The inspiring shelf life of flying cars

I talked with a class of high school students this week at Cronkite School of Journalism. These were smart kids who chose to spend a few weeks in school this summer getting a taste of college life.

My talk was on the Future of Journalism.   We started in the Cronkite museum to get a taste of the past - historic newspapers, early hand-held TV cameras and a a 1984 Macintosh computer that amused them. "Look, they used the rainbow Apple logo!" one exclaimed.


I then told them that when I was a kid and we thought about what the future would bring, we thought it would include flying cars.

"Yeah," my friends and I thought, "It'll be 2005 and we'll definitely have flying cars."

I then showed the students this cool video of Google's self-driving car project from 2010 which was designed to make driving safer, more enjoyable, and more efficient. The video shows a blind man named Steve who took the hands-free car for a spin... ending up at Taco Bell for lunch.

I talked with the students about innovation with a purpose, new ideas that help make people's lives better.



And I then asked them:

"When you were kids, what did you think you'd see in the future?  What did you dream about that you just knew will be here when you're older?"

They looked at me.  Thinking.

And then one young man shot up his hand.

"Flying cars."  


Robin, Tempe