You may have felt cool with your Sony Walkman as a teenager but contemporary teens can fit more music onto a device smaller than a box of matches. And they don’t have to flip the tape over halfway through an album.
There can be little doubt: yesterday’s cutting edge technology looks silly to today’s children and much of today’s technology will look silly to tomorrow’s children. Here’s a list of 50 technological advances, past and present, that will have young people asking: “you used to have to do what?!”
I remember the slow eject cassette was the height of cool. Still floats my boat but I haven't used a cassette for yonks. found some old C90s the other week and had to explain what they were to my kids!
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[size=1](Over 8 years ago... no really!)[/size]
Bought my daughter a mobile phone a couple of years back and she turned to Mrs White and asked when did you get your first mobile mam?
'bout a year before you did....came the reply
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Derailleurs. There has to be a better way.
This one's quite funny - it does already seem quite ridiculous
26. Telephone directories
Back to phones again. Having stuck one in most buildings (see item 4) and left a few in the street (see item 22) we then had the problem of how anyone would find the number they needed. So we printed every phone number we thought would be relevant into a huge book which we delivered to every household in the country. Seriously. Then people started asking to be left out of the directory, rendering them largely useless.
Rushing home from school to see the new television channel, there were now going to be FOUR Channels, couldn't believe it!
Some of those are wrong IMO
There will always be a place for a map and compass - nothing much to go wrong there. Relying on a electronic / battery powered thing when in the mountains is not safe and you often need to see rather more than even your computer screen to plot a route - certainly you can't plot a route on a small screen.
Books - there will always be a place for paper books. No electronic reader is as satisfying as a book.
I remember the first digital watches, pocket calculators and remote controls for your telly - and I am 48. I look after a woman who is 111 yrs old - born during Victorias reign. she remembers cars appearing, the excitement of the pioneering aeroplane flights. Radios were rare even
One thing for sure - predictions of the future are always wrong. There will be something coming that no one has forseen that will change our society in ways we cannot imagine. I do expect the energy crisis to have effects we dont forsee
Rushing home from school to see the new television...it was colour!
Agree about a map and compass - saying they are already out of date is silly.
[i]Agree about a map and compass - saying they are already out of date is silly. [/i]
they are pretty much. Did a loop in the Peaks at the weekend, all on GPS, none of us were really that familiar with the area.
nickc - and when the battery fails or you drop it and crack the screen?
How did you plan the route - on a 3 inch screen?
A gps is a nice toy and can be easy and fun to use - but no way is it as good as a map from a safety point of view.
compass and map as a backup only, gps is obviously the way forward!
things i remember that seem weird (or old) now, i'm 32.
wired remote controls
first mobile at 19 (and it was a brick)
CD's, don't own any now.
So how do you plot your routes on a gps? a map that is two feet wide and covers 25 miles is far easier to do this on than a screen 3 inches wide that either covers half a mile or is on a tiny scale
you have heard of scrolling old man 🙂 or even planning your route before you go and saving it to the gps 🙂
Plan the route on a PC, upload to the GPS, follow the ickle arrow. Want to know where you are, scroll out.
[i]nickc - and when the battery fails or you drop it and crack the screen?[/i]
We had between us; 2 GPS, and my phone that has mapping capability, and a GPS app...
RS - you still need a map - I have a big screen for my puter and memory map but for routes of a decent length maps are easier. I have the whole of scotland on one wall in 1-250 000 for touring routes and the local area in 1:25 000 for plotting local routes.
I have twice been out in the hills with folk with GPS - both times they went wrong 'cos they blindly followed the gps.
KISS - its a rule for a reason.
I think the guy in the article is talking about for everyday folk not outoor heroes like you lot. Plus he had to get it up to 50. TJ do you ever stop being an insufferable smart-arse?
Back on-topic... I reckon mechanical hard drives will look daft by the time my daughter's old enough to know about such things. Also I reckon leaving your house to work in an office 9-5 will also begin to look ridiculous. After all, it's terribly unappealing to most of us who do it and downright impractical too. We need to get a job done, but why do we all have to be in the same place all day every day to do it?
A compass? A little needle floating in water?? Madness I tell thee.
Can't go wrong with a good sextant and a nautical almanac.
We need to get a job done, but why do we all have to be in the same place all day every day to do it?
because working from home is far less appealing than it sounds!
Letter writing - shame that, but it's already happening.
I like to write letters. With a nice fountain pen.
Pity everyone just emails or texts me to say thanks for the letter....
