Support NeoGAF

[hariseldon]

I was hunting for something for another thread but bumped into this and found it quite fascinating. A good few hits and some misses.

 

[Quasicat]

I love videos like these.
im not sure if it’s still there, but in 1995, I went to the Innoventions pavilion at Epcot. There was a huge thing about the home in 2020. On one side of the exhibit was a bunch of SEGA CD consoles and a Japanese Saturn at the front desk playing Virtua Fighter. The other side had this widescreen TV with a computer hard drive attached with on demand movie trailers. The lady that ran it told me that in the year 2020 we would have all of our movies and TV shows anytime we want on TV. I walked away thinking that this would never happen. Now, we not only have this on a TV, but on a phone that fits in my pocket.

 

[nush]

Right off the bat Christine McNulty sure looks trans to me, so I'd say they were right on the money. Just outside the scope of discussion.

 

[Stilton Disco]

I miss Tomorrow's World. Loved that show growing up, and I think it's indicative of how completely self centred and shortsighted people have become, that such hopeful, creative and forward looking shows seem to have dried up entirely to make more room for reality TV drec.

They actually did pretty well prediction wise.

There is no one "home of the future', most of our tech is either integratable, or minimalist, we have loads of automated tech and energy efficiency is a big thing.

Those variable windows would be red though. Kind of bummed they apparently never worked out.

 

[-Arcadia-]

>A bunch of common sense upgrades and ideas that happened

>Also, magical floating anywhere outlets and window walls

Lol.

 

[hariseldon]

I miss Tomorrow's World. Loved that show growing up, and I think it's indicative of how completely self centred and shortsighted people have become, that such hopeful, creative and forward looking shows seem to have dried up entirely to make more room for reality TV drec.

They actually did pretty well prediction wise.

There is no one "home of the future', most of our tech is either integratable, or minimalist, we have loads of automated tech and energy efficiency is a big thing.

Those variable windows would be red though. Kind of bummed they apparently never worked out.

Not sure about people being self-centred (I mean they are but I'm not sure it's the key takeaway here) - what I really think has happened is that people have lost their optimism. I remember as a kid, Tomorrow's World would present a vision for the future in which tech would take us to amazing heights as a species, and alongside that I had things like Quest Magazine (it was one of those ones where you get a binder and each month you get a selection of bits to add to the binder plus some model to make out of bits of card - it covered science, technology, etc) which talked about how we might conquer space, how we might eradicate disease, how machines worked, all those cool things that, with me being a typical boy, absolutely fascinated me. Those things directly gave me an interest in science and while I never pursued a career in science because quite frankly I was better at programming computers (Quest covered that too with code listings) I have always maintained an interest in science and a reasonable scientific literacy as a result.

The thing is, if we go back to the 60s we see this huge optimism around the future. Think Jetsons (set in a future-50s but made in the 60s) or Star Trek and you have this positive vision of technology leading humanity to greater things, in the case of Star Trek to the stars. Humanity was quite proud of its accomplishments and felt it could do more. By the 90s that was starting to erode. You can see the faintest glimpse of the problem in the Tomorrow's World episode [EDIT: I'm an idiot - that's in the 70s review I post below - I watched it last night and muddled it up a bit] there where they start talking about the environment but it hadn't fully taken hold yet, but come the 90s we had Captain Planet which presented a somewhat more murky picture of the future to kids, where the baddies were big businesses pumping sludge into the environment. That was probably where the shift happened.

Of course there's plenty here who would argue that the increasing influence of a left that hated Western achievement was to blame and to an extent that's probably true, but something I read recently struck a bit of a chord with me. There was a Times article in which the author suggested we'd lost confidence in the West when we realised we probably wouldn't be able to colonise the stars. We started to realise the challenges of getting humanity even to Mars (and that's even clearer now we know more about the kind of radiation we'd have to deal with on the way for instance), let alone beyond our solar system, and we just kinda gave up, which is a tragedy when you consider that in the 1970s we launched probes (see Pioneer and Voyager) that are now outside of our solar system. My gut feeling is that Challenger killed our space ambitions, and in the West we stopped thinking big and started making do with good-enough.

I miss the optimism we used to have.

 

[mango drank]

Obligatory: AT&T's "You Will" ads from the early 90s, directed by David Fincher. I'm still blown away at how much of this stuff came true, given that it was all predicted before the vast majority of the population had even heard of the internet.

