Holy crap! It's the future!

[Jackolantern]

I don't know why I suddenly thought of this, but I remember when I was a kid thinking about what the future would look like. But then as time went on, it kept feeling like everything was the same. But things change so slowly that we rarely notice. Now, things are so different that life would be almost unrecognizable from when I was a kid (early to mid 80's). Almost everyone is carrying around small devices in their pockets that let them communicate with anyone in real-time, but they also connect to an international data network, allowing us to play games, meet new people, watch movies, or look up answers to questions anywhere. TVs have grown much larger and are now nearly as flat as books. Doctors can look into your body in color without cutting you open. We have radios with hundreds of stations running off of satellite feeds instead of terrestrial radio signals, and TV running the same way. Speaking of which, we have TV services broadcasting hundreds of channels to our homes through cables that carry nothing but light.

I could go on and on, but you get it. A lot of this stuff is right out of Star Trek, but you never really notice as these new pieces of technology slowly enter our lives. Aside from basic housing, the world likely look almost alien to someone from even the 1950's. Now all we need are flying cars!

[MAruz]

But, but, where's the flying cars? Floating hotels? Space colonies? Submerged cities? Personal service robots that do what I say? :p

I agree. Things change all the time.

I can't do without computers/internet. Cell phones are a must, I don't ever see myself needing/wanting a land based home phone, even a IP phone. My cell phone is sufficient, I always carry it with me.

[jpoisson]

Well with the international space station i consider it a colony since only the same people live upon it.

[Jackolantern]

Speaking of the future, you guys should check out this video, which was made in 1966. It has a startlingly accurate prediction of home computers, even including eCommerce and the internet. If I remember right, I think it even mentions being connected to phone lines. Of course there are some things they just couldn't have thought of, such as HTML web documents with digital pictures. In the video, the computer users control small cameras at a brick and mortar store to decide what they want lol.

[windextor]

You're absolutely right. It's difficult to actually see the changes happening around you on a daily basis, but when you think back 10 or 15 years, then it becomes evident.

This is a big one for me:



I kill (or invest, if you prefer) so much time just browsing about random stuff that comes to my head that I can't even remember what I did before Google or Wikipedia. I guess I just watched Discovery Channel and hoped for the best!

The way information can be accessed nowadays has completely turned society upside down - in a good way.

[Perry]

A lot of this stuff is right out of Star Trek,

I was reading about a theory that SciFi stuff has actually influenced our world a lot because the stuff future scientists watched and read as kids has always been in their heads and that is what they try when they need to solve something. It listed several examples but I can't remember them, but basically yes a lot of the stuff is out of Star Trek/other scifi.

[SpiritWebb]

Everything has flipped upside down, and def in a good way! Science fiction is around us even more so now then 20 years ago. Hell, I remember when cell phones didn't exist and either did email. You actually had to use the regular mail for something and wait those few days for a reply!

upside down:

¡?ld?? ? ?o? s??p ??? ?so?? ?i?? pu? ?ui????os ?o? li?? ??ln??? ??? ?sn o? p?? ?ll?n??? no? ?li??? pip ????i? pu? ?six? ?,upip s?uo?d ll?? u??? ??q????? i 'll?? ?o?? s???? 0? u??? ?ou os ??o? u??? sn puno?? si uoi??i? ??u?i?s ¡??? poo? ? ui ??p pu? 'u?op ?pisdn p?ddil? s?? ?ui???????

[hallsofvallhalla]

how the hell did you do that?

[SpiritWebb]

I....AM....MAGIC! Oh, just kidding. Copy and paste from a website

http://www.sevenwires.com/play/UpsideDownLetters.html

[Jackolantern]

Craziness! lol

And that comic was really funny. That is really what it was like before the internet. Well, really, it was before reliable search-engines like Google, just like the comic said. In the very early days of the internet, I remember using "Yahoo lists", which were unsearchable categorized lists of websites. Since it was all self-added, about half the websites put themselves in places they didn't belong to get more hits. And then meta-data mining search engines ruled the lands, which were also about half wrong since anyone could put any meta tags in it that they wanted. Why it took so long for someone to actually create a search engine that tags the actual content, I don't know. Maybe the hardware wasn't fast enough to crawl all of it.