I Flew 12,000 km Backwards

... and boy are my arms tired as the very old joke goes.

The miracle of how small our world has become is considered so everyday that it passes without comment most of the time. Think back to 40 years ago and even this trip I've just completed was pretty extraordinary. 80 years ago it would have had to be done by ship and before that it was often a simple one way life transformation as the distances were on the same parallel as we view going to Mars these days. (6months)

Now let's look forward and imagine the same circumstances. By 2050 will we consider an orbital excursion regular and bemoan the 2-3 days it might take to get to a Martian vacation. .? We have dismissed jetlag - it's not serious just something you work through. Will stasis-lag be the same..? Einstein's physics teaches us that we will age at different rates as we approach the speed of light but what if my spouse also went into stasis or traveled as fast and far at the same time. Would it matter 'when' we lived as long as we were together ? Is this a short-cut to time travel of a sort?

I will predict that only our core values will survive intact in the coming years. Almost everything around us will be modified from how we see things now. I'm not talking flying cars here, I'm trying to imagine how the need and desire to travel and explore will evolve with technology knowing that the 'baseline of the want' will remain in place. Might it be possible for very realistic virtualization of a place to satisfy that need..? I bet it would, cutting deeply into leisure travel as we know it. That's a simple example of how satisfying the core need will allow us to radically change how we do things.

What can you imagine and the tricky part- how do we start to bring it to life. See what 12,000 km backwards does to you ?