Well, the weather will be better. And the traffic problem will have cleared up, albeit only because there’s no oil left, no cars, and few people left to drive them (mostly eaten by zombies I am sorry to say).

We’ll still have the Beehive. And it will now be the #1 ugliest building in the world, inasmuch as all the uglier buildings in the world got nuked. Of course, aforementioned zombies and various mutants will occupy the Beehive, lurching from one crumbling room to another, screeching and ranting, seeking out the flesh of any remaining human beings . Not pleasant. But not so different from today, really.

but then it really is interesting to consider the stuff that’s coming currently being invented by 8 year olds…
http://www.spore.com/ftl
http://www.moonbots.org/

which brings me back to public transport ….. yes we need some, but how about a faster cable telecom !
or rather… telecom you had your crack at the apple (monopolistically speaking) , move aside, time for some healthy compeditive spirit to innovate – and bring the critical advantage and real public infrastructure NZ needs, ie super fast information.

….and combine it with a twist of innovative “X-Prize” spirit – its just what we need to get things interesting, strange, and off-world at thinking central …. ie at the eye of the fish, of course we need the canoe too…

or….
A Declaration of Interdependence !
According to eco-architect Bill McDonough, failure to protect the environment is intergenerational tyranny, and the key to saving the planet isn’t more regulations, but better design !

pity Auckland’s politicians didn’t have Bill on hand to advise them for Queenswharf !

snip….”The big change was really between 1840 and the 1920’s, in terms of what the physical nature of modern life is like. There’s been nothing like that since. So we can do fancy information searches in a way that no one envisioned 30 years ago – as one of my colleagues at the Times, Gail Collins, likes to say all the time where are the flying cars?

CS: Yeah, where is my food pill, where are my jetpacks. Actually, flying cars are really bad idea, if I can just go off on a tangent. Your flying car is great, what about your neighbors flying car when his 15 year old son gets into it and tries to impress his girlfriend in it. Normal cars have a simple failure mode; they stop moving, hopefully at the side of a road. Flying cars, if they have a failure mode, they stop moving and then they move very rapidly straight down.

PK: But the robot driver for the car? It’s the other thing that’s supposed to be around by now, and it’s not. It’s even on the information side.

CS: Partly, there are obstacles to getting some of these technologies out. …” snip

But I thought it was also time for an update – in that the technologies are actually becoming true, and because I have always liked jetpacks, myself. Of course, if I were a flying Fish, I wouldn’t need one…

Hasn’t this story been done before, like, a million times?
http://wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Wheres-My-Jetpack-Amazing-Science/dp/1596911360
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/feb/jetpack-future-technologies
http://wheresmyjetpack.com/
http://dvice.com/archives/2009/11/fly-away-in-a-j.php
http://www.retrofuture.com/index.php/2009/03/10/jetpack/
http://www.intute.ac.uk/blog/2009/08/11/wheres-my-jetpack-episode-83/

It may be worth having a post just on Light Rail routes some time – although I’d really quite like to get my hands on the one from the GWRC which I believe exists, but has not been made public….