Living in the future

[andrewducker]

I first realised I was living in The Future last year. I was on my way to Dundee to see Morag's band play. We'd just arrived when we realised that we didn't know exactly where we were, or exactly where we were going.

At which point I whipped out my phone, googled for Google Maps Mobile, and downloaded the app to my phone. I then fired it up, it worked out what transmitter I was attached to, and gave me a rough location from which I worked out where we were (if I had GPS it would have used that instead).

I then googled for the pub we were heading to and got the post code, and entered that into the maps application as well, giving us a route there.

That I could go from nowhere to having a maps application, which automatically located me, and then gave me directions to where I was going, felt distinctly like something out of Star Trek. I still find it impossible to take it entirely for granted.

Similarly, Nick says that he started feeling like he lived in the future when the oil started to run out, and we started heading for Mad Max territory. Clearly, we have different futures :->

When did you start feeling like you were living in the future? And if you don't - what would make you?

Comments

[drplokta]

The oil started to run out as soon as the first barrel was extracted, some time around the 8th or 9th centuries. But it's been running out for a long time now, and will continue to run out for a long time to come without ever actually running out completely.

[andrewducker]

This may be technically true, but it's not terribly useful. It will functionally run out when we can't get to any more of it in a useful manner, and when we were discovering more than we were pumping it was functionally infinite.

The sun will one day age to 'death', but this doesn't bother me as much as it will any 'people' who are around when that phase starts.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Yes, but in practice, when it starts to run out the price will start to rise quite a lot; at which point people will very, very quickly:

- identify and exploit other energy sources; or
- change the way they use energy; or
- both of those and something else we haven't thought of yet.

You may have noticed that we've weathered the transition into a world where personal service is expensive; I suspect that a hundred years ago that would be as unthinkable as managing without oil is to us.

[andrewducker]

in practice, when it starts to run out the price will start to rise quite a lot

That was _my_ point - that it running out causes change. Whereas the good Dr was saying "It's always been running out." which didn't seem terribly helpful.

I do think that we've now hit the point where it's starting to run out - or possibly we've moved to the next phase. A doubling in price over the last year is definitely a sign of _something_ (even if part of that something is investors causing a bit of a bubble).

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I think I've had a sense of that since I first came across the Internet in 1989 and was blown away by being able to communicate with computers on the other side of the world.

But I think the key tipping point for me was when I got my first flip phone, some time in the mid/late 90s. It was very like something out of Star Trek - specifically, the communicator - only better. Compared to science fiction, my phone had more and better features (photos, music, games, IR/BT connectivity - oh, and you could talk point-to-point with anyone, not just the Enterprise. And it was way more reliable as well - it never went on the blink just as peril hove in to view. (Admittedly I faced a lot less peril than the cast in Star Trek. But really, I don't think it ever broke down until it entered planned obsolescence.)

Now it's just bonkers and makes all the sci-fi I read when I was a teenager look pretty small beer. Apart from the technically infeasible stuff about transport. We could really do with a teleport.

[calcinations.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that having read so much SF, I won't feel as if we're in the future until there are plent sized spacecraft cruising between the stars, and I have my own anti-gravity backpack.
Simple stuff like landers on Mars has been done before and isn't that hard.

Possibly too much SF helps you with Future Shock.

[andrewducker]

Naaah - I've been reading SF since I was about 6, it's when I recognise things from SF in the real world that it hits me.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

For me, the odd sense of sadness and loss when you read something written five, ten, fifteen or twenty years ago and the "future" seems so outdated. Chunks of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and so forth drastically underestimating what technology can do, for example.

[makyo.livejournal.com]

There have been a number of occasions when I've thought "Gosh!"

One of these was a year or so back when it occurred to me that my camera has the storage capacity of 64000 BBC Model B microcomputers, in the form of a postage-stamp-sized bit of plastic. As of the other week, my mobile phone (itself roughly the size of a small bar of chocolate, but with a reasonably high-resolution colour screen, built-in radio, MP3 player and camera as well as the magical ability to talk to someone who's currently not here) has twice even that, in a tiny ~£6 bit of plastic the size of my thumbnail.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

The future will be upon us when we get flying cars. Flying cars or possibly Jetpacks. There is no real technological basis behind this, that was the vision of the future I distinctly remember from when I was a young boy.

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

When I realized that all of my friends lived in my computer, and I hadn't actually initialized a relationship with someone face to face instead of online in longer than I'd care to think about. *g*

[e-halmac.livejournal.com]

That is exceptionally cool and I want to live in your future (no ttheo her one, please)!!!

[rwrylsin.livejournal.com]

Little reminders all the time. Most recently it was discovering that we have spray-on plasters now.

[andrewducker]

Bloody Hell - I didn't know that existed.

That's amazing - I want some!

