Well, change comes to all things, even aviation. The changes we predict don't always happen and the ones that catch us out are often completely unexpected. There's another law of futurology, which is that we tend to overestimate the impact of R&D in the short term, and underestimate it in the long term.
All progress, it's said, is due to unreasonable people. In aviation one might say that all progress is due to people who are rich, brave and unreasonable. I'm neither rich enough nor brave enough to be a pioneer myself, but in the meanwhile I see no harm in throwing ideas around, and daring to believe that one day the problems already mentioned on this thread may be solved or sidestepped.
Anyway, there's no reason either not to hope for improvements in technology, or to diss those people who are unreasonable enough to try to make them reality.
This news story just took me completely by surprise:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/a...leaf-0930.html
Don't yet know what to make of it, if anything.