Ehrm, about the Baffler article (to quote):

"Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?"

"That pretty much answers the question of why we don’t have teleportation devices or antigravity shoes."

The article then points the finger to a plethora of culprits (capitalism, government bureaucracy, the inability to give the truly brilliant a free reign, neoliberalism, et al), yet completely glosses over the point that the utmost of the inventions/innovations wanted are either, most probably, physically impossible, or mostly economically not feasible.

To wit:

--teleportation, anti-gravity, immortality, tractor beams, force fields: physically impossible or so immensely difficult (in theory, let alone in practice) as to be practically unfeasible;

--flying cars, colonies on Mars, human space travel, personal robots for everyone: all of those are *economically* uninteresting.

Industrial robots are already decades old: they produce your cars, computers, smartphones and what-have-you. But they are so expensive that they can only make back their investment if they mass-produce. Not if they are the butler of a single person (unless that person is Bill Gates): just way too expensive.

Same for a flying car: the fuel consumption per mile is insane, apart from little things like everybody needing his own runway (unless we use VTOL flying cars, whose fuel consumption per mile is even more insane), and the practical consideration: why use a flying car when a normal car can get you there for 1% of the cost? The super-rich have flying cars: they only call them helicopters or private planes. It's the economy, stupid.

Similarly, colonies on Mars (or even on the Moon): space travel is prohibitively expensive. To get a kilogram out of Earth's gravity well is immensely expensive. That's why Earth orbit satellites are used (they make their investments back through communication, GPS and other usage), and unmanned vessels traverse the solar system: making an environment that supports human life in a hostile area called space is, so far, prohibitively expensive (apart from the rare moments that national pride demands it, which is still stupendously expensive, but a price that seems worth paying at that moment).

Now, I do sincerely hope we will have colonies on the Moon and Mars (and even my compatriots are working at it: just Google MARS ONE). But we need to make it economically feasible, first and foremost.

Why invest a several trillion dollars on a Mars mission when for the same money you could greatly relieve poverty and hunger in Africa, give decent healthcare to everyone in the US, or create a huge amount of jobs world-wide (just to name a few)?

We need to get our priorities straight, and -- sorry to say -- flying cars, teleportation and anti-gravity are not our current priorities.

Now you can call me an anarcho-capitalist, or worse...;-)