Tesla

is like a pumpkin patch.

(As I write this, Donald Trump just won the presidential election and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is going to be in charge of downsizing the government or something like that. This piece is not about that at all. I just already had it planned.)

When I was a kid, my parents subscribed me to Popular Mechanics for Kids. Despite not being a particularly mechanically-minded child (I once accidentally locked myself into the bathroom from the inside), I very much enjoyed Popular Mechanics for Kids. In particular, I enjoyed what I recall now as an annual issue that was presented as a “preview” of the future.

In the future issue, a kid of 2028 or 2075 would go through his or her normal day, but everything would be different. A doctor’s appointment would look like being scanned by a robot who could also prescribe and dispense medications. Going to the grocery store, you would no longer go to the checkout—you would just take things off the shelves. Video games would be totally immersive. You could talk with holograms of your friends. Your fridge would tell you if you were out of milk.

Some of those things really happened—most of them have not really materialized. Some probably still will. Some probably never will (going everywhere using jetpacks or flying cars, something that people have been predicting since at least the 60s, doesn’t seem like it’s actually all that practical).

Not only did we have Popular Mechanics for Kids, we had Tomorrowland at Disneyland. I don’t think Tomorrowland is quite the same today as it used to be. When I went, around age 9, I recall vividly walking through a full-size model of the home of the future. There were futuristic appliances on a huge rotating stage. My most vivid recollection is LED stars embedded into a child’s room themed around Peter Pan—I was easily compelled by an aesthetic as I am now, and I suppose such a room is within my reach now, in the future.