More on Floating Stop Signs, I Suppose

   Another thing about the post I made the day before yesterday. I guess this makes it a trilogy, since I also talked about it yesterday. I don't plan on doing any more after this one, but I feel I should say at least this at this time. A major plot (?) point of the story (?) was how in the future, you don't need poles. Alright.

   In sci-fi or any other depiction of the future, a lot of what makes your depiction of the future so convincing or not is not what's there, but what isn't there. It's the things you wouldn't notice. Challenge your unquestioned assumptions. We don't need ashtrays in mission control, for obvious reasons (you shouldn't smoke in mission control?) but try telling that to the science fiction filmmakers of the '60s and '70s (there's one particularly notorious example, but it slips my mind right now.)

   In the real future, driving down the road, there aren't going to be any bugs to spatter against your windshield, or any roadkill of any kind. None of that. You, as a teller of a story of the future, don't even have to bring it up. You just... leave that stuff out. I guess you don't have to challenge your unquestioned assumptions that much. Huh. There's some stuff that would take a greater effort on your part, though, that's not that.

    There won't be power lines, like I said, so if you're doing a visual medium like film you have to erase those digitally or something. Another thing you'll have to remember to get rid of is glare off the road. When the sun is going down or rising, nowadays, it can be hard to see where you're driving. In the future, the roads will be made of a material that absorbs the light completely. I'm not going to say that traffic fatalities will be a thing of the past, because the more safety measures in place the more likely you are to drive more recklessly (FACT!), but more people will take the train, making the point mootish.

    Like a car commercial. The future will be like a car commercial. Driving down the road, no other drivers in sight, in a clean shiny car because no bugs snuff themselves out against you, with no glare coming up off of the asphalt.

   That's just the driving, at least, as an example. There's more, if you just stop to think about it.