Waking in a different world

I hear jets a lot at my house.  I hear them at midnight, at midmorning, during the early afternoon.  I hear them a lot.  They run military maneuvers from a nearby noncommercial airport.  Twice now I have seen them practicing their hovering techniques.  Right.  Helicopters hover, jets fly at supersonic speed.  Nope, not these.

When I was growing up, I lived near a naval air base, and the experimental jets there ran maneuvers over our house.  One day I saw a propeller plane adjust the position of its rotors in midair and practice hovering.  They have come a long way over the last few centuries.

It's only when people can think creatively that machines can do the seemingly impossible.  Hovering jets - whoever would have thought of such a thing?  But when I looked about a month ago and saw it hovering over a neighborhood next to mine, there was no mistaking that it was a jet not a helicopter.

Society is probably not ready for such things as non-car transportation, but as surely as that jet hovered over my next door neighbors' houses, there will be such a thing.  When it happens, people will be waking in a different world.  That will be my granddaughter's world a half-century from now. She'll be ready along with most her age.  She represents the second generation after the birth of computers and digital storage and transmission.  They'll know all about creatively combining ideas.  Non-car transportation is only the beginning of what they will be able to do.