Alternate Energy in Daily Life

Imagine that you could travel in time, much like Doc Brown and Marty McFly in the movie Back to the Future. Suppose you traveled back to 1955 with the Doc and Marty and asked a resident of 1955 what the year 2011 would be like. Would he predict hybrid cars, or flying cars? Would he believe that the United States has a moon base -- or that is has no moon program at all? Would he believe that kids carry cell phones but that the only commercial viable robot is the Roomba vacuum? Someone living in 1955 would probably predict a future much different from the one we are actually living today. When you consider how life in the future was depicted in movies, TV programs, and books in the middle of the 20th century, it easy to see that our predictions about the future...
[ View Full Essay]