At a recent symposium on internet technology, (not that I was there, but I have friends who attend such things), one speaker marveled at how fast new developments were being introduced. By her estimate computer technology is now advancing by one year every three months. Sounds fast. I was always told that dog years could be calculated by dividing human years by four, or in other words, one dog year every three months. I’m not sure what the similarity between these two calculations means, but I don’t think this bodes well for the future. Why does everything have to get faster all the time? It’s like we’ve all signed the Futurist Manifesto all of a sudden and the only thing that matters anymore is speed. The Futurists would have loved the internet (which makes me even more suspicious of it), but instead all they got was the First World War. War was the perfect vehicle for the speed and technology that they loved so much, and they were all quick to enlist. Those that weren’t killed were able to praise it as a great triumph once it was all over. Of particular interest to the Futurists was the large-scale use of aircraft during WWI, a first for any war. Although primitive by our current standards, the use of flying machines represented the most impressive use of speed and technology ever seen up to that point.
Since then our quest for speed has continued unabated. When it was first introduced in 1976 the Concorde was seen as a great leap into the future. This wasn’t just another commercial passenger plane, this was a supersonic jet that could fly at twice the speed of sound. New York to London in 3 hours. It was just a matter of time before every plane would be flying at Mach 2. All of a sudden flying cars didn’t seem so far fetched.
The promise of flying cars, jetpacks and other personal flying devices dates back to the story of Icarus, (and we all know how that one turned out). It’s interesting that not only did Greek Mythology give us flight before it was actually possible to fly, but through the story of Icarus the Greeks gave us the first plane crash a few thousand years in advance of the first plane. One might think that this parable of technological hubris would be of great interest to a contemporary audience, but as near as I can tell the only impact it has had on current technology is that we now avoid the use of beeswax when constructing aircraft.
When the calendar rolled towards a new millennium in 2000 the air was thick with cries of “where’s my jetpack?” We’d been promised our own set of wings for so long that it was hard to believe we were still required to walk around on foot. At the time, just saying aloud “the year 2000” sounded so futuristic, it seemed inevitable that great leaps forward awaited us.
Coincidentally, 2000 was also the year that a piece of metal debris fell off a Continental plane on a Paris runway during takeoff. The next plane on the runway that day was Air France 4590, a Concorde bound for New York. The debris on the runway apparently ruptured one of the Concorde’s tyres which in tern sent pieces of rubber debris flying up fast enough to damage the number five fuel tank. Having already reached maximum speed for take-off, the pilot had no alternative but to continue the ascent, but as the fire from the leaking fuel quickly spread to the engines the plane lost altitude and crashed into Les Relais Bleus Hotel killing 4 people on the ground in addition to all 109 passengers and crew on board. Within 18 months the Concorde was retired from the skies altogether, and in the decade that has passed no supersonic jets have stepped in to take its place.
There is something strangely comforting about the obsolescence of supersonic flight. We now have this one instance where we have ceased to go forward. It might be a fluke, but for once the genie has been put back in the bottle. Maybe we don’t need to go any further with other technologies, too. Maybe we should all just stop where we are and pause for a decade or two. It wouldn’t be so bad. Must we continually update everything all the time? As long as we have pain-free dentistry what more could we possibly want from technology? The future will reach us all in good time, what’s the rush?
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