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Future airlines will get
taste of own medicine

You'd think after taking a half-dozen or so voyages into the future to the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show with my buddy in his time machine, I'd have my sea legs on the space-time continuum by now.

Well, you'd be wrong.

I can eat seafood linguini in marinara sauce while watching gastric-bypass surgery on the Discovery Channel. But I can't seem to win the battle against quantum physics without losing my lunch.

Plus, my time-traveling cohort's laissez-faire attitude toward vehicle maintenance would make anyone queasy. Sure, you might blow off the "CHECK ENGINE" light in your car for awhile (in my case, since October 2003), but when one blinks in a time machine common sense should tell you to pull over -- unless you want to be stuck in the future without a return ticket living out your years as a slave waiter to some damn dirty ape.

Nevertheless, we returned with more details about what's on the cutting edge of tech 13 years from now. While still not 100 percent, I'm able to limp to the computer to type up a couple sneak peaks (though I'm still not getting anywhere near the leftover linguini in the fridge):

Lobecasting: Podcasting -- the recording of audio that is uploaded to the Net and automatically downloaded to MP3 players -- was the new hip thing in 2005. But in 2018, it's all about "lobecasting," the immediate transmission of every thought and sensation from a person's frontal lobe. Indie lobecasts cover everything from the tooth pain of tightened braces to a marathoner's second-wind endorphin rush.

But of course, celebrity lobecasts are the big sellers. The only one I recognized was from Britney Spears -- I tried it but I don't think it was working right. After several minutes, all I heard was the sound of open-mouthed gum smacking.

RFID baggage cash-in: Soon after radio frequency identification tags (each the size of a flake of dandruff) were implanted into every object on Earth, the capitalist-coded rat race officially hit warp speed. The tiny chips are instantaneously read by scanners, that then instantaneously deduct funds from your debit or charge accounts, allowing almost everyone to pass through toll roads and grocery-store check-out lanes at the same breakneck speeds (those with credit scores below 650, however, are still required to pull over for ID checks and your standard three to four minutes of uncomfortable public shaming).

But air travelers irate about endless add-on fees (including new meters on the cabin reading lights) compelled Congress to also use RFIDs to retaliate against airlines via the Baggage Cash-In Act.

The law requires carriers to install RFID scanners that assess the total value of all luggage at check-in. Then, presuming the bags will be lost, airlines must provide travelers with the exact cash value of all items before they board, thus "cashing in" rather than "checking in" bags.

Once landed, travelers can then skip baggage claim and take a shuttle to Wal-Mart to replace their lost old items with their new wad of cash.

In the unlikely event a bag actually arrives at the traveler's destination, the money would eventually be returned to the airline (once it waits two to three weeks and fills out all the proper forms).