 

[Skyfox]

... We started to realise the challenges of getting humanity even to Mars (and that's even clearer now we know more about the kind of radiation we'd have to deal with on the way for instance), let alone beyond our solar system, and we just kinda gave up, which is a tragedy when you consider that in the 1970s we launched probes (see Pioneer and Voyager) that are now outside of our solar system. My gut feeling is that Challenger killed our space ambitions, and in the West we stopped thinking big and started making do with good-enough.

I miss the optimism we used to have.

Great post. I agree with everything you wrote.

The uncomfortable truth is that we do need to scale back humanity's footprint on our ecosystem. This too is progress.

Once we have organised our impact to give our habitat room to breathe we can step beyond earth.

Managing our environment and resources within safety limits will be necessary for space travel anyway.

 

[hariseldon]

I was watching this last night...



... and honestly it was fascinating. Some of it is a bit parochial to us Brits, the power of the nationalised British Rail getting in the way of development of Newcastle's metro for instance, and the shambles that was the development of the channel tunnel (we didn't get 0.5mile long trains nor 200mph), in a way the show does quite a good job of explaining how Britain lost its way in the 70s with the nuclear reactor being delayed because our manufacturers couldn't manufacture to enough precision and used crappy steel, or the unions slowing down the Metro build due to BR's monopoly, or Concorde not being able to go the full range with a full compliment of passengers (I wasn't aware of that - Concorde was an amazing engineering project but it does sound like they didn't think through the commercial practicalities - if it can't do transatlantic with all passengers because the fuel tank isn't big enough that's just insane). We lost our way because we got lazy and complacent, and in a way I can see now part of why we needed Thatcher, as vicious as she was.

 

[Shantae]

Not sure about people being self-centred (I mean they are but I'm not sure it's the key takeaway here) - what I really think has happened is that people have lost their optimism. I remember as a kid, Tomorrow's World would present a vision for the future in which tech would take us to amazing heights as a species, and alongside that I had things like Quest Magazine (it was one of those ones where you get a binder and each month you get a selection of bits to add to the binder plus some model to make out of bits of card - it covered science, technology, etc) which talked about how we might conquer space, how we might eradicate disease, how machines worked, all those cool things that, with me being a typical boy, absolutely fascinated me. Those things directly gave me an interest in science and while I never pursued a career in science because quite frankly I was better at programming computers (Quest covered that too with code listings) I have always maintained an interest in science and a reasonable scientific literacy as a result.

The thing is, if we go back to the 60s we see this huge optimism around the future. Think Jetsons (set in a future-50s but made in the 60s) or Star Trek and you have this positive vision of technology leading humanity to greater things, in the case of Star Trek to the stars. Humanity was quite proud of its accomplishments and felt it could do more. By the 90s that was starting to erode. You can see the faintest glimpse of the problem in the Tomorrow's World episode there where they start talking about the environment but it hadn't fully taken hold yet, but come the 90s we had Captain Planet which presented a somewhat more murky picture of the future to kids, where the baddies were big businesses pumping sludge into the environment. That was probably where the shift happened.

Of course there's plenty here who would argue that the increasing influence of a left that hated Western achievement was to blame and to an extent that's probably true, but something I read recently struck a bit of a chord with me. There was a Times article in which the author suggested we'd lost confidence in the West when we realised we probably wouldn't be able to colonise the stars. We started to realise the challenges of getting humanity even to Mars (and that's even clearer now we know more about the kind of radiation we'd have to deal with on the way for instance), let alone beyond our solar system, and we just kinda gave up, which is a tragedy when you consider that in the 1970s we launched probes (see Pioneer and Voyager) that are now outside of our solar system. My gut feeling is that Challenger killed our space ambitions, and in the West we stopped thinking big and started making do with good-enough.

I miss the optimism we used to have.

Yeah, I really miss this outlook as well. Maybe it was ignorance, or naivety that these outlooks on the future came from, because not all places of the world have it as good as countries like America. However it was encouraging, and hopeful. I don't think having these outlooks on future in fiction was a bad thing to have though. A lot of scientists or astronauts contributed their desire to learn and become smarter came from their love of science fiction from shows like Star Trek. People wanted to help make a world like that. It helped fuel the dreams of people, which is what is sorely lacking in modern fiction. CBS Star Trek has totally ripped the optimism out of the franchise to the point, that it's miserable to watch. People used to love Star Trek because they saw a world they wanted to live in. CBS Star Trek is a nightmare of a world that no one would want to live in.

