Mr. John Herman Sr. writes:

Your "Phrenicea Vision" needs competition and someone to disagree with your prophecy...

Example: The Earth is 75% water. In 50 years there will be water barons instead of oil barons, who will invent cheap ways to convert salt water to useable water, and pipe it to the area in need. No one in many areas will pay a $1 a gallon for water if they could develop catch basins during a rainstorm and capture tons of water.

Another example: In 2050, there will be aerocars for each family, which could be a car or a safe airplane, which would eliminate building more roads, and the people would go flying to work because this would eliminate all road congestion. People traveling north would be on different altitudes than people traveling going south.

And another: Planes may be banned but not rocket ships fueled by nuclear reactors, which are clean and only need refueling every 50 years. They were designed to be free from take-off and landing accidents because they had sufficient power to take off and land in a ‘soft mode’ regardless of any weather conditions.

And that's not all! When I develop my own website you will be in deep trouble! Here's a sample...

What is Polychromecia? Science in late 2010 discovered that just like DNA, each person at birth has been equipped with an individualized brain wavelength, and that each person can be linked to another person if they could identify the other person's wavelength. It’s almost the same as calling another person if you knew their phone number. Each person's wavelength would be monitored and a code number assigned in the same way as today's telephone number. However, if a person preferred some privacy or quiet time, they would have the capability to scramble their code number.
To be continued!

See, that wasn't so difficult!

Phrenicea replies...

Thank you for your letter. On the Phrenicea website we encourage the submission of visitor comments for a healthy exchange of ideas. However, the combative tone of your letter invites us to respond in kind. We hope that you can "take it" as well as you "give it."

First off, we are flattered that your proposed scenario name, Polychromecia, begins with a "p" and is suffixed with a very similar "cia." However, it does in no way reflect the nature of your proposed communications scenario. Your name implies "many colors," when perhaps you were striving for a name suggesting many wavelengths. We would suggest a name derived from the word "spectrum" might be a better "root" choice.

Regarding flying cars: These were envisioned as early as the 1940s. Today there are over 40,000 automobile-related deaths annually just in the U.S. alone. This as a result of individuals with varying degrees of skill and states of mind manipulating vehicles within a single (horizontal) plane: left-right and forward-reverse. The addition of another plane (vertical) would exponentially increase the chances of collision. And it is not expected that the skill level of drivers will improve over time — especially if "flight training" was required. (Many of today's youth are administered a watered down version of the written driver's permit test to reduce failure rates.) Today there's an entire industry and profession employed to prevent collisions of airplanes of relatively small numbers, and not always with success unfortunately. Imagine the chaos of a hodge-podge of tiny airborne vehicles.

Regarding "clean" atomic rockets: Technological advancement will not change the lethal aspects of radiation, either as the result of contained nuclear fission or its dissemination as a result of a crash or collision. Even after fifty years, there is still not a permanent solution to radioactive waste disposal from the relatively small number of nuclear reactors (440) throughout the world. Imagine the insanity of flying reactors. (The Chernobyl disaster released 500 times more radiation than the Hiroshima bomb, and a similar incident was narrowly averted at the Belayarsk plant in September 2000.)

Finally, with regard to fresh water: Of course Phrenicea is aware of the vast oceans, and that is the paradox that we face. We evolved away from salt water and require fresh water to survive. Unfortunately, the amount of energy required to distill or filter fresh water from the briny sea precludes its widespread adoption. And the water barons of which you speak that might pursue such an endeavor will no doubt live up to their moniker, and will indeed charge perhaps even more than the $1.00 equivalent referenced on our website.

To conclude: We at Phrenicea attempt to construct a future scenario that is based upon the laws of nature and our practical capacity to manipulate them. We will continue to try to stimulate the imagination responsibly, with the requisite research and knowledge as a foundation. It is quite easy on the other hand, to conjure up armchair scenarios based upon whimsy.

Please feel free to peruse the many other aspects of the Phrenicea website. Again, we invite your comments and will respond in kind.

Sincerely,
The Editors