this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
401 points (97.4% liked)

Showerthoughts

30957 readers
1053 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
    • If you feel strongly that you want politics back, please volunteer as a mod.
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report the message goes away and you never worry about it.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It was right there with flying cars and domed cities on the moon. That was part of the whole Disneyworld/OMNI Magazine promise about life in the year 2000.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] FlyingSquid 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Yep. Imagine a flying car breaking down or crashing mid-air. All the passengers dead and possibly people on the ground too.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

I'm pretty sure that depends on the technology. For instance planes just become gliders in the worse possible case.

The bigger issue is when the crash by result of error. There is a limited amount of air space anyway so if you had tons of cars there would need to be highways which would create traffic equivalent to what's on the street.

In short, way more deadly for the same result.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

It’s a horrible idea if you assume that flying cars would be made using the technology currently available to us. Imagine what it would be like to own a computer the size of a house. At one point, that was the only kind of computer there was, so it was pretty obvious nobody would want one. Also, the UI was horrible, power consumption was ridiculous, capabilities were very limited etc. If technological development had gotten stuck at that level, computers and the internet would not have become very popular.

However, many things have changed since then, carrying a personal computer in your pocket became possible, many of the old downsides were eliminated, capabilities were expanded, many use cases were invented etc. What was called a computer back then and what we use the word for today are only vaguely related.

Similarly, what we think of as a flying car today, is a complete disaster, because we’re thinking about it in the context of modern technology. In order to make that dream a bit more realistic, we would need to many breakthroughs in many different fields.