Here’s a future scenario for you. Imagine this trend catching on and staying with us:

While the headlines concentrate on peace breaking out in Iraq, that’s but part of a worldwide trend for the last few years. Violence has also diminished, or disappeared completely, in places like Nepal, Chechnya. Congo, Indonesia and Burundi. This continues a trend that began when the Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union no longer subsidized terrorist and rebel groups everywhere.

Via InstaPundit.

Merry Christmas!

When the SpecuWife and I first started going out, I was something less than the very model of emotional stability and maturity that you’ve all come to know so well from reading these pages. I had this rather quaint idea that she and I could keep things casual and avoid getting into a a full-blown relationship. In fact, I wouldn’t even allow the word “relationship” into our conversations. I insisted on using a euphemism, “the R word.”

Well, in the words of John Cleese explaining that the woman should, in fact be burned as a witch because she turned him into a newt — I got better.

These days, I just couldn’t be more comfortable with the word relationship, so I now use the same euphemism to refer to a different word, a word that I think is all too frequently offered up as a pretext for being a total lame-out, buzzkill, or any other variety of foot-dragging techno-progress-a-phobe.

That word, of course, is “realistic.”

So it isn’t too surprising that when I used the R Word in a recent comment thread, reader and frequent acerbic commenter Mdarling called me on it:

Realistic? really?

How about these for some realistic guys:

- “640k ought to be enough for anybody.” – Bill Gates 1981

- “So we went to Atari and said, “Hey we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.” And they said, “No”. So then we went to Hewlett Packard and they said, “Hey, we don’t need you; you haven’t even got through college yet.” – Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s pc.

You know this area of tech blindness at least as well most, better I would think

I’m not asking for my own personal orbital vehicle nor even my flying car (though I think a flying Segway would be wicked cool and not that hard technologically). I just want enough electric storage to move 1500-2000 pounds for 80-100 miles, that can recharge overnight. The technology exists now- though I admit there is no market and Toyota was right to hide the plug in outlet on the early Priuses. (“Priusi” ?)

So the realism you are urging is on the market- not the technology. And this may be one of those Catch-22′s where no one will build it commercially because there is no market and there is no market because the thing is not commercially available.

Well, he’s got me there. When I use the word “realistic,” I’m talking strictly in terms of what the current political/social/economic infrastructure will allow, certainly not what is technologically possible. Personal orbital vehicles and flying Segways, much less the modest electric car that MD is looking for definitely could be developed in a reasonable time frame. I mean, we’ve already had electric cars, so all we’re talking about doing is tweaking the specs of something that already exists.The Apollo program showed us how fast an idea can become technological reality, and it only scratched the surface. The greater the level of motivation, the longer the list of things that we will allow might be “realistic.”

It’s kind of like When World’s Collide. I think if we had a couple years warning of Earth’s certain demise, we could have a substantial population living in space — maybe in space stations, maybe on Mars — within that time. But failing that level of motivation, changes are bound to move more slowly. So in spite of warnings from serious people who are looking at issues much more realistically than most of us would ever care to, there is still no space ark under development.

But there would be if there was general agreement that we needed one. Just as there will be flying Segways when the technology is there, and the technology will be there sometime before the world at large is good and ready for it, but long after the good-and-ready point for people like MD (and me, for that matter.) Meanwhile, we can at least take solace in the fact that we do have some early prototype drawings of this technology in old Dick Tracy comic strips. I wanted to reproduce one here, but I cannot find any online. There is a reference to the technology here, however, with some very cool images of a more — you guessed it — realistic prototype:

So, what do you want to see in the next five years — fully electric cars dominating our highways? Personal flying platforms? Personal orbital spacecraft? Personal Star-Trek style replicators? Or better yet, transporters?

Here’s a thought to ponder:

Putting all social, political, and (most) economic considerations aside for a moment, what is the most outrageous, unrealistic technological development that we could see in place one year from today. Five years? Ten years?

I think several of the ones I listed above could happen in that period. What do you think?

When the SpecuWife and I first started going out, I was something less than the very model of emotional stability and maturity that you’ve all come to know so well from reading these pages. I had this rather quaint idea that she and I could keep things casual and avoid getting into a a full-blown relationship. In fact, I wouldn’t even allow the word “relationship” into our conversations. I insisted on using a euphemism, “the R word.”

Well, in the words of John Cleese explaining that the woman should, in fact be burned as a witch because she turned him into a newt — I got better.

These days, I just couldn’t be more comfortable with the word relationship, so I now use the same euphemism to refer to a different word, a word that I think is all too frequently offered up as a pretext for being a total lame-out, buzzkill, or any other variety of foot-dragging techno-progress-a-phobe.

That word, of course, is “realistic.”

So it isn’t too surprising that when I used the R Word in a recent comment thread, reader and frequent acerbic commenter Mdarling called me on it:

Realistic? really?

How about these for some realistic guys:

- “640k ought to be enough for anybody.” – Bill Gates 1981

- “So we went to Atari and said, “Hey we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.” And they said, “No”. So then we went to Hewlett Packard and they said, “Hey, we don’t need you; you haven’t even got through college yet.” – Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s pc.

You know this area of tech blindness at least as well most, better I would think

I’m not asking for my own personal orbital vehicle nor even my flying car (though I think a flying Segway would be wicked cool and not that hard technologically). I just want enough electric storage to move 1500-2000 pounds for 80-100 miles, that can recharge overnight. The technology exists now- though I admit there is no market and Toyota was right to hide the plug in outlet on the early Priuses. (“Priusi” ?)

So the realism you are urging is on the market- not the technology. And this may be one of those Catch-22′s where no one will build it commercially because there is no market and there is no market because the thing is not commercially available.

Well, he’s got me there. When I use the word “realistic,” I’m talking strictly in terms of what the current political/social/economic infrastructure will allow, certainly not what is technologically possible. Personal orbital vehicles and flying Segways, much less the modest electric car that MD is looking for definitely could be developed in a reasonable time frame. I mean, we’ve already had electric cars, so all we’re talking about doing is tweaking the specs of something that already exists.The Apollo program showed us how fast an idea can become technological reality, and it only scratched the surface. The greater the level of motivation, the longer the list of things that we will allow might be “realistic.”

It’s kind of like When World’s Collide. I think if we had a couple years warning of Earth’s certain demise, we could have a substantial population living in space — maybe in space stations, maybe on Mars — within that time. But failing that level of motivation, changes are bound to move more slowly. So in spite of warnings from serious people who are looking at issues much more realistically than most of us would ever care to, there is still no space ark under development.

But there would be if there was general agreement that we needed one. Just as there will be flying Segways when the technology is there, and the technology will be there sometime before the world at large is good and ready for it, but long after the good-and-ready point for people like MD (and me, for that matter.) Meanwhile, we can at least take solace in the fact that we do have some early prototype drawings of this technology in old Dick Tracy comic strips. I wanted to reproduce one here, but I cannot find any online. There is a reference to the technology here, however, with some very cool images of a more — you guessed it — realistic prototype:

So, what do you want to see in the next five years — fully electric cars dominating our highways? Personal flying platforms? Personal orbital spacecraft? Personal Star-Trek style replicators? Or better yet, transporters?

Here’s a thought to ponder:

Putting all social, political, and (most) economic considerations aside for a moment, what is the most outrageous, unrealistic technological development that we could see in place one year from today. Five years? Ten years?

I think several of the ones I listed above could happen in that period. What do you think?