Where is MY flying car?

Thirty, forty years ago, when people were talking about life in 2009, they saw it a little differently than it is right now. Forget 1984, this is 2009, where is my flying car? Where is my personal robot? Where is my PC that is embedded in my brain? Where is the real estate market on Mars? They are NOT here, wonder why? Because people hate change.

Every time technology makes a breakthrough in an area, only a small percentage of the population embrace it. You cannot constantly improve an industry when almost everyone over 40 is not interested. Still I see ridiculous html baby websites for major companies or institutions, I still get bitched out by the cab driver when I use my credit card and still hear older people question the difference between an email address and a URL.

There is a particular demographic that always supports and encourages advancement, mostly 15-35 year old persons in big cities like NY, LA and Chicago (notice I said mostly, so if you are a 65 year-old grandma that lives in Scranton, Ohio and has two IPods and a G1 phone, please do not get angry). Why is not the rest of America (or world for that matter) hungry for new advancements?

Well, unfortunately humans in general do not like change. We are truly creatures of habit and most of us prefer to go about our routine life instead of learning new things (myself included). My only question is: why did not film makers from 30, 40 years ago see this flaw in humans? Why did they put the subtitle "2003" on their movies when they showing a robot marrying a martian instead of 2503? Well the answer is simple, humans like to aspire to things that they know is out of their reach. We like to hope that tomorrow is a new day, we like to hope that we are the best people, we like to hope that we are the good guys, we like to hope for that flying Camaro in ten years...The only problem with that is we are still investing more money in Oil, War and Religion than we are on education. That is exactly why we are not the face of innovation anymore, we are a consumer country with less Physics Professors than Professional Ball Players.