I was born in the 1980s. I remember growing up, I always had the impression that by this time in the 21st century, we'd have figured out some way to break the established laws of physics. Maybe it was because of watching so much sci-fi, but I feel like I'm not alone in this. The media seemed to reflect the same line of thinking. "Back to the Future 2" with its hoverboards and flying cars is now set several years in the past.
Be it anti-gravity, interstellar travel, teleportation, whatever, I always kind of assumed that by now, we'd at least have a working theory of how we might implement it in the next few decades. I think a lot of that has to do with the start of the "information age." Computers and the way they could connect us were so revolutionary, it seemed like "magic" to the layperson. More "magic" would only be a few years away, right? If we could fit all this power into a box that sits on your desk, then it wasn't beyond the scope of reason to think that anything was possible; it'd just take a few more years for us to figure it out, then we'd be planning the first NASA mission to another solar system.
What I never would have predicted is just how rapidly computer technology would advance. We now have supercomputers in our pockets, powered by CPUs that are well into the realm of nanotechnology and are now starting to run into limitations imposed by quantum physics. As a technological society, we've probably progressed farther than I would have ever imagined, just not in the way I expected.
High speed rail.
It's insane Amtrak is the best we got. You should be able to go from Orlando to New York in hours, cheaply.
Bluetooth that works. The ability to email large files. Low cost broadband. The right to repair. Not lose the ownership of digital media.
Digital media just kills me. Back in the CD and DVD days I sent back a bunch of discs that were too scrarched to use and i would get coupons to replace them. Often times the publishers included an extra one just because they didn't want you to pirate stuff. Buying physical media meant you licensed it even when you physically couldn't so they were compelled to solve the problem.
Also printers that work
It's been a long, long while that I've had any issues with any Bluetooth device.
Can you listen to music or watch a movie while on a discord call using the hands-free microphone in your Bluetooth headset? Full duplex audio still halves the nominal bitrate for both the microphone and media playback audio; same as when the HSP/HFP protocols we're first showcased in 1999. It's ridiculous, especially now that very few flagship devices still include a headset jack.
Reasonable justice reforms for social media used as public alert and communication systems, AI, crypto, gaming, etc to regulate new markets emerging from new tech to prevent predatory monetization policy and monopolies causing increased wealth centralization and patent trolling slowing down technical innovation in general.
Not backsliding into feudalism?
You don't like the extra steps we added?
Universal Healthcare.
A functional healthcare system.
We have one!
Oh wait, you don't lol
A global functional healthcare system, silly, not just for your local residents.
more international cooperation for global benefit. instead we have more profit taking from everyone
- open source software that pays for contributions
- privacy laws that protect people against corporations
- living wage
- end of sexism and mysoginy
- global democracy
This one hits different
High speed rail (USA)
#FUCKcars
Land of the free™.
You're free to choose anything you want as long as the shareholders benefit.
Fiber to the Home Internet connectivity that was paid for 30 years ago.
We have that!
Oh wait, you don't lol
Yup. Maybe a bit bitter at US telecoms pocketing the subsidy money from the 90s, 00s, 10s, and 20s, without delivering.
The one thing I feel deprived of, is the proper sci fi aesthetic in our devices.
The beeps, the switches, the UI. All forsaken for an asinine black mirror .
TBF all those sci-fi transparent displays would be terrible to use
They're not transparent when viewing from the front, but there's not really any point to it being transparent either, unless it's a holographic projection.
Member the matrix all white control room? I want that.
Not a particular technology, but I really had a little bit of hope that we’d be able to tackle climate change like we tackled ozone depletion due to CFCs/HCFCs/HFCs with the Montreal Protocol.
Yes what the fuck happened? As a planet, we came together to end CFCs but now everyone just shrugs and says, "nah"
One problem is a bit easier then the other. No one's economy is entirely based around CFCs and CFCs have excellent alternatives.
From the perspective of a kid in the 70s, I thought for sure some level of space colonization, whether it be a Moon colony or O'Neill type settlements. Along with that would be moving industry into space to tap unlimited resources and allow the Earth to heal.
