I remember well the sense of anticipation we all felt about our future jetpacks, an item, I maintain, that we were virtually guaranteed as young Americans. It’s engendered such angst that few people of a certain age can manage to think about the future without experiencing a little twinge of regret, even resentment, about the lack of that coolest tool of personal propulsion. It’s almost a cliche, even.
It offers some sense of “closure,” as the pop-psych crowd likes to say, to read (and look at) this fine rundown of the history of failure on every hand that led to the disillusionment of an entire jetpackless generation. I mean, think about it–instead, we got Segways. And it’s hard to remember how we ever lived without those.
ADDITIONAL: Perhaps a key to the failure of this technology can be seen above. If you were going to hit the ground with considerable force while wearing a hundred-plus pounds of engine, wouldn’t you want to be wearing Converse All-Stars for the big moment?
AND ALSO:
From the Skeptic’s Dictionary–
According to psychologist James Alcock, “‘Magical thinking’ is the interpreting of two closely occurring events as though one caused the other, without any concern for the causal link. For example, if you believe that crossing your fingers brought you good fortune, you have associated the act of finger-crossing with the subsequent welcome event and imputed a causal link between the two.”
Food for thought.