 

[hariseldon]

Great post. I agree with everything you wrote.

The uncomfortable truth is that we do need to scale back humanity's footprint on our ecosystem. This too is progress.

Once we have organised our impact to give our habitat room to breathe we can step beyond earth.

Managing our environment and resources within safety limits will be necessary for space travel anyway.

The problem with thinking this way is that it leads to us thinking small and retreating away from technology - yes we need to find ways to be more efficient with energy but we've found ourselves with a negative mindset that if we have any impact it's a bad thing. In truth everything we do has an impact - we can't be afraid to walk for fear of stepping on a bug.

 

[-Arcadia-]

Obligatory: AT&T's "You Will" ads from the early 90s, directed by David Fincher. I'm still blown away at how much of this stuff came true, given that it was all predicted before the vast majority of the population had even heard of the internet.

To me, those are just informed likely speculations, rather than wild guesses. If its the 90s, you're aware of the burgeoning networking technology, and the tech of the time (Game Boys, early cell phones, touch screens etc.), its not hard to imagine how those could evolve over time with more capability, smaller sizes, cost shrinks and so on.

Still awesome, though. We're blessed to live in the fantasy world of yesterday.

 

[hariseldon]

Yeah, I really miss this outlook as well. Maybe it was ignorance, or naivety that these outlooks on the future came from, because not all places of the world have it as good as countries like America. However it was encouraging, and hopeful. I don't think having these outlooks on future in fiction was a bad thing to have though. A lot of scientists or astronauts contributed their desire to learn and become smarter came from their love of science fiction from shows like Star Trek. People wanted to help make a world like that. It helped fuel the dreams of people, which is what is sorely lacking in modern fiction. CBS Star Trek has totally ripped the optimism out of the franchise to the point, that it's miserable to watch. People used to love Star Trek because they saw a world they wanted to live in. CBS Star Trek is a nightmare of a world that no one would want to live in.

The thing about how we did cool stuff in the 60s and 70s is that we hadn't yet figured out that we couldn't do it, so we went ahead and did it. Now we've got people saying it's impossible so nobody tries.

 

[Kagey K]

I really thought we’d be close the the Jetsons by now, when I was a kid.

 

[Shantae]

I really thought we’d be close the the Jetsons by now, when I was a kid.

It really is crazy how much it feels like technology has become stagnant since I was a kid. I mean sure, I went from puttering on a commodore 64, to having a computer that can all this crazy stuff to do in about 30 years, but in terms of making life better, technology has not done it. If anything, technology has made life worse. It's made it easier for companies to rip people off, and for people to become more isolated and miserable. Car technology still feels basically the same as when I was a kid though, but we're also paying more for an inferior product. Cars used to be more sturdy, and made from metals, but are now made from a lot of cheaper plastics.

I'm still playing video games with a controller in hand just like I have been all my life. Graphics have gotten better, but the principals of technology don't feel like they've leapt much in all this time. I know that I'm understating some advances in technology, but when I think of my life, and what has really changed in my re-callable memory...the principal of all the technology I've used is still basically the same.

 

[Kagey K]

It really is crazy how much it feels like technology has become stagnant since I was a kid. I mean sure, I went from puttering on a commodore 64, to having a computer that can all this crazy stuff to do in about 30 years, but in terms of making life better, technology has not done it. If anything, technology has made life worse. It's made it easier for companies to rip people off, and for people to become more isolated and miserable. Car technology still feels basically the same as when I was a kid though, but we're also paying more for an inferior product. Cars used to be more sturdy, and made from metals, but are now made from a lot of cheaper plastics.

I'm still playing video games with a controller in hand just like I have been all my life. Graphics have gotten better, but the principals of technology don't feel like they've leapt much in all this time. I know that I'm understating some advances in technology, but when I think of my life, and what has really changed in my re-callable memory...the principal of all the technology I've used is still basically the same.

That’s the fun of being late gen X/Early Millennial, is no matter how disappointed we get, life has a way of disappointing us more.

It’s no wonder we are always so cynical.

