Trifecta!

Every now and then an idea comes along that sets a new benchmark for silliness. This is especially true in techno-solutions for social and environmental problems. Something about giving engineers a fresh pad of paper and some sharpened pencils and saying "Save the World!" opens the floodgates. These plans always seem to involve monorails, or magnetic levitation, or electric cars. Now an outfit in (where else?) California has come up with the trifecta of techno-utopian silliness:  SKY PODS.

SKY PODS are individual-sized electric mag-lev monorail cars. So they combine the immense capital cost of trains (and the aesthetic and practical horrors of elevated monorails) with the limited capacity of personal cars. It's like a ZipCar which can only follow a single predetermined route, and you have to climb up a flight of stairs to get on board!

The evolution of technology in the past century has taught us valuable lessons about the importance of flexibility, adaptability, scalability, and decentralization. SKY PODS are inflexible, un-adaptable, un-scalable (is that a word?) and highly centralized. Back in 1930 they would have been pleasantly silly on the cover of an issue of Science Wonder Stories or whatever. In 1970 they would have been another earnestly silly idea on the cover of Popular Mechanics. In 2009 they represent a stunning failure of imagination and inability to learn. I don't know of any social or environmental problem which could actually be solved by throwing monorails at it.

Comments

[Joe D]

Oh yeah? The residents of Ogdenville, North Haverbrook, and Brockway beg to differ!