Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Re:Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind o... by wanorris on Friday September 02, 2011 @04:44PM (#2955512)

Some interesting points, but I think robotic cars will/would be a bigger enabler for exurbs than for actual city dwelling. Get yourself some acreage at the edge of some teeming metropolis, have 60-90 minutes of uninterrupted time each way in your little cocoon to do as you please, have face time in the office once you get there.

Use the commute time to telecommute and shorten (or extend!) your in-office work day, or spend it pursuing solitary leisure activities and work a normal-length day at the office.

This would be awesome.

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Re:Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind o... by cpeterso on Friday September 02, 2011 @05:27PM (#2955674)

All this talk about robotic cars carrying people long distances reminds me of Robert Heinlein's short story "The Roads Must Roll". Huge, underground moving sidewalks running at 100 mph replace highways and railways as the dominant transportation method in the United States.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Roads_Mus...

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Re:Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind o... by hugh3 on Friday September 02, 2011 @10:37PM (#2956309)

Interesting, I'd always thought that idea was due to Asimov in The Caves of Steel, but apparently the Heinlein predates the Asimov by 14 years.

Unfortunately, fast-moving underground moving sidewalks sound like an incredible waste of energy.

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Re:Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind o... by stretchwithme on Sunday September 04, 2011 @02:52AM (#2958980)

or tiny gears that only move when vehicles arrive and mesh with the bottom of them, carrying them along.

Would be nice to expend only the energy required to move people and things and anything needed to take care of them (safety systems)

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Re:Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind o... by RyanMcGreal on Saturday September 03, 2011 @12:16PM (#2957526)

You still have to power the thing. Declining oil production and the limitations of battery power are going to be a severe limiting factor that will influence the way we roll out self-driving automobiles.

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Re:Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind o... by jerf on Saturday September 03, 2011 @09:04PM (#2958516)

Fleets of self-driving vehicles nearly eliminate the problems with battery power; they can easily schedule when they need to return to the station to swap out their battery packs for fresh ones.

I still think technology is winning the resource depletion race, even if we ignore the fact that it's really starting to look like oil production isn't actually near the end of its road yet. And if we don't ignore that, the likelihood that gas (or more broadly "energy") will just be "too expensive" for people to want to jaunt about anytime in the next 20 years seems to be decreasing rather than increasing. A great deal of our current apparent shortages of various things are 100% self-imposed.

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Re:Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind o... by stretchwithme on Sunday September 04, 2011 @02:58AM (#2958984)

Presumably a robot could also connect to overhead or embedded wires, reducing the size of batteries to that needed for areas without that infrastructure.

Buses in SF run totally with overhead wires. You see the drivers having to reconnect to them when they pop out.

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