Imagine trying to describe cars to pretty much anyone in 1870. You’d need to explain that hundreds of millions of people own these crazy futuristic contraptions. Each such contraption weighs about 3000 pounds, can go faster than 60 miles per hour, and can be controlled by anyone from a teenager to a senior citizen.
Also, to make this entire system work, much of our world will need to be radically transformed by an insanely expensive system of paved roads and highways. Just to make cars practical to use.
The person you are talking to would probably think you are crazy. And given what they know about reality, they’d probably be right to think so.
It is thoughts like this that allow me to believe in radical visions for our future. No matter how crazy an idea might seem in one era, it can end up being perfectly ordinary reality in a later era.
We don’t know what will be possible in the future. But we are always right to dream.
I dunno how crazy it would seem.
In 1870, steam trains could exceed 60 miles per hour and just the locomotive (without the tender) could weigh 200 tons or more. They also requires a insanely expensive (especially in terms of exploited laborers) system of rail roads that transformed maps by causing towns to boom or bust depending on their distance to the nearest train stop.
If you were a senior citizen in 1870, then you’d probably witnessed most of the development of the rail network within your lifetime. If you lived in a big city or had visited older places (like much of Europe), streets paved with cobblestones had made horse and buggy carts much more efficient and hygienic.
Oh, and a typical SUV or large luxury car today is closer to two tons than three tons. Sure, there are the massive SUVs with useless dead weight added to game the fuel efficiency categories, but those are rather anomalous. Meanwhile, a lot of sedans and coupes are about 1.5 tons.
Thanks for the heads up about automobile weight. I’ve changed that to the more reasonable value of 3000 pounds.
Rough analogy: trains are like mainframes, cars are like personal computers.