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Stuff now that you'd have laughed at on Tomorrows World in the 70's...

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[#12532532]

For me it's paying for stuff with a phone...

[William Woollard]
"And now we have a hand-held computer a quarter of the size of a typical paperback book... and if you simply wave it over a receiving device you can pay for items worth hundreds of pounds in just a few seconds. And it will unlock by taking a 3D scan of your face in fractions of a second"!
[/William Woollard]

...you'd have pointed at the screen and gone - 'yeah right! Now show me another robot!' 🙂


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:28 pm
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Not Tomorrow's World but I remember being utterly incredulous at the scene in Blade Runner where he keeps zooming in on a photo in a manner that now seems a lot like using photoshop but not really being troubled by the flying cars.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:33 pm
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[url= https://i.postimg.cc/vmRV3mTH/the-internet-cover-ute-WFNvv-Rs.jp g" target="_blank">https://i.postimg.cc/vmRV3mTH/the-internet-cover-ute-WFNvv-Rs.jp g"/> [/img][/url]


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:35 pm
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That music on your cassette tape that you have to rewind to play the other side?

You'll be able to play that through the air, immediately. From satellites!


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:40 pm
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I'd have doubted Kindles. Not because of the tech but because I didn't think people would move away from paper books like that. Much the same for "online magazines", though I still think they're stupid whereas I've come to love the ebook.

I like that "living in the future" feel. Like, phones are starting to get properly clever with integration, commonality across apps etc, we're definitely getting out of the wild west phase of "100 apps on a phone and none of them really work right". And sometimes I just watch my 3d printer and think, "I have a mechanical spider that shits plastic and then I fit things that I downloaded into my car..."


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:40 pm
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I remember thinking that by the time we could make calls with our video watches like Dick Tracy we would have solved all the world's problems. Lols!


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:44 pm
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It is amazing how much some things have progressed in 50 years. But also how some things haven't moved on at all. I mean we're only just now starting to move away from the internal combustion engine in cars...

Tyres are pretty much the same as they were too.

No flying cars, no 'real' autonomous cars, planes fly slower than Concorde did in 1969. Very few high speed rail services... 🙁


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:46 pm
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Blade Runner.

Flying cars, synthetic humans, deep space colonies. Just remember you have to use a public phone booth to make, admittedly a video call, phone call.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:46 pm
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That music on your cassette tape that you have to rewind to play the other side?

Really? Rather than wait for the auto stop, eject the cassette, flip it and hit play?


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:49 pm
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Full suspension bike with disc brakes and electronic shifting gears - designed to go up and down mountains.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:51 pm
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Not Tomorrow’s World but I remember being utterly incredulous at the scene in Blade Runner where he keeps zooming in on a photo in a manner that now seems a lot like using photoshop but not really being troubled by the flying cars.

Are you one of my clients who supplies a shitly lit and out of focus phone image and wants it to be a hero shot in a catalogue and just keeps saying enhance it?


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:53 pm
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Not really a tangible object, but the internet.

- Without the internet our smartphones would be useless.
- Allows anyone to search for anything and become an armchair expert in minutes.
- Allows us to have virtual calls/meetings where we can share screens and videos, work collaboratively and all sorts
- Allows us stream media
- Death of hedge porn


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 7:55 pm
 csb
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Really? Rather than wait for the auto stop, eject the cassette, flip it and hit play?

Get with the programme grandad, you can get auto-reverse nowadays.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 8:00 pm
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Paying for music, tv programmes and films but never owning it. Even though I do it now I think it’s stupid


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 8:02 pm
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Get with the programme grandad, you can get auto-reverse nowadays.

Oh you crazy kids, that'll never catch on.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 8:04 pm
 feed
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Get with the programme grandad, you can get auto-reverse nowadays.

Get with the insults, we're called boomers nowadays 🙂


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 8:04 pm
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Social media?
Even in early 90's if you'd have said people spend vast amounts of time staring at their phone to see what friends and "celebraties"** are doing would have been laughed at.

Then told the same would be used to swap two monumental elections and ultimately segregate vast sections of the population would have been an Orwellian fantasy.

How about go back to the 70's and explain Instagram and influencers?

** Though I think the notion of celebrities has some what been diluted lately.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 8:13 pm
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Paying for music, tv programmes and films but never owning it. Even though I do it now I think it’s stupid

Strictly speaking you've never owned it - even with physical media you were buying actually buying a license.

