It's 2010 - where's my flying car?

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Did you think we would be more advanced by 2010? What futuristic items would you most like to see exist?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/ga...-my-flying-car

Not everyone expected to be living like The Jetsons, the space age television cartoon series of the early 1960s, but the Zogby International survey of more than 3000 adults in the United States showed many were less than enthusiastic about how far we have come by the dawn of a new decade.

"The age group most likely to be disappointed with the current level of technological advancement are 35 to 54-year-olds (36 per cent)," Zogby, which conducted the survey commissioned by the website ScoopDaily, said in a statement.

About 21 percent of people believe we are more technologically advanced than they thought we would be by 2010, while 37 per cent believed we are on target for their expectations.

About a third of people 70 years and older said they thought current technology was more advanced than they thought it would be.

"First Globals, those age 18-30, are much less likely than older generations to say the technological advancements up until now have exceeded their expectations," Zogby added.

Not surprisingly, men were more likely than women to say they thought there would have been greater advances by 2010 to the Jetson lifestyle with its flying saucer-like cars and robotic servants.

[Andrew Curnow]

I know that certainly when I was in the later years of Primary School, we had at least one 'science' lesson which more or less assumed that by now (ie, by the time we were adults) travel to the moon would be as commonplace as catching a bus. Robots, as household servants, seemed to be an accepted assumption too.

What I finds interesting, though, is that although that technology hasn't got to that level in those areas, there are other things which I don't remember expecting at all, which HAVE come on in leaps and bounds. Mobile technology, I would say, came more or less out of nowhere. And even more obviously, the home PC. I don't recall computers being mentioned AT ALL in Primary School; and although our secondary school had a couple of BBC Micros and some other machines of a less famous make (I can't recall the name now) there was still in my time, a sense that computers were at best a specialised area that not everybody would ever need to know about, and at worst something very geeky - our 'computer club' was basically a converted cupboard with one PC in, into which probably about twenty or thirty of us would squeeze.

So, on the whole, it's probably much nicer to be able to communicate and discuss this subject on my PC wearing a knitted jumper, than it would be to have to talk to myself wearing a silver jumpsuit!!

[Captain Tancredi]

I think the thing is that technology developed in different ways- no, we don't have robotic servants, but most houses have a microwave which can provide you with a hot meal in less than ten minutes. We don't have flying cars because the oil didn't run out quite as quickly as expected so there was no incentive to develop them. We don't have robotic servants because it's still going to be cheaper for the vast majority of people to pay a cleaner minimum wage for a few hours a week.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I think the thing is 2010 is a benchmark year for Sci Fi, so we can't help if we're over 30 looking at the predictions in the namesake film of the 80s. I guess most dissapointing is how Jupiter and the Moon from a manned perspective seem far away. During the 60s mankind went from no manned rockets, to landing on the Moon a huge leap forward in 10 years.

There has not since been the progress made in terms of technology - for good reason - it used up a huge percent of the US GDP. However sci fi kind of kept extrapolating from that curve.

We have had robot probes to Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and the Moon, so not all bad news.

[Si Hunt]

I think it stems from the fact that, as humans, we are incapable of measuring or predicting the passing of time. It takes time for progress - lots and lots of time. They are currently developing a space mission to send a lander onto the surface of one of Saturn's moons, to send back footage - this alone will take about 20 years. To do ANYTHING in space travel takes about that long! So it's going to take hundreds and hundreds of years from our first steps on the Moon to getting people properly into space, yet more hundreds to get people living in space... it's all so gradual.

On the other hand, we have advanced greatly in many other different ways. The internet, electric cars seem to be around the corner, you can communicate wirelessly instantly, you can heat food in a couple of minutes... it is an amazing world, but advances come very, very gradually and simply can't be predicted wholesale like they tried to do in the 1960's. Plus lifestyle is tied in with fashion, which is like a runaway train - you can't predict what the future will LOOK like because fashion is by its very nature unpredictable.

Si.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I blame Tomorrow's World!

Actually it's true, technology has advanced a lot, but in the little ways over the big ways.

I mean I doubt anyone could really have predicted that technologies rather than be separate would start to merge - so a modern mobile combines elements of a computer, walkman, internet, camera, and erm phone.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Good god that was a confusing read. I suppose they thought that trying to summarise a load of bar charts in a few sentences would make it more accessible to the layman. Whereas it actually just renders it much more confusing. What does the first 36 percent refer to? How many of that age group were disappointed, or how much that age group makes up of the total sample? Does it really help to mix up percentages and fractions? How does the statement that 35-54 year olds are most likely to be dissappointed with current technology tally with the statement that 18-30 year olds are most likely to not have current technology live up to their expectations? Are we to infer that they expect more than 35-54 year olds, but are less disappointed about it not coming true?! What on Earth does "First Globals" mean at the beginning of that sentence? WHY NOT JUST QUOTE THE ACTUAL SURVEY QUESTIONS AND ACTUAL SURVEY RESULTS?