Why We Don't Have Flying Cars

Imagine this. You walk up to your driveway where your car is parked. You reach for the handle that automatically senses your presence, confirms your identity, and opens to welcome you in. You sit down, the controls appear in front of you, and your seatbelt secures itself around your waist. Instead of driving forward onto the pavement, you take off. You soar into the skies like an eagle and fly to your destination. This is what technology promises: freedom, power, and something undeniably cool.

The part we fail to imagine is what happens when your engine sputters before takeoff. What happens when you reach the sky and there are thousands of other vehicles in the air, all trying to remain in those artificial lanes? How do we deal with traffic? Which directions are we safely allowed to go? And how high?

We have flying cars today. They're called helicopters. In understanding the helicopter, we understand why our dream remains a dream. There's nothing romantic about helicopters. They're deafeningly loud and incredibly expensive to buy and maintain. They require highly skilled pilots, are dangerously vulnerable to engine failure, and present a logistical nightmare of three-dimensional traffic control.

I can't even picture what a million of them buzzing between skyscrapers would look like. Chaos, noise pollution, and a new form of gridlock in the sky. Even with smaller drones, as the technology evolves and becomes familiar, cities are creating regulations around them, sucking all the fun and freedom out in favor of safety and security.

This leads me to believe that the whole idea of flying cars and drones is more about freedom than practicality. And unregulated freedom is impossible.

The Pattern Repeats

This isn't limited to flying cars. The initial, pure idea is always intoxicating. But the moment we build a prototype, we're forced to confront the messy reality.

In 1993, a Japanese man brought a video phone to demo for my father as a new tech to adopt in our embassy. I was only a child, but I remember the screen lighting up with a video feed of the man sitting right next to my father. I could only imagine the possibilities. It was something I thought only existed in sci-fi movies. If this was possible, teleportation couldn't be too far away.

In my imagined future, we'd sit at a table with life-like projections of colleagues from across the globe, feeling as if we were in the same room. It would be the end of business travel, a world without borders.

But now that the technology is ubiquitous, the term "Zoom fatigue" is trending. It's ironic when I get on a call and see that 95% of my colleagues have their cameras turned off. In movies, communication was spontaneous. You press a button, your colleauge appears as a hologram, and you converse. In reality, there's a calendar invite, a link, and the awkward "you're on mute!" dance. It's a scheduled performance, not an organic interaction. And then there are people who have perfect lighting, high-speed internet, and a quiet home office. And those who don't.

Video calls have made us realize the importance of physical space and connection. Facebook's metaverse didn't resolve this.

The Smartphone

Imagine having a device that holds all of human knowledge at the click of a button. For generations, this was the ultimate dream of librarians and educators. It would create a society of enlightened, informed citizens. And we got the smartphone.

Despite being a marvel of technology, the library of the world at your fingertips, it hasn't ushered us into utopia. The attention economy it brought along has turned it into a slot machine designed to hijack our dopamine cycles. You may have Wikipedia open in one tab, but right next to it is TikTok. The medium has reshaped the message from "seek knowledge" to "consume content."

While you have access to information, misinformation is just as rampant. The constant stimulation kills moments of quiet reflection, which are often the birthplace of creativity and deep thought.

The Cost of Convenience

In The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, every desire can be delivered by pulling a lever on the machine. Whether it's food, a device, or toilet paper. The machine delivers everything. With Amazon, we've created a pretty similar scenario. I ordered replacement wheels for my trash bin one evening, expecting them to arrive after a couple of days. The very next morning, they were waiting at my doorstep. Amazing.

But this isn't magical. Behind it are real human workers who labor without benefits, job security, or predictable income. They have an algorithmic boss that can be more demanding than a human one. That promise of instant delivery has created a shadow workforce of people dealing with traffic, poor weather, and difficult customers, all while racing against a timer. The convenience for the user is built on the stress of the driver.

The dream of a meal from anywhere didn't account for the reality of our cities now being clogged with double-parked delivery scooters and a constant stream of gig workers.

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Every technological dream follows the same pattern. The initial vision is pure, focusing only on the benefit. The freedom, the convenience, the power. But reality is always a compromise, a negotiation with physics, economics, and most importantly, human psychology and society.

We wanted flying cars. We understood the problems. And we got helicopters with a mountain of regulations instead. That's probably for the best.

The lesson isn't to stop dreaming or stop innovating. It's to dream with our eyes open. When we imagine the future, we need to ask not just "what will this enable?" but also "what will this cost?" Not in dollars, but in human terms. In stress, inequality, unintended consequences, and the things we'll lose along the way.

We're great at imagining benefits and terrible at predicting costs. And until we get better at the second part, every flying car we build will remain grounded by the weight of what we failed to consider.

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