This blog is supposed to be about history. Yet for my first post, I would like to talk about an issue that has been bothering most of man since around the 1800s. It is probably a well-known fact that Leonardo da Vinci was able to design a helicopter hundreds of years before it ever existed. Not only helicopters, but planes, tanks, and other similar vehicles or devices. Jules Verne was also able to write the book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and describe his idea of a submarine before they had the technology to make such complicated undersea explorers. The point is, that some people in the past have been able to predict or describe things that were still dreams at that time, and would later become a reality. Hundreds, possibly thousands of ancient civilizations have dreamed of flying, but deemed it impossibility. Yet nowadays, flying is a natural occurrence, and an individual can go from one side of the world to the other in less than a day. That’s half a planet. What was once deemed impossible is now a natural occurrence.
Yet there are other times that prediction have just been completely off. For example, Bill Gates once stated that each person would only need a few kilobytes of data, yet now, when you look at such a statement, it is ridiculous, even comical. Each person uses hundreds of gigabytes, not including music on their iPod or data on their Blackberries. Development of technology is extremely unpredictable. For the last few decades, people have been predicting that by now, there would be flying cars, in order to solve traffic or overpopulation problems. How wrong could this be, because instead of everybody having a flying car, construction companies simply build more roads. Even more ridiculous is the fact that some people believed that we would actually be able to live in a biodome on the moon, or Mars. These predictions may have only came about around the era during the Space Race so it is quite acceptable. Man does not need to expand to space yet because they can just make their buildings taller and taller. Lunar or Martian bases are too expensive and unreliable for people to live in. In fact, NASA is being criticized as an organization that is no longer needed. Now that the US has been able to overtake Russia in the Space Race, and because Russia is no longer as powerful as it once was, space projects are no longer being encouraged, they are believed to be a waste of money.
This era that man is in right now is the era where things are being created smaller and smaller, there is a noticeable trend with the design of new flatscreens, smaller laptops, thinner and thinner cell phones, the list goes on and on. Unlike in World War 1 or World War 2, the militaries of different countries do not seem to be advancing in war technology. Both World Wars where one of the main reasons that development of tanks or airplanes grew so rapidly. It is said that the wartime economy is the best type, since everyone is willing to work, even children. Right now, proper ground warfare is essentially negated since Nukes have shown themselves so be such an easy way to devastate entire cities. Hopefully though, nuclear missiles should only be used for the mind games, because if a single country launched a nuke, others would follow and the entire world would be devastated. If World War 3 ever comes (hopefully it never will), then one can expect Cold War 2, or Space Race 2. If another burst in technology happened, I could be writing emails and checking the internet on mars and whatnot. I am a great fan of science fiction, people living on other planets or on satellites or bases. This is probably what would happen if ever there was another war. When man is under threat, they have shown themselves to be geniuses, developing new technology at an exponential rate. For now, though, large otherworld spaceships or extra-terrestrial biodome cities can wait. Humans are still working on making everything smaller to accommodate the growing population.
Inspired by:
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/gallery/2008-12/dude-wheres-my-flying-car-and-jetpack-and-fusion-energy
http://science.howstuffworks.com/future-space-channel.htm
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