THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Era of flying cars will lift more than just transport

Era of flying cars will lift more than just transport

But first we have to navigate fossil-fuelled politics 

When touchscreen phones first arrived in shops, only the wealthy few could afford one. Today, even the poorest villager can swipe, enlarge photos with his fingertips and carry out more complicated functions with a mixture of touching and swiping. For touchscreen technology 20 years ago, read flying cars today. 
Only the rich are drooling at the moment, but look how far smartphones and computer tablets have come – and how fast.
The world was recently introduced to its first flying cars, the prototypes of which look futuristic. But the future is arriving at an ever-increasing speed, driven largely by an exponential growth in computer processing power. The time will come when tucked away in the garages of many households will be cars that can fly. When that happens, much more than transportation will have been transformed by our era of technological upheaval.
Construction, commerce, social life, international politics and environmental affairs are among the spheres that are tied to the evolution of flying cars. Innovations will come thick and fast, after several companies were joined by government agencies like Nasa in the race to create the revolutionary vehicles. The electric version of flying cars is getting serious attention, because it holds out hope of easing the burden on our rapidly eroding environment. If cars can fly on renewable sources such as solar energy, oil becomes less important.
The early evolution of such flying vehicles is being fuelled by competition to be first with a commercial product. But with that competition come issues of patents and intellectual rights that may delay development. As in any great endeavour, competition must be carefully balanced with cooperation to meet the bigger goal – human progress. 
The man on the street, meanwhile, will have other worries. Will there be more fatal accidents as “drivers” fail to master the specialised skills needed to pilot airborne cars? Historically the transition to a new form of transport hasn’t been smooth, with the early age of cars and aircraft seeing a spike in deadly crashes. 
But the skills will come. We don’t quite know exactly how we can talk to another person on the other side of the planet through a wireless device, but we talk anyway. It’s the tech innovators’ job to make flying cars easy and safe to manoeuvre, and the lure of commercial rewards coupled with the competition from rivals will ensure they succeed. The research is already well underway.
Doubters may point to the extremely slow progress of electric cars, which has been blamed on the perceived importance of oil to international politics and the economy. Eco-friendly flying cars are bound to suffer the same delay, they say. Politics, not economic or environmental factors, will determine at what point flying cars roam the skies and people stop bothering even to crane their necks to look.
Which will be a shame. Much human progress has been disrupted by politics under the pretext of fairness or of ethics. Drugs that could save lives have not reached people who needed them. Food-saving technology has benefited soldiers more than the starving poor. 
But if politics can be overcome, small flying vehicles may cut road usage, reduce emissions, and replace planes in many cases. We have arrived at yet another milestone in our era of transformative innovation: The smooth path of smartphones is behind us, while the bumpy road to electric cars lies ahead.

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