🙄
love the panelstrip GrahamS.
spectrum 48k type games such a meteorite and lander. still quite partial to a game of lander.
im more amazed that the kids love stuff i thought was crap when i was young. im a "mature" student and the uni is full of kids in painfull skinny jeans wearing def leopard t's and converse high tops. i know fashion is diff from tech but still.
Books - there will always be a place for paper books. No electronic reader is as satisfying as a book.
Once eBooks get enough momentum going, the cost of publishing real books will go up and up and up - at some point it will become economically unfeasible. Which will be a pity, as I love books.
One thing guaranteed to look ridiculous are predictions of the future.
I never liked ebooks but I recently found one that was more useful then the paper version because it allowed be to quickly flick between pages and enlarge diagrams.
Fail - how could point 10 not mention the 'Laserdisc' - like a DVD but the 12 inch version, "what's a 12 inch Dad, Dad..."
The lifespan of GPS is now more or less measured in months seeing as the US has no launch vehicle available to replace the first 3 or 4 satellites which are reaching the end of their operational life. It's going to be interesting to see how people who can't read maps navigate (not that many people could before GPS).
[i]One thing for sure - predictions of the future are always wrong.[/i]
wrong, wrong wrong. Here's one that's absolutely spot on. By 2020, we'll all have flying cars, and we'll eat entire meals in pill form. FACT.
TJ, what happens when your map blows away (as I've seen happend when I've been out on the hills, years before GPS was around)? Maps are just toys too (my point being that just because [i]you[/i] call GPSs toys doesn't mean that's what they are).
I've done my apprenticeship with maps and compass and I'm damn good at it if I say so myself but that doesn't mean that everyone else has to pay their dues too.
Plenty of expeditions to far flung places now rely on GPSs (though typically they'd take three of anything that's critical) for routes that are life/death critical, particularly as there are often no reliable maps available and also that they're damn hard to use in jungle as you can't see anything to triangulate with. If they can do that, then I reckon your trifling toy touring could manage just fine with GPS alone.
As to it failing next year, well, we'll see. I can't help but feel that with the criticality of GPS to US military action (since many soldiers use their own private GPSs) they'll find a way to make sure it doesn't happen.
They have also said that it won't fail (though I understand that's not a guarantee...)
[url] http://www.physorg.com/news162133400.html [/url]
Hopefully travelling around with 2.5 tons of vehicle each will become a weird antiquated notion too.
Plan the route on a PC, upload to the GPS, follow the ickle arrow. Want to know where you are, scroll out.nickc - and when the battery fails or you drop it and crack the screen?
We had between us; 2 GPS, and my phone that has mapping capability, and a GPS app...
What happens if you need to deviate from your route, or if the different GPS' don't agree about where you are.
I think GPS is great, but I think it's pretty daft to rely on it entirely if you're going into unfamiliar remote country. Also you still need the map-reading skills to read a map on a GPS properly (if you've even got one with proper mapping on it).
My mum's partner is in mountain rescue in the Lakes and there are quite a few call-outs involving people thinking they can navigate by GPS alone.
or if the different GPS' don't agree about where you are.
I've yet to see that happen with GPS but I have had a big argument about where we actually were when using a paper map and compass (I was right! 🙂 )...
And you are right, you do still need some map reading skills when using GPS, particularly in the case you mentioned where you have to deviate from your route but that's pretty much a given for anyone with any common sense and still doesn't actually require a map. The problem is that some people think a GPS is a complete substitute for any navigational skill which it clearly isn't.
I got all excited when I got a portable minidisc and a cable to hook it up to my stereo, that didn't last long did it.
Yeah, minidisc really did have a short life which was a shame because I had a big Sony minidisc separate and a portable player which both worked really well but clearly aren't a patch on mp3s. IIRC I sold the Sony MD on ebay for £50 after paying about £200 a couple of years before.
aP - Member
The lifespan of GPS is now more or less measured in months seeing as the US has no launch vehicle available to replace the first 3 or 4 satellites which are reaching the end of their operational life. It's going to be interesting to see how people who can't read maps navigate (not that many people could before GPS).
I believe there's about 27 in orbit isn't there? (I could well be wrong)
I remember being told to maintain current levels of accuracy you need at least 24 in orbit and once you go bellow this magic number the service doesn’t pack up all together, you get a drop in accuracy, and more periodical loss of service, but not total failure of the GPS system.
The various GPS devices about need to see anything from 4 to 7 satellites in order to function. GPS is actually a very robust system.
