We Have Seen the Future
Paul Krugman has some nice musings on visiting Hong Kong.
Hong Kong, with its incredible cluster of tall buildings stacked up the slope of a mountain, is the way the future was supposed to look. The future — the way I learned it from science-fiction movies — was supposed to be Manhattan squared: vertical, modernistic, art decoish. What the future mainly ended up looking like instead was Atlanta — sprawl, sprawl, and even more sprawl, a landscape of boxy malls and McMansions. Bo-ring. So for a little while I get to visit the 1950s version of the 21st century. Yay!
By
Ezra Klein
|
May 26, 2009; 5:00 PM ET
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Posted by: rt42 | May 26, 2009 5:32 PM | Report abuse
To give Paul his due, I cut the line about flying cars, which came later in his post. But yes, even Nobel Prize economists miss their flying cars.
Posted by: Ezra Klein | May 26, 2009 6:03 PM | Report abuse
That's what I get for not clicking through!
Posted by: rt42 | May 27, 2009 8:33 AM | Report abuse
He should have gone to Atlanta's Center for Puppetry Arts. That is a place where the future meets the past. Fun, too.
Posted by: thescuspeaks | May 27, 2009 10:54 AM | Report abuse
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How about flying cars? Pretty much every "1950s version of the 21st century" included flying cars.