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What Will Life Be Like In 2008?
tblake writes "Back in 1968, Modern Mechanix mused what life would be like in 40 years. Some things they came pretty close on: 'Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees' accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card's number is fed into the store's computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.' Some things are way off: 'The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whiz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round.' And some things are sorta right: 'TV screens cover an entire wall in most homes and show most subjects other than straight text matter in color and three dimensions. In addition to programmed TV and the multiplicity of commercial fare, you can see top Broadway shows, hit movies and current nightclub acts for a nominal charge.'"
Almost true...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg27ckAgEiw&feature=related
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
Goddammit, I want my flying cars!
Even forty years ago, he wasn't naive enough to suggest Duke Nukem Forever being available.
Some things are way off: 'The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas
Speak for yourself...
How the hell did you manage to pass grade 2 English?
...in his prediction of intelligence pills.
Either that, or a lot of people I encountered today need to adjust their dosage.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn't totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder's spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments--on the average, about two hours of home study a day.
They got it almost spot on: 4 hours actual work; 2 hours slashdot; 2 hours talking; 2 hours walking around the office; 1 hour making coffee's; 3 hours replying to emails; 3 hours answering telephones; 1 hour break time; 2 hours travel time; 2 hours home study time; 2 hours sleep. Rinse-and-repeat.
where I can make $20 an hour laminating stuff.
If you post it, they will read.
Reminds me of the skit by Harry Enfield about Life in 1990
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdYDREry3do
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Well, we might have wireless access to our pets. And be able to watch porn during sleep. And the newest windows operating system will do the same things as today with 10^8 times the space.
You should've remembered to take your memory pill. But then, that's the trick, isn't it?
In 2008, people will travel in levitating, hypersonic personal aircraft called mePods.
Obviously they somehow saw my bank account. Money has been disappearing from it for years.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"Video game...? THIS... IS... SWEDEN!"
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I agree. I'm tired of my language having color and flair.
today we can interactively view an item for sale on the Internet, get competing prices, read reviews from real people around the world, and order the item through the same interface using buttons with descriptive labels.
And you can view products that don't work from companies that don't exist, get competing prices from vendors that never ship, read reviews from trolls and shills from every cave and mother's basement around the world, and you can pay by credit card to a hijacked site somewhere in Estonia.
"Better" is true relative to nothing at all, but caveat emptor applies far more today than it did in 1968.
John
Neither, both car owners have to sue the local government. It's the next step in American Evolution!
I hate printers.
n/t
moi
You might want to have yourself tested.
You can't take the sky from me...
Some of us were kept alive... to work... loading bodies. The disposal units ran night and day. We were that close to going out forever. But there was one man who taught us to fight, to storm the wire of the camps, to smash those metal motherfuckers into junk. He turned it around. He brought us back from the brink. His name is Connor. John Connor. Your son, Sarah, your unborn son.
But seriously, at the risk of wasting a funny post, who modded the parent insightful? Why is it that dark, brooding fears about the future are considered so profound? I mean really, +5 Insightful?
We only do that to annoy the Europeans. We would have switched long ago if we weren't so amused by the confusion of international visitors.
-- Will program for bandwidth
~Dan
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
If only we could invent some sort of thinking machine to rapidly process more information than the human mind could ever handle!?
Most people can't drive in 2 Dimensions so I fail to see how adding a 3rd is going to help.Transportation really needs to move into 3 dimensions, it's the only way to resolve congestion. Being stuck in 2 dimensions is just causing a lot of congestion and is too dangerous.
~Dan
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the number of the shoe shops were increasing. It's a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that no one should walk on it again.
Credit to Douglas Adams
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
But seriously, at the risk of wasting a funny post, who modded the parent insightful? Why is it that dark, brooding fears about the future are considered so profound? I mean really, +5 Insightful?
That sort of nonsense makes a captivating story for those who disagree with the course of human society and progress. It's the ultimate modern power fantasy to be so right in your views of economics, ecology, sociology, etc that everyone dies because they didn't listen to you.
That's why peak oil, for instance, is almost never discussed as an opportunity to make an absolute killing on some other energy source (of which there are plenty) -- it's always about how nobody will be able to grow crops and we will all die.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.