[rwrylsin.livejournal.com]

Available at a Boots near you:
http://www.elastoplastsport.co.uk/first_aid.php

[darkoshi]

I use something called NewSkin - it brushes on and dries within a minute. Very good for small nicks and cuts on the fingers, unlike a bandage which would get soaked every time you washed your hands.

As for knowing it's the future, being able to surf the web on my cellphone is ... yeah. It'll be more the future when I can watch video on it, and TV, and movies... and it was the future already even when cell-phone use become common enough that many people had them.

Today though, I was thinking that it would be the future when we all have our own medical scanners with which we could scan our bodies and see what our insides look like (without harmful radiation)... and have a computer compare a current scan to an old one to determine if something has gone wrong... and can tell you what is wrong and what to do about it, so that you don't need to go to doctors for all that.

[andrewducker]

I can watch videos on my N80, and the iPhone will happily watch video files.

TV on phones is coming - various devices support it, but the broadcasting isn't there yet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-H#Devices

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't feel that I have had a moment of "oooh I'm living in the future"... I feel very grounded in the present and accept technological changes are just a part of being in the now.

However the piece of technology that has impressed me the most is the Go Anywhere Internet things for laptops.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I think you'll have that moment when a piece of technology the mind of your youth firmly considered to be "in the future" , occurs.

So what do you consider to be in the future?

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Floating skateboards!

I'm not actually sure, its a good question. I suppose I feel new developments are to make like easier, and I suppose I probably take that for granted, in a "oh thats really useful" kind of way -but I'm not sure I'm blown away by anything.

I suppose I'd like to see more environmentally friendly transport methods, that are faster. However I think this is a long way away.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I said "in the future" not "in back to the future".

But that'd do me as well.

I reckon we're a good century off flying cars. If ever. The logistical problems of making them mainstream seem a lot larger than certain small, hopeful companies think they are.

[andrewducker]

Flying cars aren't a technological issue - they're a social one. You need a license to fly a plane, and they're heavily monitored and policed. You need to put in a lot of time and effort to make sure you're up to date, log a lot of flying hours, and pass numerous exams.

Can you imagine what society would be like if everyone could fly a light plane anywhere they wanted?

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

Flying cars are still a technological issue (as well as a social one of course). I don't think any of the small scale prototypes have ever actually flown. They'd use up a ridiculous amount of fuel for take off and landing (especially if not flown at speed), require all sorts of runways and landing pads everywhere and probably have to be flown on auto-pilot.

Even mass produced they'd be prohibitively expensive.

[andrewducker]

You want _cheap_ flying cars?

Well, yes, _that_ is a technological issue.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Even more than cheap flying cars, I want flying cars that are sufficiently automatic that they won't fall out of the sky when the pilot has the flu, is drunk, or is simply a moron. From my PoV, that means that they either wouldn't have manual controls or would have automatic overrides in case someone did something stupid. That's asking a lot of any technology. I'm honestly expecting flying cars after we get sentient AI, if then.

OTOH, what I really want is automatic cars. I hate driving (and suck at it) and don't like having to depend upon others, and even in the best portions of the US, public transport is non-optimum. The fact that we're getting close to this is definite a living in the future moment for me.

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

I'd be more tempted to take the underground.
nice strong ceiling between me an the boy racers in planes

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

Every time I drive round the M25 towards the M1 and pass a huge wind turbine around junction 19. Wind turbines are THE FUTURE!

[andrewducker]

Jesus Christ!

I didn't even know you _new_ what your LJ login was any more!

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

mike lives! Pimp your brother andy!

[martling.livejournal.com]

Free wireless internet all the way down the East Coast main line.

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

I was recently thinking how unfuturistic Edinburgh looked.
All the new tech is almost invisible.
Modern cars are way ahead of 1990 era cars, but look pretty much the same.
Mobile phones are one of the few visible pieces of tech and give that a few years and they might not be visible.

The main changes that will make it feel like The Future(TM) to me are:
Direct neural computer interface
Small scale fusion power
The end of oil use as an economical fuel (almost there)
1st offworld human colony (probably the moon)

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

"I was recently thinking how unfuturistic Edinburgh looked."

That's actual a deliberate decision, isn't it? Or was it just a popular myth that Edinburgh Council or the government wanted to keep it that way?

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

For buildings etc yes.
But the council are not the ones making the advances in technology unobtrusive.
That is a general culture thing.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

I realized I was living in the future when I began to detach my sense of self from my desire to gain material goods and prosper financially in this world. Once freed from that burden, I was able to see things for their beauty more clearly, including the fact that we're living in the new and exciting time, when the world is unlike it has ever been.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

The very earliest thing I can remember that made me think gosh, wow, the future, it's amazing, were photocopiers; ie the power of the underground press. My next door neighbour's dad had his own photocopier at home, and we got to use it sometimes, that was amazingly cool. I suppose I was about ten at the time and photocopiers were not new.

