No jetpacks.

Portland is getting a bike-sharing system, and while I have issues with it, I'm getting pretty excited about the potential short-term future of urban transportation systems. I imagine Dutch in 10 years,* preparing to go out with friends - she'll pick up her Mobile Device Of Some Kind** and tell it where she wants to go, and it will tell her the best way to get there. But it won't give her driving directions. It'll tell her where the nearest available bike or car can be found (maybe a commercial car or bike share vehicle, or maybe a peer-to-peer share vehicle, parked in somebody's driveway,  available for instant rental by MDSK), the location and arrival time of the next bus, the location of the nearest available cab or jitney or whatever.... Maybe she'll grab a bikeshare bike and ride it to the light rail station, where she'll dock it and hop on the train.

It's going to be great, you guys. Of course, there's going to be a lot of stuff about it that's going to piss me off, and I'll be sure to be grumbling about how much goddamn time Dutch and Skipper spend hunched over their MDSKs,*** but we're going to get so much closer to having really flexible transportation options. If the Republicans don't screw it all up.


* This scenario assumes that society doesn't collapse, and that Dutch has a safe home and a reasonably healthy social life...
**which will be able to do a billion things that I can't even imagine...
*** and of course if we've moved toward massive 20-lane highways filled with driverless cars, I'm going to be REALLY pissed.