As a follow-up to Norman Bel Geddes' utopian film of 1940 posted below (a projection of the modern american city of 1960), we would like to direct our readers to the an op-ed printed in yesterday's NYTimes. Here, Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun and Google product manager Anthony Levandowski address the dire straits of the big 3 automakers by proposing 4 innovations that they suggest might help Detroit avoid squandering its recently acquired bailout billions.

Does #2 sound familiar? Thrun+Levandowski: On the highway train of tomorrow, cars might be able to drive with robotic precision while we sit ... and relax.

Surely this similarity between today's "innovations" and yesterday's futurism offers anecdotal evidence that progress is never guaranteed. How many films and other manifestos have over-promised on the future? Where's my hovering skateboard from Back-to-the-Future II's fictional 2015? Yes, we'll concede that the sophisticated wireless networks required for Thrun/Levandowski's "highway-trains" might not have existed by 1960. But it is clear that there was the intent, at least as early as 1940, to hybridize the train with the car, merging the strengths of both.

This is really exciting: the independence of a car plus the efficiency and speed of a train in the same package! The spectacle of sedans peeling off of a high-speed train upon reaching the driver's cul-de-sac evokes visions of collective intelligence normally trotted out in defense of "emergence" theory (flocking birds, schools of fish and the like).

All of this begs the question: why have we been stuck with the dumb, only-a-car for so long? Thanks to computers, we can now do great things like transfer power "from the wheels that slip to the wheels that grip" and such, but we've dropped the ball on macro-traffic engineering for the last 68 years! Today's cars are still marketed as the 21st century horse--a stead under the sole control of the individual cowboy--which is at odds with reality of the car as an insignificant unit in mass-exodus of daily banality. Now, it appears we have the chance to resurrect the 19th century streetcar without sacrificing our individual mobility. And, finally, we are in a position to leverage the likes of GM (Bel Geddes' client in 1940) into making it happen. Let's hope it doesn't take until 2060.