h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

First of all, creating a utopia would be completely impossible. The reason is that no matter what we make, we always want something else.
For example, a little while ago, the only way to travel somewhere was on foot, by boat, or by cavalry. We weren't satisfied with this. We thought the world would be a much better place if we had machines to pull us around. Scientists complied with their requests and came up with cars, airplanes, better ships, ect. But today, we don't really see the world as a much better place. We only think about flying cars, how nice it would be if we all could zip around in flying cars and say goodbye to traffic jams forever. But let's say we actually do make flying cars. Whoopdee doo. But once we extend our travel to space, since we'll certainly be going to Mars by that time, humans will want to go there because they before only could go there by space planes (just an example). It would seem nice to go there by flying cars of space. See what I mean? It'll be never ending. Maybe, by some insane miracle, we'll settle the whining about cars and planes. So what? We still aren't in a utopia, because there are problems with war, politics, power, health, human nature, agreements, and much, much, much more that I won't waste my time on telling you.
Second of all, if by some miracle, we ended up with a utopia on our hands, we wouldn't like it at all. We'd be stuck in a world where there are no problems whatsoever. Because being happy, in this imperfect world we currently live in, is only produced by a lack of sadness. We're happy about living to be pretty old because we know it's possible that we could die before then. In utopia, we live to be extremely old. So what? Everyone else does. What's the point? In utopia, we make millions. So what? Everyone else does. What's the point? In utopia, our government is somehow completely just and fair with no war or conflict. So what? That's how it's always been. What's the point? Therefore, becoming sick of the 'perfect' world we one day live in actually turns it back into an imperfect world because we're not happy with it.

Sorry for the longness.

to start, the idea that we NEED transport hinges on the idea that we, in the first instance, relied upon tools in order to make work easier for ourselves, a wagon for the transport of hay, for example. Then at some point, the idea of freedom came along, and with it the idea that one should not have to work hard, thus vehicles were designed, people or animals enslaved to provide power, which eventually progressed to cars, trains, etc. ad infinitum. This is need, a powerful drive to succeed and a powerful drive to self destruct. Consider the following: 'I need to destroy my enemies definitively, so i need a weapon of mass destruction.' From this we got nuclear weapons, and secondary to that, nuclear power. Which is a fairly clean, fairly safe way of providing energy. The fact that the furtherance of technology is tied into man's quest for power is obvious, so if anything was going to drive us towards a utopia it would be that. at some point, we will NEED to inhabit the same place as those different from us, and live in harmony.
In my opinion, we are very close to a state of 'utopia' as we stand. Brave new world, a novel which shows us the side of ourselves we should revile and try to change, has strong links with the way we live in society, with weekend binges and the prevalence of drug culture we anaesthatise ourselves from the 'pain' of the working week, and this in turn blinds us to what is wrong with society. people spend so long playing centrifugal bumble puppy (I.E. computer games, DVD, etc.) that there is no time to change anything,. and the only people who spend their time thinking about the furtherance of society are the ones wrecking it in the first place. Beatiful in it's simplicity.
my other point is that the idea of happiness is so directly linked to the idea of sadness that were one to be removed, the other would disappear. Much like, for instance, the jamanese samurai tradition of having 'intimate relations' with fledgling samurai, which was at first outlawed in our own society until the near past, things change as societies change, and eventually our concepts and notions will die and be replaced, hopefully by something more humane and a bit more sensible.