A World Without Roads

Have you ever thought something like, "I wonder what the pilgrims would think if they saw the world now?"  Or maybe you think about the Vikings, or the Visigoths, or something more mundane like people from the 1950's.  In whatever past reflective direction you go, it is startling how our planet has changed, how technology has improved our lives and how dramatic our standard of living has increased over a relatively small number of centuries.

Sometimes I think about how the world will change in the future.  What if I could close my eyes and when I opened them, I'd be able to see the exact same location but one hundred years in the future.  Would the difference be significant visually, or would houses pretty much look like houses and roads pretty much look like roads but things would have advanced from a technology front?   I suppose we'll know in a hundred years.

One thing that seems to be so different from two hundred years ago is the huge amount of space we utilize in our road systems.  We move goods and people via the roads, and our roads have gotten bigger and more complex as a result.  There's been talk of flying cars ever since I was a child.  I don't see flying cars as a reality to come in my lifetime, but if or when that happens, the landscape of our inhabited world is going to change drastically.

All those highways can be put to use as parks.  Houses that are nicely in a row now and all facing the road can face any direction they want because you'd just hover in for a landing on the parking area.   My whole mental map of the city in which I live is based entirely on the road systems and how I get from one area to another.  All of that would change.

If I could see into the future, I'd love to see a world where emission-free, not environmentally detrimental vehicles were moving about in the sky.  I'd love to see much less hard scape on our land and a more natural, growing world around us.

The Big Boy Update:  The Bony House.  Today on the way to school he saw a house under construction in the middle of being framed.  He repeated, "The bony house, the bony house" as he pointed to the house across the street.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Sinus infection?  She has some very bad looking congestion.  She can't breathe in the mornings or after a nap unless she's been nasally aspirated.  We're debating on taking her to the doctor.  They will probably prescribe antibiotics.  She might be at the end of this cold and I'd rather keep her off medication unless she needs it.

Fitness Update:  Sixty-five degrees?!  I ran in shorts and a short sleeved shirt today.  My neighbor got hot, took off her shirt and just ran in her running bra.  Hard to believe it's sixty-five degrees on December tenth.

Someone Once Said:  Dear, we do not exhibit our youngest the moment someone sets foot in the foyer and thereby place on him the onus of being insincerely ecstatic.