In Popular Culture
Complaints of the non-existence of flying cars have become nearly idiomatic as expressions of disappointment in the failure of the present to measure up to the glory of past predictions.
The December 30, 1989 Calvin and Hobbes comic strip depicted an early instance of the "Where are the flying cars?" idea:
| “ | Hobbes: "A new decade is coming up."
Calvin: "Yeah, big deal! Hmph. Where are the flying cars? Where are the moon colonies? Where are the personal robots and the zero-gravity boots, huh? You call this a new decade?! You call this the future?? HA! Where are the rocket packs? Where are the disintegration rays? Where are the floating cities?" |
” |
A memorable 2001 IBM television commercial featured Avery Brooks (of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame) complaining "It is the year 2000, but where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars. I don’t see any flying cars. Why? Why? Why?"
Comedian Lewis Black had a similar routine early in the decade: "This new millennium sucks! It's exactly the same as the old millennium! You know why? No flying cars!"
Read more about this topic: Flying Car (fiction)
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“The man of large and conspicuous public service in civil life must be content without the Presidency. Still more, the availability of a popular man in a doubtful State will secure him the prize in a close contest against the first statesman of the country whose State is safe.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“... we’ve allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyond fifty, sixty, or seventy—all part of the average human life span providing we can escape hunger, violence, and other epidemics—many people can see only a blank screen, or one on which they project fear of disease and democracy.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)