Plus the Yanks aren’t the only lot able to put satellites in orbit… the end isn’t nigh just yet…
The best bit of navigation kit ever has to be the SR71/A12’s “Astro-Inertial Navigation System”;
There were no satelites at the time and they were the highest, fastest thing in the air, so they had a computer that watched the stars in order to position the aircraft, how cool is that?
Kids these days may well have access to lot’s of technology, but how many actually understand it in any meaningful sense? A very small minority I would guess... A generation of consumers does not make a world full of Engineers and Scientists, any ****er can operate an Ipod, how many can repair a broken one?
As for Working from home? What a crock of shit! I’ve yet to meet anyone who genuinely “Works from home” it’s middle management speak for Skiving, generally the email arrives about 16:45 on a Thursday informing the rest of us that “Tommorow I will be working from Home”…
The lifespan of GPS is now more or less measured in months seeing as the US has no launch vehicle available to replace the first 3 or 4 satellites which are reaching the end of their operational life. It's going to be interesting to see how people who can't read maps navigate (not that many people could before GPS).
Except for the European and Japanese systems that will be coming on line and are designed to work with the American systems.
I agree with TJ about maps and books. One thing about books is that they last a whole lot longer than any electronic media. With a bit of care papaer can last for a couple of hundred years. No electonic media can last that long. Most electronic files from the 80s & 90s can't be easily read.
The lifespan of GPS is now more or less measured in months seeing..
Not going to happen. It's not just there for "toys" for lost mountainbikers you know, it is an integral part of civilian & military aircraft and shipping, not to mention being fairly essential for modern warfare (connected battlefield, UAVs, guided missiles etc)
I’ve yet to meet anyone who genuinely “Works from home”
Hello! 😀 I'm a software engineer. I spent all last week and the first half of this week working from home. I'll be doing today and Friday in the office then probably more from home next week.
[i]but I think it's pretty daft to rely on it entirely if you're going into unfamiliar remote country[/i]
Riiiiight, we're talking about cycling 21 miles in one of the most popular national parks in the centre of the UK, on trails that are well established, and full of walkers, day trippers and other cyclists, all within walking distance of a reasonably sized town/village. In the UK one is, I think, never more than 7km from a metalled road? TBH TJ my navigation and map reading skills are pretty sharp, and I was more than comfortable with my choice. Forgot to say earlier, my watch also has a compass built in...Perhaps I should carry a sundial just in case that battery fails as well?
I still have minidisc in my car, use it everyday, quality is great.
hmmmmm, Id rely on a gPS over a map any day of the week.
Battery life? Even our 15+ year old magellan2000 will run for 24 hours with normal 4 AA's, gets to about 3 days with recharagables, including 12 hours of backlight.
Drop the GPS and crack the screen? Id like to see a usable map after its been droped in a uddy puddle, just wipe the screen and the GPS is fine and dandy most of the time. And this is all assuming the map didnt get blown away when you droped it.
I've never know a GPS give the wrong position, even back in the day when the signal was scrambled it was good to within 20-30m usualy, and the firmware usualy had a buffer to calculate your position based on dead reconing and the gps so it avoided any erronous signals. Anyway, its much better than DECA ever was, and even dGPS wasn't as accurate as modern handhelds now that the signal is no longer scrambled. Even the best map reader will make mistakes, IME GPS never does, how the user interprets and reacts to that data may be questionable, but i'd wager knowing your exact position and making the wrong decision is safer than geting it wrong in the fog/woods/unfamiliar hills and still making the wrong decision.
because working from home is far less appealing than it sounds!
Seems that way NOW, maybe - depending on who you work with. But in the future it'll become normal and accepted, and people will realise who they can trust, and work out how to keep tabs on those they don't.
I love working from home and would be pushing for it on this project if it wasn't a secure one.
Seems that way NOW, maybe - depending on who you work with. But in the future it'll become normal and accepted, and people will realise who they can trust, and work out how to keep tabs on those they don't.
Maybe.
But there are other issues:
- you miss out on office banter, coffee room chats, lunchtime gossip, overheard conversations.
- it gets quite lonely.
- it's very hard to motivate yourself.
- you end up working at odd times of day.
- it's much harder to separate work and home life.
>Drop the GPS and crack the screen? Id like to see a usable map after its been droped in a uddy puddle<
You've got a 15 yo Magellan and you've never heard of waterproof maps / paper?
Tuttut...
Despite all the bashing of me about GPS no one has answered the point - how do you plot a route across a distance without a map? Say Blair Athol to Kingussie? ( that being a route I have done)
I have MM on my puter but still know its easier with a paper map where I can see the whole route at once.
The other thing you cannot do with a gps is name the various surrounding mountains. You know - the munro baggers game.
