Do you ever think about airports? I mean,do you ever really think about them? Not just how annoying it is to go to one and have to wait in long lines and all of the other crappy things that immediately come to mind.
Not what I mean. Instead I am thinking about how at one point there were no planes and then BOOM! We have planes and there needed to be airports in order to land them. It is striking to me how quickly the airplane/airport idea developed.
The Wright Brothers happened in 1903. Sixty-six years later we landed on the moon. Think about that for a second. In 1903, we celebrated the first flight of a heavier than air craft (or however else you want to qualify it, I get there were zeppelins and balloons) and it went 120 feet. In 1969, Apollo 11 traveled around 225,000 miles to the Moon! Think about that: in 63 years, we went 9,900,000 times further than we had before. I think that is an amazingly short timeline.
But think about it in other ways. I mean, just look at this timeline of airplanes…
Sixteen years after the Wright Brothers, we had the first Atlantic crossing. By the 1950s, we had commercial flights across the ocean. The first commercial flight was in 1914. It only took eleven years for someone to go “damn, how can I make some money from this?”
And then at some point, someone else went “well damn, we need a place to land these planes.” Infrastructure sprung up to support it. Governments figured they need to probably regulate things. But things happened. It just all worked out. Do not send me a link to any history of this subject…I am sure there are horrible stories about how this came about and people who destroyed lives and blah blah blah. I am sure that is in the history, just like every story of every single thing ever.
Here is another fact: the first airplane passenger death happened in 1908. No one decided it was time to put a stop to these crazy airplane contraptions. I am sure some people wanted it (I bet there are great editorials in papers back then demanding that man was not meant to fly), but for the most part…we pushed on and continued with progress. Cities built airports because they knew eventually there would be planes coming. And the people would want a faster way to travel.
What is my point to this? Not a history lesson, obviously. Instead, I was thinking about self-driving cars. Google started developing their autonomous cars in 2009 and it has been nine years and while there have been plenty of advancements, it does not seem like things are progressing like they should.
In 2016, one person was killed during an accident and people freaked out. The companies immediately stopped everything to investigate. It turned out that it was human error that caused the accident (I think that is what I remember), but that still did not matter. It will take years to get to a point where self-driving cars are the standard, where they are normal.
Before you say “well it looks like the timeline is actually ahead of schedule compared to planes.” Think about how much faster technology evolves now. The tech evolves, but I am worried that we are not ready for the changes that will come with it.
It frustrates me. I read a few years ago how different investment companies were planning for the future. They were thinking about how the economy of the future and self-driving cars would change things. They were investing in ways to shift infrastructure. I love reading stories about that, makes me believe that there are still people out there who want to change the world. Probably why I like Elon Musk, even if he can be a bit…much at times.
Honestly, I have no clue what the point of this post was…mostly to just rant a bit.
