Visions of the Future: "The City" in 2057

"2057: The City" had lots of interesting tidbits and one big problem, but nothing that disturbed me on the level that "The Body" did, so I'll run through them quickly.

• Holograms: Scientists have found ways to create 'curtains' of micro-water droplets, so light and fine that a person sticking their hand in it won't get wet and yet substantial enough that they can project a holographic image on it.* Cool. They have also developed computer programs that can instruct the holographic image to 'follow' a person around the room, limited by where the 'curtain' is. Very cool. They believe that, in the future, people might have holographic 'pets' following them around. Um, unlikely. In the first place, it would be difficult, bordering on impossible, to get enough water (or other) particles into midair to project the images on if the source of the particles (a device attached to the person) was constantly moving. In the second place, even if it could work, it couldn't be used the way it was on the show. On the show, a child's holographic dolphin was flying all around his head, jumping in and out of the way of passers-by. While the hologram could not actually block the way of pedestrians, it looks substantial enough to be a problem and would likely be banned as a public nuisance. I do see potential in presentation situations: anything you might want to show on a large screen (e.g. movies, office presentations, slide shows) could be shown without one just by using water droplets as your screen, also it could be very effective in plays and other performance arts.
• Robots: They spent a long time analyzing the particular problems with creating humanoid-type robots. Movement, recognition and decision making have all been extremely problematic because what humans can do is actually quite complex and we have difficulty replicating it. While advances are being made, we are unlikely to have a Data or a C-3P0 in the next 50 years.
• Self-driving cars: Experiments in and contests for systems in cars that would allow the cars to drive without input from humans are creating better and better software. While there is still a ways to go, I would not be surprised if it such cars were on the road by 2057.
• City control of cars: While the coordination efforts would be considerable, the development of cars that would allow a city's computer system to drive it and of a computer system similar to the self-driving system but capable of handling many hundreds of cars and figuring out the best routes for those cars is an entirely feasible possibility.
• City's run by computers: The idea that more and more control of routine functions will be transferred to computers is hardly even a prediction; we are already moving in that direction as fast as we can. However, the idea that a 20-year-old computer virus, accidentally let into the computer system, would wreak the havoc seen in the program is ludicrous. It is ridiculous to think that an entire city's system would be centralized (everyone knows the danger of putting all of your eggs in one basket) and, technobabble aside, computers will not lose the ability to defend against old viruses just because the new ones are different. Otherwise, any hacker would just use old, outdated viruses. I realize this was necessary to inject 'drama' into the program, but seriously.

*When I was in high school, my family went to Disney World where they had a show that utilized a similar projection system, but used more substantial amounts of water.