The Tech of Tomorrow That Never Arrived & The Remarkable History of Teeth - SYSK Choice

Something You Should Know

The episode explores the gap between futuristic tech promises and reality, featuring journalist Nicole Kobie who explains why innovations like flying cars, humanoid robots, and fully autonomous vehicles

Key takeaways

• The first flying car certified for road and flight was approved in 1956 but failed commercially due to high costs ($15,000) and poor dual functionality as both a vehicle and aircraft.
• Driverless cars already operate in limited areas like San Francisco, but full autonomy requires widespread vehicle-to-vehicle communication that hasn't yet materialized.

Main topics

• Futuristic technology delays
• Autonomous vehicles & automation

Notable quotes

"A lot of these ideas, they do work. They work according to physics or they work in a lab. But then when you try to bring them into the real world and have them interact with people... they start to fall apart a little bit."

Conclusion

Listeners gain a grounded perspective on technological timelines, recognizing that incremental progress often

Transcript preview

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Use code S-Y-S-K at Monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50 % off your first year at Monarch.com with code S-Y-S-K. Speaker 4 (1:22) Today on Something You Should Know, an almost effortless way to cut your grocery bill down. Then, future technologies that never quite seem to arrive, like flying cars. Why don't we have flying cars? Speaker 1 (1:36) Oh, we do. So the first one that was certified for road and for flight was certified in 1956. No. So if you wanted a flying car, you could have bought one ages ago. You just probably didn't want this car. Speaker 4 (1:49) Then, paying down your debt can do wonders for your health. And the amazing world of teeth. Why you have them and why we judge other people by how good their teeth look. Speaker 2 (2:01) And a lot of that, I think, started in the 1920s when films went from silent films to talkies. And then all of a sudden there were these close-ups and it was clear pretty quickly that some people had really lousy teeth. Speaker 4 (2:16) All this today on Something You Should Know. Speaker 4 (2:21) A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility. Sell it. Every day people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't wear, list it on Vinted. Listing is quick and simple. And when an item sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. And importantly, there are no seller fees on Vinted. So when you sell something, you keep everything you earn. I like this whole idea because instead of clothes just taking up space, Somebody else gets to wear them and you get some money out of the deal. Your closet looks better too. I mean, everybody wins, even the closet. So maybe it's time to stop waiting for someday. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees so you keep everything you earn. Speaker 4 (3:38) Something you should know. Fascinating Speaker 3 (3:40) intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Speaker 4 (3:50) Oh, and we have a lot to get to today. Everything from technology to your teeth. But we're going to start today at the grocery store with a suggestion that is very likely going to save you money. So first of all, you know that Grocery stores are designed to get you to spend money. The longer you stay in the store, the more likely you are to buy stuff. And it comes as no surprise that if you go to the grocery store hungry, you are much more likely to buy more stuff. In fact, one study confirmed that even people who are on a very tight budget will spend more money when they go to the store with an appetite. But get this. By using the self-checkout lane, you will reduce your impulse purchases drastically. In a survey, women bought 32 % fewer impulse items and men bought 16 % fewer. Because apparently, when you know that you have to scan all these items, you become much more selective in what you buy and you spend less money. And that is something you should know. Speaker 4 (5:02) Ever since I remember watching the Jetsons, I have thought, I can't wait for flying cars. George Jetson had one that seemed to work pretty well. In Back to the Future, they were predicting flying cars by the year 2015. Well, that didn't seem to work out. It seems that flying cars and other technology that you kind of think we should have had by now, say robots that really do things and driverless cars. Where are they? It makes you wonder what other technologies have we been promised that never quite seem to get here. Well, here to discuss this and the rather interesting path that new technologies take is Nicole Kobe. She is a London-based technology and science journalist who's written for several publications. Her byline appears in Wired, where she is a contributing editor, and she is author of a book called The long history of the future. Why tomorrow's technology still isn't here. Hi, Nicole. