Visions of the future haven’t been terribly optimistic recently. Although the dystopia genre isn’t new, it’s become a more popular mode of creative expression to imagine how all the people die.

And who can blame us? We’ve been steeped in death for almost all of our history as a species. In Stanly Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the defining moment of intelligence is when an ape turns a bone into an instrument to club other apes to death. War, proud war-mongers sometimes boast, is responsible for some of our greatest inventions. That, and, you know, war.

“Jeremy! Call the patent office, this is the ONE!!”

My history professor once told me that people who grew up during the Cold War didn’t want it to end. When asked why, he responded that there was only one people figured it could end. Then simulated the dropping of a warhead with his hand, replete with sound effects. I loved that class.

So Death is buddy buddy with cultural advances. It’s stoked the greatest minds into fleeing for their lives from it, when they were really on the same tandem bike, They’re entering the Double Dutch tournament. Metaphors. Since we’ve crossed nuclear annihilation by Soviets off our list, we’ve replaced it with the slow strangulation of climate change and the irrational panic of airplanes hitting every building. People are still checking for terrorists like spiders hiding in  the bottom of their shoes.

Another invention of Death’s: the prostate exam.

BUT! (Aha, you thought I wouldn’t get there?) I’m here to offer a vision of the future that is not a nuke-scorched death-o-sphere. And I didn’t need to consult the moose knucklebones on this one. There are people driving innovations that will lead to  what I predict is a more stable, technological future. I’m not sooth-saying; I don’t have tomorrow’s Stock Market readout printed on my eyelids. These are personal projections about how nearing advances are going to shape the future into a veritable bouquet of happiness. And in this case, it starts with power.

Clean, renewable energy isn’t easy to come by. We’re still relying primarily on combustibles and lighting shit on fire to charge our iPads. While other renewables are doing their best to catch up (Whoo, Biomass, you go!! No, no one is making fun of you… they’re just haters, honey, keep going!), we’re still using methods that are extremely hazardous in the long game of human survival. Nuclear reactors are pretty awesome, even though they’re essentially giant tea-kettles, but still only accounting for 19% of energy produced in America in 2013 (see “methods”).

So what’s the deal? Where are the life saving innovations? Save me, you scientist bastards, I haven’t unlocked the next level of Candy Crush!

Spoilers: it’s actually about pill addiction.

My focus is on three innovations that will change the way power is generated and utilized in this country and, hoping we’re not greedy bastards about these advancements, across the world.

1. Rise of the Planet of the Electrical Cars

I’m not a scientist, an engineer, or even much by way of an artist. But I do know that the early Prius models looked more like Little Tike pushcars than automobiles. And while I was disappointed I couldn’t push the Prius around like Fred Flintstone and relive my glory days of age 6, I had to concede that visibility was poor and I felt like I was driving around in a shoe made of aluminum foil. Gas mileage was the good type of ridiculous, and I was fortunate for that, but the problem didn’t even go that deep: not only did I feel exposed, early electric cars just weren’t sexy. I know how shallow that sounds. It is that shallow. And it still doesn’t change the fact that, in this country, if it ain’t safe, it better be pretty.

Enter Tesla Motors. My whole argument stems from their logo, and moves on from there.

Look at the future. Touch the future. Smell it. Go on.

I’m not going to rave about the advantages of getting a car by Tesla, or tell you to “go out and get one now, you fucking idiot.” No, other people have already done it far better than I could. And if you just read that review by Matt Inman aka The Oatmeal, you can hear the argument for this remarkable piece of technology. What Tesla Motors has done is create something the market craves that redefines the guidelines of beauty. Think about it. You see one of those car-spaceship hybrids floating down the street, you don’t think about how proud you are of your gas mileage. You think, the future is now, motherfucker, and I’m living in yesterday. In short, Tesla is giving people the impetus to rethink the social standing of electrical cars, with all the practical and superficial benefits to match.. So I’m just gonna leave this here. And here

… (“Shhh, just buy it, shhhhhh”)

2. Solar Roadways

It’s pretty rare for a cause to get me motivated. As a part-time New Yorker, I have mastered the art of not giving one clinically depressed fuck about what’s happening around me. Unless of course, you’re walking more slowly than I am. Then all I’m going to think about is how much I want to throw you.

But one night I saw, I forget how, a page for a project on indiegogo. The title intrigued, so I clicked on it, and found the future like I had just clicked on some Narnian portal. Solar Roadways is a multi-purpose project, but its primary function is to generate free, clean solar energy. It will do this by replacing all roads with special hexagonal tiles embedded with solar panels. If that sounds crazy to you, I assure you. It is.

“Crazy enough to work!” said every hero ever.

This guy has that tattooed under his glorious mustache.

