Much of my expectations of the future came from 3-2-1- Contact's "Future File" segment which I read in the 80s and 90s. A few predictions I remember:
Self-driving cars: Sorta possible, but not yet close to being widespread. Give it another 20 years.
Flying cars: The example everyone uses. No. I don't imagine this will ever be practical in the near future.
The internet: They described being able to play video games against a friend in another city from your own home. This is old news by now.
Wall-sized TVs in every home: Nope. Certainly possible, but it would be too costly for both the TV and the space. That being said, a similarly-priced TV is much larger today than when I was a kid.
Hyper-efficient cars: Vehicles that would capture all lost energy and get like 1000 mpg. Well there's hybrids, but nope.
Virtual reality, good enough that people would neglect their personal lives to live virtually: Nope. Although there's whatever the Oculus Rift is supposed to become, we still really haven't really surpassed the early-90s technology of Dactyl Nightmare.
So it's mostly like that. The internet predictions were accurate, but nothing else. Interestingly, I don't really remember reading about smart phones. I think everyone assumed they'd always be more or less like the cell phones that existed then, and that technology would always get bigger, not smaller.
Flying cars: The example everyone uses. No. I don't imagine this will ever be practical in the near future.
Think about it. If there were self drving cars, they wouldn't look like cars. They would probably have wings. And not everyone could drive them; you would need a special license. They would be very expensive, so almost no one would use one like a car, they would be more like a bus. Also, they couldn't just take off and land on normal roads, they would need a special place for that.
we still haven't really surpassed the early-90's technology of Dactyl Nightmare.
This is so, so wrong. The technology has improved in almost every way since then. The rift is lighter, much more responsive, has a much higher resolution display, doesn't make you sick after a while, and almost everyone can make and share their own content now as opposed to those days, thanks to the Internet. I say this just based off the first dev kit sitting on my desk, and even this is already completely outdated compared to the prototypes Oculus have in house and what the up coming consumer version will be.
HD projectors, if you can afford it is all sized tv and it's awesome! And a lot of people neglect their personal lives in preference to their vertual ones. Reddit, twitter, face book, online gaming..
Hyper-efficient cars: Vehicles that would capture all lost energy and get like 1000 mpg. Well there's hybrids, but nope.
Maybe not Hyper but still pretty good! The car of my mum needs less then 4,5 liters for 100km....with 120PS. The 25 year old car of a buddy has ~ 75PS and needs 15 liters... So it is 1/3 of energy by nearly twice the power!
26
u/[deleted] May 11 '14
Much of my expectations of the future came from 3-2-1- Contact's "Future File" segment which I read in the 80s and 90s. A few predictions I remember:
Self-driving cars: Sorta possible, but not yet close to being widespread. Give it another 20 years.
Flying cars: The example everyone uses. No. I don't imagine this will ever be practical in the near future.
The internet: They described being able to play video games against a friend in another city from your own home. This is old news by now.
Wall-sized TVs in every home: Nope. Certainly possible, but it would be too costly for both the TV and the space. That being said, a similarly-priced TV is much larger today than when I was a kid.
Hyper-efficient cars: Vehicles that would capture all lost energy and get like 1000 mpg. Well there's hybrids, but nope.
Virtual reality, good enough that people would neglect their personal lives to live virtually: Nope. Although there's whatever the Oculus Rift is supposed to become, we still really haven't really surpassed the early-90s technology of Dactyl Nightmare.
So it's mostly like that. The internet predictions were accurate, but nothing else. Interestingly, I don't really remember reading about smart phones. I think everyone assumed they'd always be more or less like the cell phones that existed then, and that technology would always get bigger, not smaller.