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I think where technology is in general would be really difficult to grasp. Imagine telling someone you can instantly get a hold of all of your family members and friends wherever they are. Or that They could just press and button and get instant, overwhelming amounts of entertainment or up-to-date information from across the world. Imagine trying to explain how airpods work to a person that has never experienced active noise canceling. Or rule 196, or rule 34 for that matter.
Nope. It’s the other way around.
People in the 50’s were expecting space colonies by now. Nuclear energy being this wonderful fix all.
explaining why theres no flying cars or robot pets or instant gourmet food generators, etc
well the flying cars is easy: there's two reasons. First, It's very energy inefficient. for transporting people, you'll never get the same effective range for the same energy capacity whether it's running off fuel or batteries- because ground vehicles have to push it along where aircraft have to both push it along and push it up.
Secondly, it's about size and form factor. what is a flying car? a hybrid vehicle designed to be able to switch between being a ground vehicle and an aircraft. Engineering is all about balance, and designing to fit a certain task. when you go with two tasks, suddenly you're making compromises to achieve both of them. And generally those compromises means it sucks at both of them.
Just one example of the compromises: do you want a comfortable on the ground ride? the unsprung mass of a typical 4 person sedan is around two to three hundred pounds, and that's basically just the wheels . a far 103 compliant ultralight is capped at 250 pounds.
You'd also have to pile on a motor (Or motors, or some sort of transmission system) just to drive it. You'd also have to have some sort of steering system. All of that is going to turn into dead weight when you start flying... which means you're going to need bigger motors, bigger and faster rotors (or bigger wings) which all equate to even more weight- and even more fuel- which makes the thing even bigger. and bigger. Until now you have to take off and land at an airport or something, and won't be allowed to fly into a city because.... well you're liable to fall out of the sky.
More annoyingly, you're now also maintaining basically to drive trains- and those drive trains are more complicated than they would have been on their own, which makes maintenance annoying, and expensive.
And that's just one compromise. It's a lot easier to just buy a car, and buy an aircraft. and you'll be more comfortable in both.
as for robot pets... speak for yourself. Sure, they're not sentient... but I got mine...
That's no excuse! They'd be expecting everything to be "too cheap to meter" nuclear, if not Mr. Fusion.
George Jetson's flying car folded up into a briefcase. The '50s people continue to be disappointed in your lame excuses!
Lol!
I mean, read the foundation series. Asimov’s take kn where we’d be would have probably slagged most the planet… they just didn’t how dangerous that stuff is.
Which is hilarious because when he was talking about things glowing with radiation… it was literal. Humans can see x-rays as a soft blue glow. If the source is strong enough. (And that’s very much not safe to be around,)
It’ll be interesting to see what we misunderstand in our modern sci-fi