryland and New Jersey to engage as farmers. The natural gas gave out decades ago, so heating is done with wood and what little coal is left. There is some electricity that comes from some few solar panels and a light water breeder reactor (one of the few that was built before the collapse and depression of the 2020s and 2030s). America pissed its wealth away on bullshit back in the late 20th and early 21st century, and in the 22nd century it no longer has the resources to feed itself much less build gyroscopic trains.

    This doesn't mean disaster - it just means "poorer" by our standards. People will still live rich colourful lives. But they'll do it on 2000 calories a day, if that.

    RS

  • The big NYC financial houses are already selling themselves to Arab and Chinese investors. This trend will continue. NYC will become a UN of finance, a place where the various world financial powers can meet and make deals. There will be no middle class in NYC. The population will be the uber-wealthy and the low paid service workers they employ. America will still be the place where the rest of the world sells their stuff, but they won't be selling it for US dollars. Americans will be on the dole or working in foreign owned sweatshops, and buying shit on credit. You won't retire, you'll work till you die, if you work at all.

    Ex-president Chelsea Clinton's granddaughter will be running for president against a Saudi prince whose last name is Bush. American Idol will still have more voters and generate more interest than the presidential election. Canada and Mexico will complain about US citizens illegaly immigrating to their countries.

    The New England Patriots will be working on a 1900 game winning streak, and Bill Belichek's head will be in a jar on the sidelines. Athletes will be grown in axoltl tanks. A new Slashdot ID will be a very large number. Windows 2108 will be late, bloated and buggy. The Linux kernel will still be licensed as GPL v2, and will be at version 2.6.something.

    Apple will issue an update to the iPhone that breaks the hacks that let people install third party applications. Time Machine will let you restore files you haven't created yet. My iMac will be getting its 2000th logic board replacement.

    This post will have been moderated into oblivion, but my clone will still think it was funny.

  • everyone's eyes will be implanted with tiny displays

    While I agree that ubiquitous HUD is not an unlikely thing, I personally doubt implantation would be the path. If you can implant it, I would wager a more popular and equally effective method would be contact lens display or glasses. The only possible advantage of implantation would be greater flexibility with respect to power delivery, but power consumption/storage technology would probably make it a moot concern, with lenses charging quickly for up to many-day concurrent usage.

    I also doubt you'd be lo

  • It all depends on energy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @10:29PM (#21861802) Homepage

    If we don't find a new energy source to replace fossil fuels, industrial civilization won't last another century.

    Since the Industrial Revolution, there's been a new major power source at least once every fifty years. Until the last fifty.

    Think about it. In 1800, everything was human or animal powered, except for a windmill or waterwheel here and there, and a few wood-burning Newcomen steam engines pumping away. By 1850, the European countries and the United States had substantial railroad systems, and coal and steam powered factories. By 1900, most major cities had electric lights and street cars, and gasoline engine powered cars were starting to appear. By 1950, petroleum powered everything mobile, gas turbines powered aircraft, and nuclear power was just starting to work.

    So what do we have now that we didn't have fifty years ago? Solar cells were demonstrated in 1954. The first commercial nuclear reactor started up in December 1957. Sputnik I had been launched. Megawatt-scale windmills had been tried (1941), but weren't worth the trouble in an era of cheap oil. Oil had been found in the Middle East. Natural gas was being moved through long pipelines. Even ethanol from corn had been tried. Every major energy source we have today was working in 1957. Nothing new and big enough to matter has come along since.

    In the 1970s, there was hope that Government spending via the Department of Energy would yield something. Didn't work. In the 1980s, there was hope that the free market would yield some solution. Didn't happen.

    What's actually happening is that all the old ideas that used to be too expensive are now competitive with oil. There's oil from tar sands. Deep offshore drilling. Ethanol from corn. Wind farms. Solar panels. At $100/bbl, these all look good. But energy is expensive from here on.

  • The real difference between 1908 and 2008 ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Sunday December 30, 2007 @10:42PM (#21861912) Homepage Journal
    Is unabated pessimism.

    In 1908, the sky seemed the limit and the predictions tended to focus on new, marvelous machines and how they would make life better for all.

    In 2008, it's not so much about the technology or science but about how so few are wealthy and the general feeling is that we are on the edge of a long hard decline. The only upshot beeing that we'll somehow continue to have cutting edge tech.

    Is it just me or are people genuinely very worried, frightened and so deeply unhappy with world affairs to the point that they think it's just crap from here on out and we should welcome an age of mechanized oppression?

    To say no US Citizen would be able to afford to live in NYC while Oil Barons owned entire burroughs is complete and utter BS in my book.
    It reeks of weakness and apathy. The same weakness and apathy that brings us all the people who whine and cry about Bush and his administration yet fail to do anything about it. The same weakness and apathy that has Americans crying about Global Warming, but they all shut their faces about it when they go home to waste several hundred kilowatts watching Survivor and American Idol.

    This was supposed to be a dreamy piece, about "what if" and where "anything" could happen. What do we get? Hit over the head with "FAIL FAIL FAIL" again and again throughout the article. Not one prediciton was positive, each was somehow foreseeing a darker future where we are all worse off except the monied elite. From these predictions, it seems people have given up and the future they are grateful to accept is one where Asia leads and we just consume their tech and get whatever kind of living they give us.

    Pretty sad if you ask me.

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