Ability to speak to a computer in free form, in dozens of languages, and have it understand you, is fucking mind blowing.
Voluntarily being surveilled and profiled 24/7.
Modern video games.
If you sent, say, a huge RPG or simulation game back in time, or even Minecraft, anyone who understood computation would drop their jaw. What a computer can render 90 times a second still kinda drops my jaw, when I think about it.
Still having no public health care.
Having better Internet almost anywhere, in your pocket - compared to the wired Internet even 20, not 50 years ago.
I think a 1970s American would get a kick out these:
- Global warming is real and worse than you think and no it’s not going to be addressed.
- Those gas prices are going no where but up.
- Anyway we decided that all cars will be F350s.
- I hope you like pocket electronics because those are literally the only things that will seem truly futuristic to you. Everything else? Pretty much the same. Yep. We don’t even live longer.
A super computer at the size of your hand. Yet, I’m using one to type this comment right now (I’m of course talking about the smartphone)
Immediately accessible on demand free pornography.
The Patch was hypothesized in 1988 and first documented in 1997, by a passing yacht racer. Research on the patch began in earnest in 2009.
Estimates on the size are still nebulous, as it continues to expand and shift. But I doubt anyone in the 1970s was predicting a patch of trash twice the size of Texas would appear in the Pacific Ocean over the next 50 years.
We got most of the tech from the jetsons ppl could envision in the early 1960s (video calls, smartphones, smart watches, smart homes), but still don’t have flying cars, cloud cities, robot maids, and moving sidewalks going everywhere.
“Cordless” isn’t much of a word anymore because everything runs on batteries. Battery tech itself has come a long way.
The Nazis are back.
the punks tried to warn us
They never left
I don’t think you comprehend the words “wildest dreams” in the title…
Last night my sister and I had a 90 minute conversation on our phones with full-colour, hi-res video, me in the UK, her in NZ. It didn’t cost either of us anything. We’re in our 70s, such a thing was unimaginable back in the day.
I remember talking to family in Australia from UK on the phone in 90s and it costing multiple £/min with noticeable delay.
Remember the pressure to say everything as fast as possible without lapsing into mundane things? Long distance phone calls were stressful.
The wheeze was to make a reverse charge call and tell the operator your name was “Itsaboy”. The call would then be declined.
It cost you internet and your privacy. 🤗
Mate, back in the day there was a phone book in every home with everyone’s exact address and phone number in it. If you wanted the phone number of someone in another city, you went to the public library, which had more phone books. If the library was big enough, they had international phone books.
If someone didn’t have a phone, you could get their address from the electoral roll, again available at the library.
A lot of people didn’t even lock their doors. We did, but the key was hanging up in the garage.
Edit: my internet is unlimited - it doesn’t cost me any more to blab for an hour.
You could, however, pay a fee to the phone book company to leave your info off of it.
Not if they were using stolen wifi and Signal \s
Not your privacy if you can find an encrypted video chat software. I’m trying keet.io it’s been solid
I was explaining to my 8 year old son only last week about how when I was a boy phones existed but nothing like what we have today. We had one phone in each house, usually in the hallway or bottom or the stairs. Rotary and then digital. Phone books, pay phones, yellow pages, and so on.
The conversation started because we walked past an old BT glass phone box with still had the phone inside and the slot to put coins in. He asked what it was.
This one for me too. I remember watching some movie when I was younger and it had two people talking over a video screen and I thought that when that happens I’ll be actually living in the sci-fi future. Fast forward many years and I’m driving with my husband, regular old day, and as I’m looking out the window I see a girl face timing with somone at the bus stop. And it hits me, I’M HERE, I’M IN THE SCI-FI FUTURE. And that was 15 years ago. It’s missing a bunch of the other cool sci-fi shit, but it’s nailing the dystopian aspect’s full on.
I hope we’ve outpaced the imagination of somebody from 50 freaking years ago. Imagine how the 1970s would look to somebody from the 1920s.
I wouldn’t even know where to begin… And I still marvel everyday about where we are today, compared to last year 😁 And I’m here since the internet began, and I had to drive to neighbor-city, be interviewed, fill out forms, join a nonprofit, just to have access to it.
I’m in awe every time I look at my e.g. phone. A thing that is a factor of like a hundred thousand or more in terms of speed, resolution, storage, in comparison to my first computer. And I carry it around. And it can connect to the net at unbelievable speeds. Without a cable.
…yet websites often load slower than back then, thanks to lazy devs, the use of 5838229 frameworks or scripts noone needs and also tracking and the likes.
