What ‘The Jetsons’ predicted right — and wrong — about the future

[Kamaji]

What ‘The Jetsons’ predicted right — and wrong — about the future

By Tim Donnelly
July 31, 2022

Get ready to meet George Jetson — because he’s about to be born.

The button-pushing, flying-car-riding, iconic future man entered the galaxy on July 31, 2022, according to “The Jetsons” canon. While George is having his first birthday, the show itself is about to celebrate its 60th: it debuted on Sept. 23, 1962, a century before it’s set.

That means we’re supposed to be only 40 years away from the Jetsons’ world of Rosie the Robot, toothbrushing machines and apartment buildings high above the clouds.

So why are we still stuck on the ground waiting for our jetpacks? And why, all these years later, do we still hold a slightly corny, old-school animated sitcom up as a beacon of what could be?

“We still speak about the future in Jetsons terms,” said Jared Bahir Browsh, author of the 2021 book “Hanna-Barbera: A History.” “A show that originally ran for one season had such an impact on the way we see our culture and our lives.” (“The Jetsons” actually came out in two chunks: its original ’60s run was only 24 episodes, and then a reboot in 1985 gave it another 50.)

Read on to see what “The Jetsons” got right about the future — and what it got hilariously wrong.

On-point predictions

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Source:  https://nypost.com/2022/07/31/what-the-jetsons-predicted-right-and-wrong-about-the-future/

[goatprairie]

One thing that makes me laugh in reference to the Jetsons is the demand by many people for those flying cars that everyone was supposed to have by this time.
Attention: we will never have flying cars. Because unless they repeal the law of gravity, flying cars will be far more dangerous than they will be useful.
What happens when your car engine stalls on the road?...you can coast to the side of the road.
What's going to happen when your flying car engine stalls several thousand feet in the air? You're going to crash and probably die that's what.
And even if you can somehow parachute your way out of trouble, there's still going to be a flying vehicle of considerable weight crashing to the Earth very possibly on top of someone's head.
So forget about the flying cars  like we have automobiles....it ain't gonna happen.

[Smokin Joe]

One thing that makes me laugh in reference to the Jetsons is the demand by many people for those flying cars that everyone was supposed to have by this time.
Attention: we will never have flying cars. Because unless they repeal the law of gravity, flying cars will be far more dangerous than they will be useful.
What happens when your car engine stalls on the road?...you can coast to the side of the road.
What's going to happen when your flying car engine stalls several thousand feet in the air? You're going to crash and probably die that's what.
And even if you can somehow parachute your way out of trouble, there's still going to be a flying vehicle of considerable weight crashing to the Earth very possibly on top of someone's head.
So forget about the flying cars  like we have automobiles....it ain't gonna happen.

Those conked out flying cars would probably end up more like this:
...still a problem if they land in the wrong place.


My main problem, though, is that there are already millions who can't successfully travel in two dimensions, so letting them loose in air traffic is likely not a good idea.

[goatprairie]

Those conked out flying cars would probably end up more like this:
...still a problem if they land in the wrong place.


My main problem, though, is that there are already millions who can't successfully travel in two dimensions, so letting them loose in air traffic is likely not a good idea.

I'm not saying (given human ingenuity) that they'll never come up with a solution, but for one thing that's an uncrashed plane.
 Two jetcars (?) colliding would very well not release intact parachutes or whatever. There are as yet many unsolved problems as to what would happen if the jetcar engine stalls, crashes, there's a medical emergency, etc.
Now imagine thousands of jetcars in the air at the same time in some compressed airspace over a large city. Imagine hundreds of thousands of commuters in their jet cars going to or leaving work at the same time.
Like the old movie said, there are no highways in the sky. I can't see it as anything short of an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen.