The design of "impossible" things

This is not in the sense of Don Norman's ergonomics concerns in the 80's and 90's. Instead, what I call the "design of impossible things" is more related to the idea of solution spaces and how some new ideas are too radical to be implemented. Sometimes the issue is technological, and we have to wait for a really clever and dedicated person to achieve a breakthrough. But most often, the barriers are social, human, political, cultural, etc.

In this interesting article, Joe Kissell talks about the old-new idea of personal flying machines. What ever happened to all those future predictions of personal airplanes that would replace the car? Instead, we've been locked in minor improvements of the same idea. This article brings together many issues and is a great departing point to discuss the gap between a good idea and an innovation.

http://itotd.com/articles/397/personal-flying-machines/