St. Louis to Have Its First Automated Parking Garage

Back in the fifties there was an explosion of what I like to call "living technology." Not technology that was alive, but rather the sort that made living easier. Automobiles went through radical design changes, kitchens became all electric, you could watch moving pictures in your home through the magic of television, and everything was improved upon, from the toaster to the hot water heater to the toilet. This was all driven by the fact that we had just put the first satellite in space and the first man in space would come just a few years after in 1961. It all created a Jetson's-like vision of things to come in our minds. By the year 2000, we would all be swallowing a pill to get our nutrition, there would be very little disease, and we'd all be flying around in magnetically propelled automobiles. All the sidewalks would be moving so we wouldn't have to walk anymore and at home robots would wait on us hand and foot.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Instead of all of the wonderful mechanical gadgets, we discovered two things that would change our lives drastically, and even more so in the future: computers and cracking the human genome. Instead of robots fixing our meals we opted for cell phones and hand held computers that play video games. We just make a phone call and have our food delivered to us. And the homes of the future don't look like those metal ones envisioned in the 50's, but rather we've went back in time for that classic retro look, with wood and brick, fireplaces, and lots of landscaping.