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How did you imagine the future?


HarmonicGenerator

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I think that when we were kids, most people probably had ideas about what 'the future' would be like when we were grown up, ie now. Jet packs, hover cars, robots, living on the moon etc.

 

What were your best ideas of what 2015 would be like when you were growing up? And what do you think of when you think of the future now?

 

(That second question's likely to be far more depressing. Climate change, overpopulation, the Singularity etc)

 

Were your ideas influenced by film and TV - Back To The Future II, Terminator, Space Precinct, that sort of thing?

 

SpacePrecinct_screen.JPG

You know you remember it

 

Or did you come up with stuff in your own imagination?

 

Personally, I'm mostly just disappointed they still haven't figured out how to clone dinosaurs from amber. It's 2015, it should have bloody happened by now! WHY IS JURASSIC PARK NOT REAL YET?!

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Growing up I thought we'd be watching everything on LaserDiscs and telling everyone so. They were CDs the same size as vinyl records that Id seen on some TV show as being a thing in Japan, don't think they ever made it to the UK.

 

I think back 15 years ago and think much hasn't changed really but I then remember what mobile phones looked like then and analogue TV was the main source of television. Even in 2000 I couldnt get a clear Channel 5 picture.  

 

As a kid, a year like 2015 was something you'd only see in Sci-Fi films/novels. If possible Id tell a 10 year old me 'dont get too excited kid. Apart from getting more TV channels, easy access to porn and phones that can fit in your pocket and can leave the house with, nothing much has changed'

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Personally, I'm mostly just disappointed they still haven't figured out how to clone dinosaurs from amber. It's 2015, it should have bloody happened by now! WHY IS JURASSIC PARK NOT REAL YET?!

 

This is a great shout. As a kid I don't think that I ever really thought much about hoverboards or robot assistants or anything like you saw in most movies, but I do remember being totally sold on the scientific explanations offered up in Jurassic Park. Seemed nailed on to me that we'd have dinosaurs back before too long.

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Growing up I thought we'd be watching everything on LaserDiscs and telling everyone so. They were CDs the same size as vinyl records that Id seen on some TV show as being a thing in Japan, don't think they ever made it to the UK.

They did, I believe, but never really took off.

 

I own one, a Dudley Moore & Eddie Murphy film, best defense or some name like that.

I cant watch it, as I have no player, but it was 10p or so in a charity shop and I was intrigued by this giant dvd, so bought it and then looked up what the fuck it was.

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I always imagined the future to be a little more advanced but it feels like for the most part were taking steps back not forward.

 

You watch programs like Jeremy kyle and you think were in the year 2015 where if you have the internet you can build knowledge on whatever sectors you wish to build knowledge on and yet it seems people are getting thicker.

 

Were in the age where alot of people don't seem to give a shit and i think thats hindering our growth as a race, we could be further advanced we just don't seem to be succeeding

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Growing up I thought we'd be watching everything on LaserDiscs and telling everyone so. They were CDs the same size as vinyl records that Id seen on some TV show as being a thing in Japan, don't think they ever made it to the UK.

 

Think they managed to come over here. I remember trying to pester Mumzie into getting one over 20 years ago. Thankfully she held firm and I didn't get one. HMV on Argyle Street used to have a ton of Laserdiscs.

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I thought we would have super-computers in homes that you could operate by speech (“computer on” etc). We kinda have that with things like the Xbox One, and even Siri, but I thought it would have permeated the home computing market more. I’m sure there are computers with those capabilities, but if they are they’re not as widespread and as robust as I imagined them to be.

 

Speaking of Siri, I never thought we would have the mobile phone capabilities we have today. Even ten years ago, the thought of a mobile phone you could talk to, have cameras comparable to compact digital cameras, gigabytes of storage and whatnot would have been alien.

 

I also thought cloning would be a thing for some reason, probably because every one knew who Dolly the Sheep was at that time (mid ‘90s). I thought any one would just be able to go to some mad scientist and get a clone and be able to play really cool pranks on people. I didn’t really think about the specifics too much though—if had I I would have realised that a clone would need to develop like a normal human, so they’d never be the same age as the original. Bah!

 

I also remember reading in a science textbook that all fossil fuels would be exhausted in 50 years (it’ll be about 35 years’ time now if the book’s prediction was anything near correct). It actually shook me quite a bit inside, knowing how much the world relies and them, and it’s something I’ve taken forwards with me. It’s nuts full-steam-ahead the world is in powering nations with these fuel sources instead of renewable energy sources. It amazes me how—as an island surrounded by sea and wind—the UK’s not built more wind farms and hydroelectricity stations.

 

And another semi-apocalypse thought: landfills. If rubbish just kept getting dumped in them, they were just going to grow and grow, and there would be no nice places left because we just had rubbish every where.

 

Jeez, I sound like a Green Party nut reading that back, now! Don’t worry: I’m not.

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Growing up I just assumed we'd have encountered aliens by 2015-20. Either baneveloent ones would have said hello, or judgmental Inquisitor types would have observed and judged us a species by our conduct from a distance, then vapourised us.

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Agree with YFS about phones. Ten years ago, having a flip phone with little to no internet connection was considered the norm. I remember either 2004 or 2005 a mate getting a phone that let him put mp3's on it and being really impressed. In fact, I wouldn't say phones have changed that much over the past five years. It was more 2005 to 2010 that they evolved. An iPhone 4 that was released in 2010 wasn't too dissimilar to the popular phones now (generally speaking), but the iPhone 4 was worlds apart from what you could have got 5 or 6 years prior to that. In 2005, I wouldn't have thought that within 5 years I'd be able to have video calls, play crisp videos and games on phones, use something like Google Maps and do whatever else that modern smartphones let you do.

 

I thought video gaming would be entirely different to what it is. I was a big gamer when I was younger but stopped playing regularly around the time the PS3 came out. In 2001/02 I really thought gaming would be a lot more advanced than it is now. The leap from the PS1 to the PS2 was huge and I thought that we'd be at the stage where holographic, 3D gaming was the norm by now.

 

I thought we'd have mastered teleportation by now. That was always the buzz technology word at our school. Teleportation. Even if it was only for small objects, I thought you'd be able to teleport a can of Coke or something to another place.

 

So yeah, I thought holographic 3D gaming and teleportation would be normal, but didn't think smartphones would develop so quickly. 

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This is the 70s, when I was born...

 

70s_zps2exc01px.jpg

 

...and this is the 80s, when I grew up...

 

80s_zps9rxzdmys.jpg

 

From this, it was perfectly natural for me to assume that we were progressing toward the kind of technological utopia that was being presented to me. 75% of what I was taking around that time was sci-fi/futuristic/computery stuff. Even the dystopian stuff like Blade Runner still had the massive advancements in technology.

 

I didn't believe that we'd be growing tree houses, as one of the books at school suggested, but I did expect lots of mirrored glass, shiny metal and neon lights.

 

One thing I thought would become more widespread was Virtual Reality. I know it's coming back with the Oculus Rift and similar, but I thought that as graphics and processing got more powerful, that arcades would be full of them.

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I thought VR headsets and the way they're used in gaming would be a lot bigger. Like we would genuinely all sit round wearing them watching TV, or movies, or playing games etc.

 

I am also waiting for a genuinely new genre of music, as we haven't had one since probably Hip Hop in the mid 70s.

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