I remember two incidents from when I was thirteen; the first was another photocopier; this time a coin-operated colour photocopier in a shopping mall. In practice it was so expensive that you couldn't have used it for more than the odd copy. But still, the possibilities. The second was when I had access to a computer for the first time. The school I was at had a dumb terminal linked to the minicomputer at the nearby college. I used the computer to print out a list of prime numbers; I've written about this before.

[andrewducker]

Heh - when my school moved from using Gestetners for mass printing (because photocopiers were too expensive) to just using photocopiers for everything, that was definitely a big step.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

The most recent moment like that I had was to do with the iPlayer. It sounds really basic now, but the fact that I'd forgotten that Who was on, but could *immediately* just go onto the computer - to a legitimate website - and watch it. More generally, the huge take-up of iPlayer and the fact that even my non-geek friends and family members use it, I see the imminent demise of scheduled TV programming.

The other thing that tends to do it is talking to teenagers who've grown up with the internet, and the fact that things that still amaze us a bit, they just take totally for granted. And hearing about three-year-olds who want to know where the mouse for the TV is, so they can interact with it.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

Today I had lots of errands and parcel collecting in the endless industrial estates along the M8 and could not stop thinking about how it'd look post-apocalypse. For me, it's the knowledge that within my lifetime the world will change so dramatically. And sort of looking forward to it, kinda..

Apart from the inevitable Tories winning the next election.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

During the G8 protests, on the 6th July 2005, that was when I first felt it, actually, thinking back.

The bus to work never came (there were roadblocks in place nearby) so a bunch of us at the bus stop got a taxi. Partway to work it stopped dead in traffic that wasn't moving so we got out and started to walk along the river to go under the big main road and near to the office. Police stopped us, due to dangerous anarcho-hippy-scum being somewhere up the road wanting to protest about something, then realised we were in fact suited-and-booted so gave us an escort along this riverside path. This turned out to be the staging area for a whole bunch of really cheery riot police.

Being escorted to work past riot police, with police to save us from sinister protestors and seeing soldiers on top of our office buildings, and hearing helicopters overhead made me feel like I was living in the kind of dystopian police state I like to read about. The bombings in London the next day didn't do anything to dispel this image.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I still sometimes shake my mp3 player and marvel that it doesn't stop playing.

Also, since I don't really -watch- TV and haven't watched TV that is actually being broadcast right then for a while, you messing around with Tivo weirds me out.

[andrewducker]

I could download more stuff, but when it's being sent to my flat over a cable already, in high resolution, I don't much see the point.

I don't tend to watch much actual TV - but I do watch Video On Demand occasionally. Having iPlayer on the TV is great.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

The first time someone raved at me about some form of instant messaging (icq, probably) and I said 'but it's just irc!' I've been a techno curmudgeon for a while.

More seriously, in 1994 I went to New York and had arranged a job and a place to stay via usenet despite never having met any of the people face to face.

[erindubitably.livejournal.com]

It would take monkeys feeding themselves marshmallows with a robotic arm attached to their brain to convince me it's the future. Oh wait...

[broin.livejournal.com]

Stuck in Aberdeen and needing a hotel. So driving around with my laptop's wifi radar calling the shots, and eventually using the wifi of a McDonalds from the street nearby - didn't even have to buy a McMuffin.

Teaching a guy in his 50s how to use computers. Googling for his grandad, who drove one of the first tanks. Finding a whole fanpage about his grandad, with pics the guy had never seen.

And a friend starting up an iPhone on launch day. Browsing the web over the phone network. Then seamlessly using an open wireless network in some office. And looking at videos of her family.

[daisyflip.livejournal.com]

My dongle still amazes me. When George the Laptop and I go on adventures now and have a spare time we can go on the internet right there and then. It's impressively fast, depending on signal, and has done me proud on many a train journey.

And the first time I produced a podcast.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

China being an important country almost makes me think I’m living in the future. When China is a superpower, that will be the future.

The War on Terror sometimes feels like a dystopian future.

What it would really take to make me feel like the future had arrived: clean shiny trains, and clean shiny train stations. Every other time I catch the train, it makes me feel like I’m living in the early 80s.

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

Freak-show television. It's like the world is now populated by supporting characters from 1980s Judge Dredd stories.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

This is the future: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/05/dean-kamens-rob.html

[captainlucy.livejournal.com]

*notes conversations above about flying cars*
*cancels the "where is my flying car, eh?" rant*

Thing is, in the past we all thought The Future would be announced by Patrick Allen to a backing of fanfares and troupes of dancing girls. Granted, it might very well receive such an announcement in the Micorfost boardroom or wherever, but the first most of we mortals notices it is when we're bimbling past Dixons and we see it on sale in the front window. :)

I think the moment I first felt I was living in the future was probably on 6th November 2004, when for the first time I bought pizza over the internets. :)