I’ll spare you the sales pitch, as the crowdfunding event is already over anyway. But consider this vision of the future, especially paired with a safer, more efficient spacecarpod by Tesla. First, all roads, pathways, driveways, landing strips, gaming courts, etc. would be replaced with these tiles, which would start generating power immediately. Cool. That means no more powerlines. Oh sweet, no more dangling deathvines of electricity. Yes, SR’s feature an underground network of wires to avoid collapses during storms. Another network funnels runoff water into treatment facilities so it isn’t being pumped back up Nature’s butt like a radioactive enema.

Cleaner energy, cleaner water, fewer power outages, cool, cool. Very cool.

But wait, there’s more! Not only are these panels generating electricity, they are equipped with programmable LEDs, they’re pressure sensitive, and are capable of providing heating. What would that mean? No more shoveling your driveway or roads or even sidewalks. Nah. No more of that, because the panels have lifted the temperature to just above freezing. That means no more buying huge quantities of salt and having to get your car washed in winter.

It also means the whole road is programmable by pressure. If you’re going too fast, the road can literally tell you to slow down. If there are moose in the streets, it will alert you, preferably in tall, bold lettering: MOOSE!! And of course any court or space could change to any type of sport you’d need. Basketball to floor hockey in a moment. Powered by your parking lot. As they say in the video, which breaks it down pretty thoroughly, “Let’s put our roads to work.”

And yes, also because the whole world will look like Tron.

I have nothing witty to say. This should be where we live.

3. Self-Driving Cars

This is an innovation that will meet a lot of social strife in its early phases, what with the Skynet and all. We already have a difficult enough time getting Grandma to give up the keys to her Ferrari, so how will we go about getting a nation that considers cars phallic  to fork em over? I would say statistics, but they mean little to voting populations whose education ended at the 8^th grade, twenty years ago. So I’ll appeal to Stastics’s older, wiser cousin of Logic, a somewhat safer middle ground.

I have no evidence prepared when I say that 100% of traffic is caused by human stupidity. Imagine this: you’re driving down the highway and you enter some period of traffic. Fuck me, you say, I’m going to be late for my piccolo recital. So you chew your fingernails and project your hate onto all the other cars boxing you in, all the while crawling forward at an agonizing 3 miles an hour. Pigeons are strutting past you on the divider. The driver in the car next to you is knitting a sweater. You sadly play your piccolo.

“Play ‘Danny Boy.'”

And then, a break! The cars ahead of you pick up speed, and you look around, rubber-necking like a goddam tourist with the expectation of some justice for your pain. And you see…!

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Granted, it’s only really been about four and a half minutes, but still. In our egocentric little heads, we immediately crave justification for our delay. We hate being made to wait for things, pretty much always. And when we are, we have to know at least that our pain is going towards something, a small five car pileup for our troubles. These blockages happen for a very simple reason: someone went around a bend, and started to break. Then, the person behind him/her started to break, anticipating the shift. This repeats until you have a soul-killing chapter of your favorite modern torture created. Yep. Traffic is caused by people slowing down too much.

I don’t mean to connote this as stupid behavior. Slowing down is good. Better safe than sorry. But I have to get to my piccolo recital, and you’re in my way.

“Part-time New Yorker… ENGAGE!”

The real problem is human error. Stop and go traffic could be better moderated if people weren’t the ones moderating it. Think about when you’re the fifth car back at a red light when it turns green. Theoretically, if everyone started driving at once, there would be no love taps on anyone’s bumper. Instead, because we inherently can’t trust the person in front of us to go when we think they should, we end up waiting for them to stop flexing their brake lights so we can stop reading their eighteenth bumper sticker on their political opinions.

In a future with autonomous cars, there would be no traffic inspired by humanity’s caveman instincts, however many bone-club patents we’ve filed. There would also be no such thing as drunk drivers. Can we talk about how terrific that would be? No more families ripped apart because of someone else’s demons. I am all on board for that. Other changes: no more “driving” age (this would become a new debate as to the appropriate age of self-monitoring), stricter legislation on accidents caused by “manual” cars, better GPS navigation, and the redesigning of car interiors to be more social centered. The back of every car would be like a limousine, a place to talk to friends and play cards. Sex might actually become comfortable, removing the impetus of teen romances everywhere. You know, like a spaceship.

Obviously, cars would still need a manual function for if the computer every broke down. It just makes sense, and it would placate a lot of naysayers. But the consequence of this would be sterner legislation for accidents caused by “manually” driven cars. And before someone starts in on why a computer should be trusted more than a human to pilot our vehicles, I remind you: computers brought us to the Moon, motherfucker, and spacecraft have a much better success rate than people. There is no pirate’s steering wheel on the International Space Station. Computers run that shit.

To recap. More free, clean energy for everybody, and safer, sexier, self-driving spacecars. People will undoubtedly find a way to fuck this up. It’s what we do. Fortunately, it’s also what we do to create brilliant new solutions to humanity’s fuck ups.

Trust me. I’m a scientist.

This is for my next projection of the future.