BACKGROUND
On October 29, 1998 I received an EMail from Jim Calder, the managing editor
of the IEEE as follows:
"Dear
Doug Malewicki: Today, I am contacting
you to invite you to serve as a Special Guest Author for the PROCEEDINGS OF
THE IEEE and write a brief Companion Predictive Essay as an introduction to
a 1962 Predictive Paper entitled: "Communications as an Alternative to
Travel," authored by John R. Pierce, who was the VP and Technical
Director of ITT in 1962, when this paper was written. We believe that it
might be appropriate to include some information on the potentialities of
"solid state travel" and the People Pods concepts in this look
into the future. (This approach is based on the idea that while
communications has been revolutionary-there is more travel as well as more
cars on the road-and perhaps it is time to re-vitalize and re-engineer our
concepts of public transportation systems.)
The Pierce paper was originally published as part of the 50th Jubilee
Year Celebration of the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) in 1962."
I called Jim to discuss what
he had on his mind for the paper. I told him that writing about the
future could be a lot of fun and as long as he would let me include some
wild, though technically feasible ideas, I would be happy to put in the
work. Some time later I sent him a first draft and Jim responded with
a request for even more pages. Happy to comply. Then after the
final draft was turned in, the IEEE sent me back an edited down version that
"lost it" as far I was concerned. Jim, blamed the removal of all my
fun, bizarre stuff on the "powers that be". So now the actual April
1999 IEEE Proceedings paper is just another boring Ph.D.-like diatribe.
In retaliation,
here is the original fun version. All the crazy, though technically
feasible, stuff in the beginning has a purpose! It specifically steers
people into thinking about solving everyone's personal problem of "how
can I minimize my commuting time?". I purposely did not want a
paper that discussed an "improved mass transportation system
concept" because that is quite secondary to what SkyTran is
about. This uncensored version is designed to give the reader insight
into the thinking processes that integrate numerous unrelated inventions and
technologies into something new and useful for all. SkyTran will make
more sense to you after reading this paper.
BTW, I
couldn't stop laughing when I first saw one special picture that my
talented artist friend, Steve Crompton of Scottsdale, Arizona,
created. It is of me in my ultra-senior prime at age 113 in the
year 2052 - the improved Doug "Arnold" Malewicki! It was done to point out that by then there will be
many unexpected technological advancements in ALL fields of
creative endeavor - not just transportation! You get to see it
here on the web - the poor IEEE Proceedings readers will never know the
laughs they missed. Enjoy!