For fun, let's say we'd sat Geoff down 20 years ago and asked him to rate the following futures in units of 'preposterousness': "Geoff, how preposterous is it to believe that in 20 years..."

1. We live in a world of self-driving, all electric automobiles, the safest and fastest ever built in mass production.

2. We live in a world where private space companies build profitable space transportation systems that can land themselves after orbiting the Earth.

3. We travel from city to city in vacuum tubes that enable 700+ mph speeds on land.

4. The mind-numbing gridlock of urban auto traffic is relieved by tunnels that whiz cars across town at speeds exceeding 120 MPH.

I'm pretty sure he'd scoff at all of it. I would have, too, but then I'd be pretty giddy that even one of them had materialized.