Future Commuting - A Flight of Fancy on Alternative Transportation

The race is on to find alternative fuels before existing oil supplies either dry up or become too expensive for practical use. The major car manufacturers are all plowing money into research to this end - they'd like nothing more than to find another fuel they can have a part in the profits from, and continue transporting people just the way they have for the last hundred years. Unfortunately for them, that's not likely.

The way I see it, we've reached a crossroads. We're questioning how we get around. Hundreds of smaller organizations, individuals even, have been putting just as much time (if not money) into developing fantastic and wonderful inventions that can do the job of getting us from A to B just as well, if not better, and many of them without relying on fossil fuels. But the questioning hasn't stopped there.

Governments are now re-thinking their own approaches to transport, and making public transport a much more holistic approach. Masdar is one example, but there are others.

But even that isn't where the questioning should end.

Think about it. The world has gotten smaller. Location isn't the constraint it used to be - we have networks that span the globe so that a banker in London can work while he's visiting LA. Why do we need to travel every day at all?

Maybe the model of alternative transportation for the future is a shift into virtual worlds. Maybe the commute of tomorrow will be to the dedicated work-room - taking the space garages used to need - where you'll plug yourself into your work VPN (virtual private network) to start the day. Meetings can be held online now, with avatars as realistic as you like - although it could get interesting on red nose day! If your office chair had TENS built into it, you could be working out while you work!

Admittedly, work is not the only thing you travel to, but that could be changed as well. Just as email turned into RSS and 'push' technology, delivery models of the future could revolve around getting things to you, instead of you getting out to things. Communities could be built around a hub and spoke model, with a central meeting place and transport to that place incorporated into the planning stages, along with faster cross connections from hub to hub when you did need to get around. Planning tomorrow could learn a lot from IT network infrastructure models of today.

It's interesting, don't you think, that fuel crises are precipitating changes to our way of life just as our technology develops to the point that alternatives may not need to cope with the same level of demand as days gone by.

Crystal N Woods

Analyst by day, NetCitizen by night, Futurist always: I'm currently delving into the world of alternative vehicles to bring you the funniest, fastest, coolest and most out there alternatives to the car that I can find.

Visit me at http://alternativevehiclesreport.net and check them out!

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