 

[hariseldon]

It really is crazy how much it feels like technology has become stagnant since I was a kid. I mean sure, I went from puttering on a commodore 64, to having a computer that can all this crazy stuff to do in about 30 years, but in terms of making life better, technology has not done it. If anything, technology has made life worse. It's made it easier for companies to rip people off, and for people to become more isolated and miserable. Car technology still feels basically the same as when I was a kid though, but we're also paying more for an inferior product. Cars used to be more sturdy, and made from metals, but are now made from a lot of cheaper plastics.

I'm still playing video games with a controller in hand just like I have been all my life. Graphics have gotten better, but the principals of technology don't feel like they've leapt much in all this time. I know that I'm understating some advances in technology, but when I think of my life, and what has really changed in my re-callable memory...the principal of all the technology I've used is still basically the same.

We've focused on minutiae for consumers rather than big engineering projects - that's the problem. We haven't pushed new forms of energy, new modes of transport, cars still run at similar speeds, we lost our ambition.

 

[Shantae]

That’s the fun of being late gen X/Early Millennial, is no matter how disappointed we get, life has a way of disappointing us more.

It’s no wonder we are always so cynical.

Totally. We started out life with left overs of that optimistic future in our media. I may have not been born during original Star Trek, but we had TNG which carried a lot of the same messages. We still had encouraging and uplifting heroes, that were not miserable people that reflected the miserable reality of the reader/viewer. We had fiction that actually inspired us, and didn't reinforce our depression.

Now we live in a world where we're basically told that our old idealistic ways are no longer welcome, it's meant for a new younger audience. Make way for the gritty reboot, or soft reboot.

We've focused on minutiae for consumers rather than big engineering projects - that's the problem. We haven't pushed new forms of energy, new modes of transport, cars still run at similar speeds, we lost our ambition.

Yeah, this is what makes visiting Japan such a wonderful thing for people like me. You actually see a world where they do have some of those advances that US consumers are too cheap to invest in. Simple things like the better toilets, the better public transportation, the bullet train...better technology that actually makes life better that we don't get because our politicians don't give a shit about the economy or infrastructure.

 

[TGO]

Nah Demolition Man is more accurate..
I'm actually really disappointed with technology advancement tbh.
I mean when you can watch a film or a TV show from 15-20 years ago and the giveaway is their phones are smaller
it makes you wonder.

 

[mango drank]

To me, those are just informed likely speculations, rather than wild guesses. If its the 90s, you're aware of the burgeoning networking technology, and the tech of the time (Game Boys, early cell phones, touch screens etc.), its not hard to imagine how those could evolve over time with more capability, smaller sizes, cost shrinks and so on.

Still awesome, though. We're blessed to live in the fantasy world of yesterday.

True, easy to predict for AT&T's engineers back then, but for the audience seeing these ads--the vast majority of whom had plain old tube TVs, corded landline phones (cellulars were for yuppies and serious business people), didn't own one of those bulky beige $3k "computer" things, hadn't even heard of the internet, and didn't read Wired (which had just launched)--this stuff would've been nuts.

Joe Everyman, watching a new episode of Seinfeld season 4 in 1993, is basically being shown wireless broadband internet, videoconferencing, touchscreen phones and tablets, GPS and voice navigation, flatscreen TVs, and Netflix. Hot flaming damn.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

I miss Tomorrow's world, it was the Bomb.

Anyway, we won't see an increase or big leap in tech while we are open borders and globalist. Technological advancement can only come through a country with closed borders and who is ultra-nationalised.

Why?

Because how can we build a car with a hydrogen fuel cell, if that fuel cell has more power in it than a grenade while we have enemies in our borders?

Imagine launching a car running on compressed hydrogen and then selling then to destabilised places like the middles East?

Imagine building an energy reactor, 10 times more powerful than our fission reactors? Forget trying to understand nuclear fission and fusion, just sabotage one of these bad buys if you want to mess a country up.

The only way we can move forward safely with tech is to make sure 99% of the world has zero access to it. High walls, big guns, bigger brother. Sad but true

 

[Compsiox]

That was barely accurate lol

 

[Skyfox]

The problem with thinking this way is that it leads to us thinking small and retreating away from technology - yes we need to find ways to be more efficient with energy but we've found ourselves with a negative mindset that if we have any impact it's a bad thing. In truth everything we do has an impact - we can't be afraid to walk for fear of stepping on a bug.

We can do both.

Protect and continue to grow natural resources, educate populations AND build big shit in space.

