So, in the future I'm going to program my GPS the same way I used to adjust the levels on my equalizer?

sigh.. how did we go from that vision to this reality.

What? they dont have seatbelts in the future?
Anyways, I prefer the parking lot from iRobot(and that audi too) because it reminded me of a dry cleaners.

@Garrison Dean:
Ever see Strange Invaders?

Explains it all.

automatically washed, dried, refulled, routed, and driven?

utopian future or driver's hell? i'll be one of the crazies changing my own oil and running my car on gasoline in 40 years talking about the good old days before auto pilot on the highways...

Oh yeah, the future's so bright ... yada, yada, yada. What always amazes me is that even though the tech advances (if you want to call it that), social/culture norms never change an iota from stereotypical 50's golden age paternalism.

@tetracycloide: Not me. Paying attention to the road during my commute every day feels like two wasted, irrecoverable hours.

Maybe it'll be different when I get my motorcycle.

If you really want to be boggled, check out the link to the longer clip on YouTube. The highway as the "magic carpet" to the future, bringing the peoples of the world together. Not a traffic jam in sight to cloud this bright, sunny view.

@bjarmson: Really? Did you miss the article in the news last Friday that 25% of all teenage girls have at LEAST one sexually transmitted disease? I would say the social/culture norms have changed SIGNIFICANTLY since the 1950s. Not necessarily for the better though.

@braak: well yeah, that's why i take the subway to work. driving is about going places when you don't have to.

If the Future would look like this, people would get really fat. They only move about max. 30m a day!

@EBone: My comment was aimed at the fact that these future analyses always show great positive technological change, while maintaining the cultural norms of that particular present. And gee, state-imposed segregation, rampant sexism, zilch ecological consciousness, etc, etc. A few things have changed for the better. But like almost everything, there are tradeoffs. Not much crime, STDs, or traffic jams in fundamentalist Islamic run areas. Wanna live there.

@EBone:
You're suggesting that it wasn't this way in the fifties. I love how people believe that young people only started having pre-marital sex sometime in the sixties and everyone back in the "good old days" was chaste and pure as the driven snow. You know the secret about the "good old days? They're a myth, there were no good old days.

@Plague: Nope, but after watching a Siskel and Ebert review of it on youtube.. I'm there.

@BSAKat: I don't question the fact there was premarital sex in the 50s. My point is 25% of all teeeange girls in the 50s did not have STDs. That's a phenomena we can chalk up as a 21st century cultural "advancement."

@bjarmson: Didn't say I'd rather live in the 50s or now. I'm just saying that modern American social/culture norms are significantly different than it they were 60 years ago, as opposed to your assertion they have not changed an "iota."

@EBone:
Prove it. Consider for a moment that stats like this are only being kept within, say, the last twenty years. Also consider that over sixteen million men served in WWII and more than a few brought back "venerial" diseases. That, combined with the fact that any discussion of sex and sexuality in the media was pretty much verboten, make records such as those spotty at best. Your argument that 25% of all teenage girls having STDs is a "21st century cultural phenomenon" is dubious at best and naive handwringing at worst.

@EBone: Okay, stop being obtuse. My original post was a sarcastic critique of the clip posted. It had nothing to do with what chages have actually transpired in the US since then. My next post quite obviously states there have been large changes, some for the better, some for worse. Where does this lead you to think I believe soc/cul norms haven't changed an "iota." I was around in the 50's (born 1946) and have lived through the great changes (both tech and soc/cul).
You're getting a bit obsessive about this STD info. Who knows what it actually means (ever hear the bit about lying with statistics). Even if true, I would never want to return to stereotypical sexual norms of the 50s (which reflected white, middle-class, conservative aspirations). Some things are better, some are worse. It's the way of the world.

The father chooses the route

forever and ever

Awesome.

For a ten year old boy in 1958{yes its me}, when i first saw this on TV iwas totally blown away.
was that really 50 years ago??..time flies..