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Where's my Damn Hovercraft!!

By Charles Hageman Frey

Technology has come at different rates throughout history. What controls the evolution of scientific progress? Some pundits will always say money, others the human will, still others throw in government and a good lack of religion. I think it has to do with the size of ones basement or backyard and ones ability for patience.

Hovercrafts--we were all suppose to have hovercrafts by now but instead we got little computers and moving walkways. Why? Public demand perhaps. I mean think of a world with hovercrafts--drunk driving where you aren't restricted by gravity--ugly. Not to mention every out-of-towner parking on your roof. A pager to carry in my pocket and a cell phone to call a cab from anywhere seem preferable. Then again, eloping with your sixteen year old sweetheart would take on a whole new dimension if the person lived on the second floor of her parental home.

The main restricting element is having enough space to try to construct one of the machines. We immediately have to rule out all the city geniuses who live in apartments. Not to mention the pack rats who have their inventors' garage jammed with old comic books. Also the pet owners who can't come to grips with scraping dog crap off the exhaust system model in the backyard cause Fido has been out again. Therefore the mere number of people who have enough space to tinker about with a hovercraft device is minimal.

This basically places our hopes in the hands of those kids still living on their parents' farm in the Midwest. Taking these people, we have to remove all those without focus--those preoccupied with planting crops or playing on the school 8-man football team. Patience is needed since you don't invent something like a hovercraft on the first try. There is serious trial and error, cats flying into the rotor blades, and mom throwing away your guidance design plans. I have no doubt that Mr. Edison didn't let his mom into his room after the age of 10. All this being said there must be a few out there who are making attempts. So why don't we have the hovercrafts yet? We do have the Osprey which is perhaps our closest equivalent, but the government has an inexhaustible back yard and enough money to keep any scientist away from the track or the big game for eternity.

Micro is the wave of inventing now and I am convinced it is because everybody can make enough space on the floor between pizza boxes and phone bills to try and come up with something small. Everybody is working on little technology and that is why it is progressing at an exponential rate. Raw materials are relatively cheap and there is always time to fiddle with a small project during an unengaging rerun of Baywatch. The hovercrafts though--the big durable goods--these things take space, time, and focus.

So I await the arrival of the hovercraft. Perhaps it will be soon now that Mr. Gates and some of his silicon valley cronies have gotten themselves decent housing with large garages and huge backyards, but then again they have their millions to count, not to mention they are all nesting with families. I still hold out hope, however, for that Hoisington, Kansas youth who just got cut from the tennis team and no longer has to help all day with the family chores. If only he can knuckle down and keep his parents out of the barn.

Charles Hageman Frey is a student of philosophy and science living in Washington, D.C.