Like you discover fire but keep burning your teepee down - you'll definitely want to keep making fires but you also have to keep the teepee safe.

 

[Deleted member 1159]

Shantae are you kidding about cars? Cars today are safer and more reliable, simultaneously more powerful and efficient, creak less and have less road/wind noise. Read up on how manufacturing has changed over the years, if you’re looking to replace a component on an older vehicle you may be SOL on finding which part you need because even within the same model year some manufacturers would just grab whatever was available off the shelf.

Anyone complaining about newer cars didn’t spend significant time daily driving pieces of shit from the 80s and 90s and prior IMO.

 

[nush]

Simple things like the better toilets, the better public transportation, the bullet train...better technology that actually makes life better that we don't get because our politicians don't give a shit about the economy or infrastructure.

China has it right "Within this window", We're doing this for the betterment of everyone.

Your house is in the way of a new high speed rail line and you want to halt construction with appeals and red tape? Fuck you. Here's your new high speed rail line.

Theres a mountain or hill in the way of a new construction project? Fuck you. Here's a new industrial area and highway.

That singular focus and direction gets shit done. If you live in one of the tier one cities you'll get all this new tech sometimes years before.

 

[Kadayi]

The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed - William Gibson

I do find these old clips quite fascinating it has to be said

 

[hariseldon]

The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed - William Gibson

I do find these old clips quite fascinating it has to be said

For me part of the fun is as a historical document - telling me something about life in the UK at those times. The 70s review one for instance hinting at unions and nationalised rail as a monopoly holding things up, and the engineering incompetence of British firms re nuclear and Concorde (the two things are not unrelated - unions made it bloody hard to fire people even if they were grossly incompetent - we will see the same in the future with certain groups being impossible to fire for a whole different set of reasons). Many of us Brits despise Thatcher because she was the milk snatcher, creator of the poll tax, crusher of miners strikes, destroyer of British industry, but when you watch things like this you see that British industry was already well on the way to destroying itself - our lack of desire to innovate and work hard killed our industry, not Thatcher.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Everybody thought 2020 would be flying cars, multidimensional perception, robot police units, respawns

 

[TriSuit666]

It's like y'all didn't realise BBC did a show in 1987 that correctly predicted the rise of things like Alexa, 'sentient' AI, state intrusion into individuals lives through apps, the privatisation of space, and companies like SpaceX.

They were off by a good few years, but 2027 is ballpark, isn't it?



(The full show is on YT if that interested you...)

 

[Punished Miku]

I really thought we’d be close the the Jetsons by now, when I was a kid.

The tech for that kind of thing would come about very, very quickly if we got some new breakthrough in batteries or energy generation.

We're still burning fossil fuels and still need engines. The next time there is a huge energy breakthrough, lots of other stuff will follow quickly.

 

[jshackles]

These same "researchers" must have gone on to work for Google Nest or Amazon Alexa. This video could have practically been a commercial for their products.

 

[Kayoba]

 

[timeflais]

"Predicted" in the same way that The Simpsons, predict things.

 

[Aesius]

I love videos like these.
im not sure if it’s still there, but in 1995, I went to the Innoventions pavilion at Epcot. There was a huge thing about the home in 2020. On one side of the exhibit was a bunch of SEGA CD consoles and a Japanese Saturn at the front desk playing Virtua Fighter. The other side had this widescreen TV with a computer hard drive attached with on demand movie trailers. The lady that ran it told me that in the year 2020 we would have all of our movies and TV shows anytime we want on TV. I walked away thinking that this would never happen. Now, we not only have this on a TV, but on a phone that fits in my pocket.

Innoventions ruled. I was there in early fall 2000 and they had a bunch of Dreamcast games set up, including an early North American version of Shenmue and a bunch of other games that hadn't been released yet.

 

[IfuckinghateReddit]

No predictions for "being trapped in them".

 

[Tesseract]

The tech for that kind of thing would come about very, very quickly if we got some new breakthrough in batteries or energy generation.

We're still burning fossil fuels and still need engines. The next time there is a huge energy breakthrough, lots of other stuff will follow quickly.

i agree with this, the frontier is battery power

i'm hopeful the digitization of the periodic table (which is a herculean effort) will manifest this future sooner than later

 

[TheMan]

well i guess a lot of that shit exists but smart homes are so far from being commonplace, most of that shit kind of seems gimmicky