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Speaker 1 (6:07) Hi, Mike. Thanks so much for having me. Speaker 4 (6:09) So flying cars, I mean, that's the example everybody uses as a technology that seems like it should be here, but it's not here. And I guess it's such a good example because we have cars. We know how to do that. We know how to fly. We've got planes and helicopters. drones and things like that. So we know how to fly. We have cars. Why can't we put them together and have a flying car? Speaker 1 (6:33) So a lot of these ideas, they do work. They work according to physics or they work in a lab. But then when you try to bring them into the real world and have them interact with people or, you know, just everything else that we have to interact with, they start to fall apart a little bit or you start to see the weaknesses in them. So a lot of these technologies we do have and we have had for decades, they just don't work quite the way we expected them to in the lab. Wait, Speaker 4 (7:01) we do have flying cars? Speaker 1 (7:03) Oh, we do. So the first one, the first one that was certified by the precursor to FAA for road and for flight was certified in 1956. No. So if you wanted a flying car, you could have bought one ages ago. Speaker 4 (7:18) 1956? Speaker 1 (7:20) Yeah, you just probably didn't want this car. Speaker 4 (7:23) Oh, yeah. And why is that? Speaker 1 (7:26) Well, when they were, you know, a lot of this happened after, kind of after the war, and you had a lot of people coming back. as pilots or with the ability to fly or with engineering skills and this kind of renewed, I don't know, like optimism for what you might be able to do in the future. And people started building these cars with the ability to fly. So they could go, they couldn't take off from your front, you know, your front road, but they could take off from an airport. So the idea was that you would drive it to the airport and then it would take off there. And that's... Similar to the flying cars that we're kind of hearing about in headlines and stuff now. But that meant that they weren't very good as cars and they weren't very good as planes. They were sort of, you know, slow to drive and, you know, heavy and not very much fun to drive as cars. And then when you got them in the air, they were equally slow and clunky as planes. And they cost a ton of money. So this first one that was certified in 1956 was... was Moulton Taylor's aero car. And he believed that he could sell hundreds of the thing, but only managed to actually build six. And they cost $15,000 at the time, which was obviously a lot of money for them. And at that price, you could have bought a new plane, you know, that was just yours and you kept it parked at the airport. And you could have bought a new car and had well over $10,000 left. So why wouldn't you just do that? Speaker 4 (8:52) Right. Well, I remember too, Years ago, I have this vision of seeing it in a magazine or something that there was a car that you could drive into the water too, but that generally it looked like it was a really lousy car and a really lousy boat. So kind of the same idea, like you can't serve two masters. Speaker 1 (9:12) Exactly. I mean, why not just drive to the lake and then have a beautiful boat waiting for you? They Speaker 4 (9:17) should have called you. Yeah, it seems pretty logical that way. So the idea of... Let's get specific now and talk about the things that we hear about. And we hear about the driverless car. And I've always heard that driverless cars are fine if everybody was in one, but driverless cars operating on the same road with driven cars by people will never work. Speaker 1 (9:44) Yeah, that's a big problem because we need a way for the cars to kind of communicate to each other. And that's not necessary. We could have driverless cars on the same roads where there are cars driven by people. And we see that in San Francisco now where Google's Waymo is testing them. And that has worked okay. There's not major problems with that. But the real benefits from driverless cars... is when they can all talk to each other and you don't need to have traffic lights and they can kind of all organize themselves and not be running into each other or having to figure out what that person thinks. Because that's the real challenge of driving is figuring out what's going on in that other person's head. So we do have driverless cars that work and we do have driverless cars that can work on the road with other cars, you know, driven by humans. But it's in really limited places and it's in really limited circumstances. We've made a good start. We're just not there yet. But Speaker 4 (10:43) isn't that how all this stuff works that you make a start and it's kind of awkward and clunky and it doesn't work very well. But then you fix that a little bit and you build on that and then you build on what you fixed and eventually, ta-da. Speaker 1 (10:57) Yeah, and I do think that will happen with driverless cars. I do think they're going to exist at some point in the future. It's just... the industry has told us that they would be here by now and depending on how you define it you know they they are driving around san francisco they do exist it's just you know we're not in san francisco So if you're willing to wait 100 years for these things, then you're fine. The question is, how long is it going to take? And what technology is it going to use? And are they going to operate the way that companies like Waymo and Cruise, who are building them now, think they're going to operate? Because we have been building driverless cars for several decades at this point, and we have used all different sorts of technologies. We thought that radio would work, that we'd just be able to control them with radio. We thought