[extropy-chat] Communication vs transportation

Brian Lee brian_a_lee at hotmail.com
Mon Dec 1 18:22:17 UTC 2003


I've thought a bit on this lately and am a little let down with the pace of 
transportation. If you look at air travel over the last 50 years there are 
few major breakthroughs. 75 years ago, it took weeks to travel around the 
world and then with commercial air travel, that was cut down to a day or 
merely hours. 50 years later, we're still pretty much at the same flight 
times. We have more routes and scheduled and tvs in the seats but flights 
are still about the same length. Perhaps they are even longer if you take 
security waits into the equation.

I think the main reason why air travel tech has stalled is lack of 
competition. There's really only two companies making planes-Airbus and 
Boeing- and both are heavily subsidized by their respective governments. Air 
travel is subsidized by local governments and businesses who don't have much 
incentive to decrease travel time.

For ground travel, in the US at least, road trips take less time because the 
speed limit has been increased from 55 to 70-75 on interstates. It's nice to 
be save 2 hours from an Atlanta to Miami trip, but I'm still waiting for 15 
minute NY-London trips and flying cars.

How long until the science fiction breakthroughs come on line? Transporters, 
etc.

I've done a bit of teleconferencing and videoconferencing and while it is 
sufficient for basic communication, it's not yet replacing meatspace.

BAL
>From: "Henrique Moraes Machado" <hemm at br.inter.net>
>To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>Subject: [extropy-chat] Communication vs transportation
>Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 13:57:22 -0200
>
>Hello extropians,
>
>I've been reflecting lately on communication versus transportation. The 
>first is developing faster than ever, while the former seems to be stalled. 
>Is it related? Are we concentrating our resourses in evolving our 
>communication means because our transportation means are poor, or does de 
>current pace of developments on comms in fact causes less effort on 
>advancing transportation? Just thinking. Sorry for the bad english, but 
>it's not my native language and I am still learning.
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>extropy-chat mailing list
>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
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