Of particular interest is the fact that, in '66, keeping the car's battery warm enough was an issue, instead of the concern we now have keeping the batteries from overheating.
Also, we'll all suffocate by the year 2000. Read on!
Let's pause the tape for a second there. Popular Science seems to be assuming that automotive technology would stagnate in 1966, and that cars would remain filthy and inefficient forever. In their defense, maybe they had little to no evidence to believe otherwise or something? Sure, but here in The Future, we have the benefit of Actual Data from the intervening decades to check their assumption. NOAA tracks this kind of stuff. It's kind of their thing. Los Angeles is a pretty polluted city with a huge traffic problem as bad as any city gets. So, what does the data on LA say?
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/news/2012/119_0809.html
Hey, pretty cool. We're not dead yet. This is very likely due to the introduction of catalytic converters, which the editors of Popular Science wouldn't have had a clue about, way back in '66. Will electric cars become the norm? Of course, and they'll be great. However, PopSci's predictions about doom and gloom are just as questionable as their exciting predictions that we'd all have a wall-sized OLED television by 2005, and that they'd be so cheap that even the smelliest of hobos would be able to afford one (something I recall reading in a PopSci issue circa 2003 or so). Anything Popular Science says "will happen soon" should be taken with a massive grain of salt.
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1 comments:
It's an interesting viewpoint: cool new technology will be here any second, but there is no hope of improving current technology.
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