2062, a Structural Engineering Utopia

When I was young, everybody knew what the future held.  Much as an earlier era had had Jules Verne’s novels to show them space travel and undersea living, we had The Jetsons every Sunday night on ABC-TV in 1962-1963.  Here our future world was clearly laid out for us — there would be robots to do 99% of our work; all buildings would be high on stilts, above the clouds; every person, place, and thing would be named after something related to outer space; and of course we would have jetpacks.  Yes it’s true that The Jetsons didn’t get everything right.  For example, teenage Judy Jetson was often shown confiding her secrets to her robotic diary, while in reality adolescents of today’s “future” are much more likely to broadcast their secrets onto the internet – one small detail that the show missed completely. Continue reading →