and why don't we have flying cars yet? hell, back to the future 2 even had em and that was an impression of what 2015 would have been
then again, i don't see any actual futuristic shuttles (or at least some spacecraft) flying around in SAM age either. did see some oversized flies around tomorrow age though (prob some sort of messed up drones
)
I'm not surprised that the roads won't go away, these games are conceptualized at a base level far longer in advance than most gamers, watching the gradual roll-out process, think. For a long time, the Future Era was to be the last Era of FoE, hence the generalized name -- and on ad banners it reads to this day something like '10 000 BC to 2063 AD...". After that came the improvisation, newer goods remained unused, events galore to keep players happy somehow... I guess, no one thought of dealing with this minor plot hole since roads never were intended to be obsolete at some point.
Why don't we all have flying cars in real life?! This has been MY bloody question for most of my life! I wanted to have one ever since I first saw them in some sci-fi thing during my childhood, I don't remember exactly, 80s. In the 90s I read in a futurist magazine that some small companies were working on them since the late 70s and the technology for them had been in existence at least 10 years before that, not only that but they would use less gas than even most gas conserving road-bound cars while travelling at ~600km/h or nearly 400mph. All right, bring 'em on!
Nothing.
Drones arrived. For public use. The bore cameras but didn't get bigger, seemingly. A few years back, I stumbled onto a company selling big drones for use in industrialised agriculture with load-bearing capacities north of a thousand pounds.
A year back, the first drone taxi for commercial use. WHERE ARE THE EFFING FLYING CARS, I WANT TO BUY ONE! ...'No!', says the company, and others with drone cars under development follow, 'we don't aim to sell them, those will only come as taxis.', or sth to that effect.
Yeah, see, in the years between, I also learned some things about how politics work, and I mean the non-advertised parts, the parts we don't see on TV, and if all goes well don't even learn about ...maybe ever.
Power in the world is distributed a certain way and those who have it don't like to lose it. Change happens but slowly and is always accompanied by fighting in the dark ...and the resistance is strong. Power rests on control -- and cars reliant on roads and expensive fuel gives control over where and how far people can go. Imagine a company with a remote RnD center, suddenly 50 people in sky cars emerge and film stuff. Remote? Does'n exist anymore, nature's wildlife reserves, all within reach for the littering hordes. A military parade, the president attends, some hate him enough to go for a little kamikaze flashmob. Fences and walls are virtually useless now. See, not all reasons for not having flying cars are even bad. But I STILL want my flying car, of course. ^^
Induvidually operated flying cars will not come soon, and if at all, they will have to be wrung out of the powers that be, they will not give them to us -- unless perhaps they can have giant force shields first.
- Flying cars have been advertised during the 50s to be avialable for all Americans within 5-10 years, and the technology has been described as fully developed.
- Within the past 100 years, there have been developed at least five ways, some say dozens, to refit a normal gas fuelled car to run on tap water, Patents were bought but never developed, workshops burned down, inventors got suicided.
- Nikola Tesla is even said to have invented, and there is evidence for it, a car running on Earth's electrical field, no fuel required, just an antenna array the size of about two gas car batteries. He reportedly pitched his idea to General Motors even adding that with further modifications, his technologiy could be used to negate gravity and literally let entire cities fly. GM was extatic -- until the asked where to put the meter and learned that Earth's field would be, naturally, free for all! Patents were bought, the rest is, sadly, NOT history. Then came Elon Musk and used Nikola's good name for that PATHETIC excuse for an electrical car using THAT name!
The reason why we don't have the most potent technologies to let us live the free life we want, for example of a simple farmer with unlimited free energy, or being an interplanetary logistics expert like Han Solo ;-), is that these seemingly simple things actually are A LOT of power, and power on this day's Earth is jealously guarded by not so many who have it. And few of those who have not, realise how little they have and where they had to look and what the had to do to reclaim what they've given away in ignorance over generations, largely for the promise of safety ...that never came.
But together, someday, maybe soon, will we be able to wrest the power back to the people, inch by inch. I believe this. I have to. Because I want my friggin' FLYING CAR! ...But I might settle for a Millenium Falcon.