Just because there are nearly unlimited resources out there, doesn't mean we won't keep abusing the ones down here.
Something, anything in the freaking moon.
Why haven't we been back there in, like, 50 years? That mission was done with computers that were less powerful than my stupid phone.
Anything, a telescope, a transmitter of I-don't-know-what shit, a lunar farm, a Coca-Cola or Disney advertising, ANYTHING!
Short answer: it's not that we don't have the technology, its that we don't have a reason to. With very few exceptions, if you can do it on the moon you can do it on earth or in Earth orbit
Long answer: in the space industry/field the moon is incredibly boring, relatively expensive to get to, and adds an extra step of logistics to an already complicated mission profile. Most space related technology advancement efforts have gone into doing things in orbit and there is more to do there than on the moon, it's logistically simpler, and cost is orders of magnitude less. Stuff is still advancing there, think Hubble vs James Web, GPS 1 vs GPS 3, the entire GOES system. In terms of technical challenges, they're far more interesting than anything on the moon, but it's not as flashy/headline grabbing so it's not talked about much.
The US going to the moon in the 60/70s was a rare combination of a win for scientists, politicians, and the people. The political incentive went away since as the USSR space program collapsed so too did political pressure to continue to put men on the moon and "prove 'Murica is better than those damn commies".
In modern times the political incentive is returning with the continued efforts by China to do more stuff in space so we get the Artemis program, but the incentives aren't that strong which is why the program has moved so slowly.
I know all that, it's what causes me the most frustration. In the end the "Greatest Achievement of Mankind" is not much different than a guy jumping to touch the ceiling because they told him "bet you can't reach", and after that, unless they find oil or some shit like that on the moon, they're never coming back.... At least the Americans, since the Chinese do plan to establish "something" there, at least to show they can.
Yeah, there was a period in time where people were discussing Helium-3 as a source of fuel that we could very easily and efficiently farm on the moon, which was seen as a key step in becoming a space-faring species. Okay, so we know where the fuel is and we can get there, so companies can start using Earth fuel to send helium-3 extraction machines, which can then be used to collect fuel for them to use in further missions and eventually, a small amount of helium-3 will be used to fuel a mission that returns with massive amounts of it, so we have a fuel, and now we can start exploring space even further, with people. It was the clear direction to take.
It's a bit of a fantasy, I think. There is nothing profitable about space exploration. It's either science experiments or nationalist dick measuring.
Yeah, and then use a slingshot thingy to move a container into low earth orbit in exchange for a container being shot to the moon thingy
I grew up in the '80s. I was expecting either nuclear annihilation or cities on the moon.
¿Por Qué No Los Dos?
One could certainly speed up the other
I'm just mad as hell at how many things seem to have topped out in the 1940's. My car is basically the same. Five wheels and I chase an explosion around. Air travel is basically the same. Big aluminum tube that's expensive size as hell. TV is basically the same. Tune in, sit on ass, watch.
You look at how life changed between 1900-1945, and how life changed since then, and we've really stagnated.
That's not to say it's all the same, phones are amazing, but they don't change my life fundamentally, a day without my phone is very much the same as a day with my phone.
I think we've still made amazing progress, just in different areas. For example, communication. In the 40s, if you were in the US and needed to contact someone in, say, Australia, the options would either be to send a letter and wait maybe weeks or months for a response, or possibly a prohibitively expensive phone call.
Nowadays you could click two buttons and have a six-hour HD video conversation if you wanted to, essentially for free. And you could send them documents, videos, money, whatever you want basically instantly. Heck, if you really wanted to you could both create realistic 3D avatars and hang out in VR if that's your thing lol
Since around the 1940s and the 1950s scientists and Engineers have definitely kept progressing. Do you think all that human experimentation by the Nazis Etc came to nothing? No. Much was learned & implemented.
Scientists & engineers are keeping a ton of technology proprietary while they've also figured out how to hypnotize the plebian masses into being consumers, entertainment-seekers, and obedient ignorant workers.
