State of transportation in 50 years.
50 years! It’s a long time sure, but in terms of human’s existence or the cosmos it’s a blip. Regardless of whether you view it as a chunky blob of time or the beat of a humming bird’s wings, one thing is for certain. Transportation is an industry on the cusp of radical exponential changes. By and large, not-withstanding improvements in efficiency and safety, we still have the same basic units of transport as we did 50 years ago. Cars, trains, metro, airplanes, boats, bike, cycle, skateboard all harken back to the last century. The new kids on the block like e-bike, while certainly shiny don’t radically transform the landscape of transportation.
But with things like, hyperloop, starship, boring, self-driving on the horizon transportation of the future will likely resemble nothing of today. Also, can we take a moment here and appreciate the fact that #inelonwetrust has his toes in all 4 of the above entities (and kick-started 3 of then). I predict he’s going to be the richest man in 2030 and likely will end up as the Albert Einstein of this century. Don’t piss him off (especially on Twitter).
Anyway my goal here is to not deify Mr Musk, but provide my own arm-chair strokes on where I think transportation is headed and what I’d additionally like.
Self-driving cars — This thing is but a given. It’s no longer a matter of if, but when. More so when will legislative catch up with technology. I think in this respect the legislation will benefit from fresh blood and new thinkers. Yes we need to temper innovation with thoughtfulness, but to me the tilt seems to be more towards slowing things down. The Uber incident certainly helped no one.
Starship — this is the one I’m personally most excited about. As a young kid, I would devour encyclopedias on rockets and aeronautical engineering. As fate would have it however, my career had other plans for me and I ended up talking to computers. While it’s fun and great, it doesn’t feel “real”.
