[Danihan]

You're an example of not orienting your perspective properly.. ;)

The internet, a global communications network that everyone carries with them in their pocket on a mini touchscreen PC, is fucking incredible.

Even prisoners who go away for 10-15 years have been blown away by the advancements in cell phone technology and adoption when they get out.

[goatlover]

It is incredible, and most people didn't see it coming, but compared to the scifi stuff I read and watched as a kid, the future doesn't feel all that mind-blowing, at least so far.

Part of it is living through it and adjusting to the changes, but I was also born into a world that had TVs, telephones, microwaves, VCRs, satellites, space programs, and personal computers. Computer networks and games existed back then. Miniaturization and Moore's law was known about.

I think living through the early 20th century might have been more mind blowing.

[greenhouse_gas]

It's because there's a difference between cool and usable.

For example - compare a Virtual Reality 3D city you can scroll around on your computer, visiting different houses, "chatting" with them, then reading what they posted on their public refrigerator door, then maybe reading some books from their shelf, watch a movie together then you "walk" to a library ... To the internet (Facebook + Wikipedia).

What's cooler? Obviously #1.

What's more usable? #2.

If you could go back in time to the 70s, what would you show on a futuristic movie?

#1, since the you want to "wow" your audience, who won't have to deal with such mundane issues as vertigo, or rapid navigability, or searchability.

But it's not that we can't do #1. We not only could do it, but there were many tries (VRML was supposed to be the "next big thing" since the 90's). It's just that our current UI is better.

[ako]

That's the problem: living through it and adjusting to changes.

How do you feel about the chance of living twice as long as your current life expectancy?

Sounds great right?

Does it also feel just as great that you already have twice the life expectancy of 140 years ago?

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/die-ano...

[goatlover]

Does that double life expectancy take into account infant mortality rates? It's not like people living into their 70s was that unheard of back then, it's just that it was easier to die younger.

And yeah, I'm living through it, but it still feels largely like the world I was born into with some additional advances in computing. A huge part of the world is based on incremental improvements on stuff that has existed since the earlier 20th century.

[melling]

The Internet is about 5 decades old. I shot the shit almost exactly like this on Usenet decades ago. Cell phones? They’re smaller, great.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2010/09/23/gordon_gekko_...

Everyone expects the world to change, and advance. It’s not fucking incredible. Even John Sculley saw it coming.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cultofmac.com/120716/apple-...

[aidenn0]

Cell phones were still futuristic in the 80s, and they were science fiction in the 60s.

[melling]

No one is that progress hasn’t been made. We expect progress. Moore’s Law.

What is being said is that the world is not wildly futuristic.

[dtech]

But now you're just placing an arbitrary bar on how much progress can be made without it being futuristic.

[goatlover]

But it's not _wildley_ futuristic. I'm not taking a flying car to a space elevator to visit my relatives on Mars while my house and pets are left in the care of my android maid.

Wasn't it Buzz Aldrin who said he was promised Mars colonies but got Facebook instead? For some of us, that tradeoff doesn't seem terribly futuristic.

[aidenn0]

We carry supercomputers in our pockets for the primary purpose of broadcasting pictures of food we are about to eat. If that's not wildy futuristic (and perhaps a bit dystopian), I'm not sure what is.

[Danihan]

I get your point, but space exploration and robots everywhere aren't the only types of "wildly different" futures. People just have latched onto those two things as facile benchmarks.

[varjag]

If anything, my cellphone was tiniest around 2004 and gradually bloated back to mid-1990s sizes.