astercontrol:

Fantasies about future technology are often mostly just fantasies about changes in society.

Sometimes this is sorta reasonable

Like when the fantasy of being able to live forever by loading your mind into a computer is also a fantasy about a world without planned obsolescence and subscription models and shitty engineering, where computers and any software installed in them actually have a chance of lasting any longer than the body you’re in now

Other times, it is nowhere near reasonable

Like the fantasy of “flying cars”

Which have existed for ages… it’s just that when they’re being used as cars they have to follow the same road laws as cars… and when they’re being used as airplanes they have to follow the same air traffic laws as airplanes

and the fantasy of a flying car is mostly (as far as I can tell) a fantasy about being able to drive a car and pilot a plane without having to actually follow any of the laws that keep those things even marginally safe

(and also, possibly, to have a vehicle that can fly without being the shape that is required by laws of aerodynamics in order to be physically capable of flight? I dunno. Fantasies are weird, man)

Though, if you do still want a “roadable aircraft” (the flying cars that currently exist) but your obstacle is that they’re expensive and you can’t afford one… (as the lament is often worded, emphasis added by me: “where’s my flying car?”)

….Then that’s a fantasy about economic changes, I guess.

And have patience. Because economics is still having enough damn trouble with “where’s my healthcare” and “where’s my stable access to housing.”