It’s been a while since I last watched Magic Highway USA, a beautiful and optimistic look at the future of travel from 1958.
You have to love the retro-futurism, with its assumption of ever larger public works projects. Why stop at paved highways when we can have illuminated interstate highways with radiant heat to melt away ice? Indeed, let’s heat the countryside in case a car passes through.
Some ideas seem both reasonable and wild, like giant VTOL emergency aircraft, which can dash to a crash site and whisk away both injured victims and their damaged vehicles.
Of course, in 1958, the future is atomic. We’ll use mobile atomic reactors to melt tunnels through mountains. Eventually we’ll drive atomic cars. What could go wrong?
One of the biggest difference in attitude though involves not just an optimistic view of what we will be able to do, but of what we should do.
From 1958, lining a steep mountainside with high-tech highways seemed like a great idea. It’s not just a beautiful natural scene; it’s a beautiful natural scene with a beautiful high-tech marvel too!
I felt like some kind of Luddite when I got to the end and saw the highway of tomorrow passing right by the sphinx and off toward the pyramids. Of course, that’s not too far from what ended up happening, only the intervening countryside is no longer pristine desert.