http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1-jLX0sL5Q&feature=related

Walter Cronkite shared many of the same interests as Walt Disney such as the future of humanity is space and the world of the 21st century. Cronkite and Disney, like most of the adults I knew in my own life, both had that “forward vision” that appealed to me.

It really wasn’t until the end of the 1970′s that I began to encounter people that were using a different playbook for the future. I wanted dramatic cities soaring into the sky, hovercraft cars with automatic controls, and high-tech gadgets to make life effortless.

Yet all around me there were people that wanted trees, flowers, open meadows with clear running streams. Instead of hovercraft these folks wanted horses. Instead of Disney’s “house of tomorrow”, they wanted a log cabin.

Now I live the real 21st century. Right versus Left, East versus West; and all the while we split down the middle and fight over everything – even the constitution.

To paraphrase Carl Sagan; “a spectacular future requires spectacular citizens – to make it all happen.

When we got our first automatic dishwasher at our house in the early ’70s, we had a family joke, “don’t forget to wash the dishes before you put them in the dishwasher”. They’ve gotten way better now, but back in the day they seemed pointless because of all the pre-rinsing we had to do before actually putting the dishes in the machine.

Cronkite’s program sorta kinda got the home office concept right, although back then the Internet was embryonic, and the idea of a desktop computer was something people were just starting to get their heads around.

Videophones? Well, we’ve got ‘em now — after a fashion — but no matter how much the tech/internet hucksters hype the idea, nobody really seems to care for it. I remember seeing a demo of an actual two-way video-over-the-phone system as a young kid in the mid ’60s; I thought it was really cool at the time, but even then nobody was that nuts about it. Then, as now, all we could think of was what a pain in the butt it was to hear the phone ring while in the shower, and how a bigger pain it would be if that were to happen on a videophone system. And, don’t even get me started on telemarketing.

3D printing has gotten really good really quickly, but I think it might be a while before a 3D printing system can synthesize disposable dinner plates out of a material you can actually eat off of.

Cronkite’s got the home-entertainment system concept nailed down fairly well, too, except that we don’t control our home stereo/theater system from something that looks like Mr. Spock’s bridge console on the Enterprise.

Last year, my wife bought a Roomba to replace our worn-out “old-school” vacuum cleaner. She’s totally sold on it, though I’m not too sure about it yet — but I certainly do like the idea of not having to schlep the vacuum cleaner around the living room myself.

Still, the big question on my mind now is: where’s my flying car? I mean, c’mon, man, it’s the 21st Century. Where’s my flying car??

China is fired in a kiln at high temperatures for long periods of time. This requires lots of energy. The same amount of energy could be used in the remoldable dinnerware over from what I remember a 5 year period.

I really wish I had a link, but that is the gist.