Flying Cars

This strip got me thinking, technology is known for rapid growth. People always throw around the saying, "in a year, your computer processor will be half the size and run at double the speed."  Okay maybe not that exactly, but it is commonly known that technology growth is exponential.  This made me wonder why we actually don't have flying cars already and why developments in that technological field seem slow in comparison to other industries.  I thought maybe some science fiction was better at predicting the future than others (such as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four).  Looking into this, I found myself assuming what most people likely assume.  It is 21st century and flying cars have been imagined in every different way in TV, movies and novels.  But, despite it being the 21st century, it is only 2011.  Some of the most popular flying car examples I could think of were The Jetsons and The Fifth Element.  There is still time for flying cars to make their way from auto show prototypes to every suburban driveway, because The Jetsons takes place in 2062 and The Fifth Element in 2263.  Closer predictions, such as the year 2019 in Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? (or Blade Runner), show more restricted flying cars like hovercrafts or those limited to flying close to the Earth's surface.  Other times the flying cars are only available to the government and wealthy people, as in the case of Blade Runner.  So maybe the flying cars out today are leading us towards this next step and soon towards flying cars for the common man.

[Sometimes when I look at how much time I spend thinking about or referencing a comic strip that should have only taken 30 seconds out of my day, I wish Randall Munroe would write a bad strip every once in a while.]