PEORIA MAGAZINE April 2022

T he future is a tricky place to visit, a harder place still from which to send a postcard. We are an anxious people, desperately trying to crane our necks around the corner, hoping to glimpse an eye-popping tomorrow. Amid such an eager audience, prognostication has always been a steady racket, and not just for sideshow fortune tellers. News media long have provided a platform for self-styled experts armed with crystal balls, especially when it comes to technology and science. I thought about that as we put together this month’s magazine, which focuses on innovation. Big thinkers with big mouths have forever promised The Next Big Thing. Andwe eat it up, waiting for mind-blowing inventions that will electrify our lives. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “Where’s my f lying car already?” A few decades ago, we somehow collectively got the idea – probably from watching the “Jetsons”

too much – that we’d be zooming around the skies by now. Actually, a California company called Aska says flying cars could be available – if perhaps not easily affordable – by 2026. The cost will be $790,000, which for most of us would make for a slightly higher monthly payment. Still, flying cars sound exciting, until you think of the traffic implications. Lousy drivers have a hard time not crashing while doing 10 m.p.h. in a Kroger parking lot, let alone zipping freely through the wild blue yonder. Accidents overhead would rain down shattered glass and twisted metal. If you’re walking outside come 2026, you’d better carry a super-strong umbrella. With all that cost and risk, maybe we won’t all be airborne anytime soon. Still, it’s hard not to get carried away by futuristic musings. In fact, I wish yesteryear’s soothsaying scribblers had blessed us with more success. They came up with some doozies that I wish had come true.

For example, in 1950, the science editor at the New York Times wrote in Popular Mechanics about “Miracles You’ll See in theNext Fifty Years.” Among them was housekeeping by hose, as described amid the chores of a future, fictional housewife named Jane Dobson: “When Jane Dobson c l eans house, she simply turns the hose on everything. Why not? Furniture (upholstery included), rugs, draperies, unscratchable floors — all are made of synthetic fabric or waterproof plastic. After the water has run down a drain in the middle of the floor (later concealed by a rug of synthetic fiber), Jane turns on a blast of hot air and dries everything.” Wow. No sweeping or vacuuming or dusting? Talk about easy-peasy. It sounds like how I clean my backyard deck, with just a casual blast of a garden hose. That’s the good life right there. Add a beer and some ‘70s rock, and that’s pretty much how I envision housecleaning in heaven.

92 APRIL 2022 PEORIA MAGAZINE