The lack of flying cars in the world has become a gripping concern for many people like myself, people who actually need flying cars now, and who are sick of all the jokes about it. I like jokes, but when they replace innovation and imagination, then it's time to turn off the laughing gas and get serious. Those comical moans of "we were PROMISED flying cars!", and an endless barrage of 'Jetsons' jokes eventually became the only accepted way to address the missing cars in the sky, and now I'm just dismayed that we would give up so easily on something so important.
flying car? To remove support cables, try squinting.
Instead of writing a nice article about how hilarious it is that we still don't have flying cars, here I will only begin the process of trying to understand WHY we still don't have them, and how the jokes really aren't helping anything.
Schooling
Modern science may be hard to keep up with, and schoolchildren can hardly be expected to learn the most recent advances in technology, but even the basic sciences are often barely touched in schools. Old science can be addressed, but there are important sectors of older technology and science that seem to stagnate over the years, such as energy.
For an example, lets look at the most advanced modern nuclear power plant for a second. While some regular water is boiled with fancy thermo-nuclear heat, the actual turbines that create the electricity are ultimately turned by the resulting steam from that plain boiling water. So basically, the modern world is still powered by steam.
That is where we are apparently at, but I won't be discouraged so easily. The sky is waiting.
I have to wonder if I'm properly prepared to address this flying car business. Do our public educational systems teach young people the basics of how the physical world works, like gravity, or electricity, or how to invent, to solve problems, using a clear understanding of physics and science? The answer to that may be part of WHY we still don't have flying cars. Coming from the USA and a background of the American "educational system", it would be easy for me to blame that notoriously flawed program for my own inability to build a flying car, so that is pretty much what I will do here in this article.
Let's Build a Flying Car!
That's right, perhaps instead of asking why we still don't have flying cars in the sky, we should just figure out how to make one ourselves, and get to the skies right away. Let's dust off some of that old science we have laying around, since this project will require a certain amount of technology, I'm guessing.
What is Gravity?
With a glance at our goal-- a 'flying car', it seems that the first obstacle to overcome is going to be gravity. What is 'gravity'? Modern science should come in handy now, with a definition of this common force, but apparently it's not that simple. A bit of research will show that the guy who invented gravity, Sir Isaac Newton, was a mathematician of sorts, and most people still don't understand how he did that trick, with it's fancy math equations and big numbers.
When I was in school, we never got past the Newtonian apple story-- our red crayons had dutifully colored in the apples on the copied lesson, but we barely had time to color the rest of the tree before we were herded elsewhere for our continuing 'well rounded education'. As a graphic artist, I'd learned a lot that day, but unfortunately I won't be much help in explaining Newton's 'gravity' here.
Anyway, we'll probably have to come back to the concept of gravity if we want our car to defy it, but meanwhile, how will we power this flying car as it somehow skips across the open sky? Before we can start building, we will still need to do a bit more research in that area. The craft will need to have at least some electricity, for the cigarette lighter and stereo, and of course power windows. How complicated will it be to have some electricity?
What is Electricity?
What is it that we are first taught about the common electricity that surrounds us in our lives and homes? From the very beginning of life, a stern and wise warning from the grown-ups is due when it comes to the deadly juice waiting in the toaster or that handy wall outlet.
"You stay away from that! It's boring, and it can kill you!"
That single lesson about electricity will often endure for entire lifetimes. Learned at a young age and passed through the generations, the teachings are confirmed with highly-visible 'HIGH VOLTAGE' signs placed on barbed fences-- warning of imminent death if touched, while society always promises certain boredom if any hint of the mechanics of that same electricity are discussed out loud, in public.
it could be that electricity just hates disco
Something that is too dangerous to touch while also being off-limits for acceptable discussion gets my attention though. Forget about the flying car for a minute-- maybe there is more to electricity than we have been told. Maybe the real reason that electricity is kept up on poles away from reach is so that we won't feel as curious about it, and we won't tinker with it, and we won't make any new discoveries about it through creative experiments.
Maybe it's intentionally cloaked in danger so that natural human inventiveness won't stumble upon new ideas, new ways to use electricity, and new ways to understand what it even is, or perhaps even what the very universe is made of. Suspicious indeed.
"What electricity? 'HBO' is in here somewhere!"
Formula for Secrecy
Just as things like magic and drugs have traditionally been given a fearful veneer, electricity may have secrets that are being obscured under this fearful high-voltage mask of danger. With the emotion of fear attached to the idea of electrical research, the public's mind has remained dormant-- the power lines were just part of the landscape for many years-- but now with the Internet revealing everything at once, things are starting to change quickly. Technology is exponentially becoming more advanced, and the secrets of electricity and gravity are already popping out.
What if electricity is somehow related to gravity? There are countless stories, for example, of German scientists around the time of World War II and their secretive programs in anti-gravity, and those stories seemed to involve some sort of mysterious electro-magnetic technology which remains lost or hidden in obfuscation today.
Then, there's gravity and time. Is the manipulation of gravity the same as manipulating time? They seem to be related somehow, and if there's anything to it, it's certainly liable to affect the accuracy of the speedometer on our flying car, or could even get into time-travel, but I just don't know these things yet.
Conclusion
While my flying car remains in the 'research and development' phase, I'm left here on the Earth's surface a while longer noticing curious things. Electricity is easy to figure out from down here; the power lines and poles run like veins all over the landscape in a two-way system; The population gets electricity from one direction in the line, and it seems like they then willfully send all of their creative energy and their very powerful humanity back through those lines to be squandered by faceless corporations.
For the inhuman industry, this feedback loop acts as a perpetual free-energy device, but for the population of living people who reciprocate and grease this shady lighting system with their programmed ignorance, it is just another draining day of servitude under the humming power lines and numerous warning signs.
Meanwhile, I remain confident that all around the world, in little workshops and garages hidden in the neighborhoods and farms, people are tinkering. A weird bluish light is shining from a barn somewhere in the night, as there is a human tendency to tamper with the structured world, to find short-cuts and to delight the imagination with discovery. Electricity will be discovered again, and gravity might even be compelled to join in the experiments by some unexpected invitation.
Those electrical cables are stretched everywhere just overhead-- out of sight, out of mind. They tower above us and they are ignored, because the fear of danger becomes tiresome, and familiar tradition becomes comforting, even if it's wrong.
I'm looking up though, and I'm noticing those wires and poles. Whenever I get this flying car up and off the ground, those are going to be in my way.
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thanks for reading, let's build a real flying car in the comments section below. Steem powered.
all images above thanks to Pixabay