Advanced cybernetics. From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel.
It's saddening to see the slow slow progress of cybernetics.
You what?!
Me too. Every morning I wake up and scream in existential terror at the slimy corpuscle that is enveloping my soul.
First we sent small animals into space: a dog, then monkeys.
After that: people.
And then we stopped. I expected that we would have sent cows, horses, maybe even hippos or elephants by now.
What would be the point?
"we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
But really I was just pretending to misunderstand the early test flights as a progression of sending larger life-forms, and that we should continue sending larger and larger animals.
Humans on Mars. We are 15 years late already.
Half-Life 3
I recently played HL2 again and it's still awesome.
Fully automated luxury communism
We went Aldous Huxley when we should have gone Iain M. Banks lol
Wisecracking robots who drink alcohol.
with blackjack and hookers?
Honestly thought I'd see more phones, with desktop modes, replace laptops in day to day life.
This is happening soon. USB-C seems to be empowering this, and many of us are now running phones with gargantuan specs. The sole remaining issue is the keyboard. If we continued down the keyboard-smartphone route, this would be a no brainer.
I guess with the switch to Arm on laptops this can be possible real soon.
Samsung does have dex which is pretty good!
Flying cars and hover boards
I'm more concerned with the things we had a few years ago that are now gone, and the new fascist hand me downs that are popping up everywhere.
Private jet packs, flying cars, robot butlers, implantable cybernetic upgrades, a cure for baldness, affordable and safe space flight, free healthcare, a future that doesn't look like the love child of Idiocracy and Demolition Man.
Universal Healthcare
Laptops with good build quality, I mean the type of build quality Thinkpads used to have
Honestly, Tuxedo Computers and Framework I think do that.
They do it in comparison to other laptops released today but cannot compete with older Thinkpads. Ive held and personally seen a Framework 16 (arguably their laptop with the best build quality) and I can tell that it has some massive sacrifices. Its not as durable and not built as well most likely due to manufacturing issues, in addition its clearly trying to be somewhat slim which im not a fan of. Im not sure about Tuxedo because theyre basically a German first brand (granted you could technically get it imported but you have to pay over €100 in shipping and additional import fees/customs. Also im pretty sure it'll take significantly longer). Ok I just checked the build quality looks good (german engineering and manufacturing is famously good) and they sell some hefty laptops, obviously its sold at a very high premium.
The Bell Riots.
Still waiting for my personal jetpack and/or flying car
Most people can't be trusted operating a ground-dwelling vehicle, I'm fine with not having flying ones yet.
ROCKETMAN
I really want to try a powered paraglider. Seems fairly accessible. Costs no more than a used car. Curious about the legality/feasibility of using it to get around..
I thought surely by now autocorrect would not still be horribly wrong in its predictions
If AI is just autocorrect on steroids (it is), I wonder if actual good old autocorrect will see any improvements
All autocorrect now defaults to Reddit comment style
Duck you!
The utilization of global powers to collaborate and defeat climate change before the doom clock hits zero.
A more civilized, earth friendly, peaceful world working for the common good.
The virtual reality you used to see in movies or on TV where you would put on a helmet and actually enter it and have full movement capabilities. Something like that one episode of Batman The Animated Series where Commissioner Gordon goes into the Riddler's computer and gets trapped or just about any other cliche, dumb way they portrayed VR back then.
We have some cool VR treadmills, one of them thats releasing soon will even only cost $1k (cheap in comparison to every other VR treadmil released previously). Combine that with full body tracking and a good high end headset like the Bigscreen Beyond or Immersed Visor.
something like tricorders, they'd be kinda usefull for medical personel or engineers, of course they wouldn't be as advanced as in tng, but still
also I'll get one as soon as they're invented
Hoverboards, RePet and a hangover cure
Antigravity looked like the clear favourite for scientists, but then they all went into astronomy and the age of the universe.
Providing for the needs of all.
Self driving cars and fusion. I'm still optimistic about fusion.
I don't remember ever expecting much.