About to put our recycling out and I don't thing my past self would be enthralled by the notion that in the shiny suited future people of the next millennium would wash their rubbish before they threw it away 🙂


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 8:15 pm
 csb
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Early 70s me would be in hysterics at 2022 me considering the bulk tealights in the shops in case of powercuts.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 8:21 pm
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Are you one of my clients who supplies a shitly lit and out of focus phone image and wants it to be a hero shot in a catalogue and just keeps saying enhance it?

Or a private investigator with a fuzzy bit of CCTV and I want you to pause it, zoom and enhance to identify the criminal... 😉


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 8:50 pm
 Drac
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People not believing vaccines work.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 8:59 pm
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Really? Rather than wait for the auto stop, eject the cassette, flip it and hit play?

Doh! You know it's been a long time since you played a cassette tape when you forget how to use them... 🤣


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 9:04 pm
 jimw
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I remember seeing a compact disc player being demonstrated (1981?)on Tomorrow’s World which I watched every week (yes I am that old). It seemed remarkable then. I would have been astonished to know that 40 years later I can fit all of the music that I have ever bought (and quite a lot that I didn’t buy…ahem) on a small piece of plastic the size of my thumbnail.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 9:18 pm
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Computer nerds inventing currencies named after dogs... Oh wait people still laughing at that.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 9:31 pm
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teaching people to wash their hands in 2020


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 9:32 pm
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oceanskipper

Full Membe https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1566016654357565440/blockquote >

Omg they even got the fashion right!!


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 9:33 pm
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I was but a babe in the late 70’s, but massive TV’s that are a few mm thick would’ve seemed like utter make believe in the 80’s. A big TV took up most of the living room and *probably irradiated your testicles and gave the family pets super powers*

*Disclaimer - I’m not a scientist.

I can’t differentiate between Tomorrow’s World and the second series of Look Around You.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 9:36 pm
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I remember on Going Live or one of its precursors, Philip Schofield demoing a little box of electronics where you could insert little microchips to play albums rather than faff about with cassettes. There might have been a competition coming next week where you could win one.

It was, of course, an April Fool. But they inadvertently predicted both the mp3 player and SD-style storage.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 9:46 pm
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Are you one of my clients who supplies a shitly lit and out of focus phone image and wants it to be a hero shot in a catalogue and just keeps saying enhance it?

Yeah, been there, done that! And the client was Canon, too! They dished out digital cameras to their staff to take photos for the company magazine. I think they might have been Ixy Digital 320 with a 3.2 Mp sensor. We’d get JPEG files at the smallest size because of the small cards used, so possibly about 250Kb? And they wanted them used at about A5, sometimes larger.
The digital artefacts in certain colour channels showed no detail at all, it just looked like square paving slabs.
Quite a challenge in Photoshop; I learned a lot doing those pics.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 10:02 pm
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I remember an episode on genetically modified crops, the emphasis being that they could be grown in areas of limited water supply and perhaps help feed people in remote or poor agricultural areas Fast forward to protestors pulling them out of test sites in Oxfordshire.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 10:02 pm
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Not really a tangible object, but the internet.

I love old episodes of Tomorrow's World. The use of the Internet was something that cropped up a lot and was described very accurately.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 10:09 pm
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Bet they didn't realize they were inadvertently predicting Alan Partridge 😀 😉


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 10:11 pm
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I was promised a hoverboard. Well where is it? Want one now


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 10:18 pm
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That I could point a telephone at the night sky, and it could tell me what stars I'm looking at.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 10:24 pm
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https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/tiny-3d-printed-backpack-turns-insects-into-bluetooth-controlled-cyborgs-214442/

I'll just leave this here. I think the link is self explanatory enough.

Oh and maybe this quote

nobody wants a suddenly out-of-control team of cyborg cockroaches roaming around


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 10:27 pm
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I was promised a hoverboard. Well where is it? Want one now

Hoverboards and jetpacks cropped up regularly.

Reading some sci-fi books is quite funny too cos they assume things like hoverboards and jetpacks but also haven't got beyond tape decks and analogue. 😅


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 10:36 pm
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Reading some sci-fi books is quite funny too cos they assume things like hoverboards and jetpacks but also haven’t got beyond tape decks and analogue. 😅

Nah, they just predicted retro didn't they.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 10:44 pm
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A soup maker, I mean WTAF as if someone would actually invent that!


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 10:55 pm
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I remember a late 60s edition suggesting that we’d have yellow ,reflective, rear number plates on vehicles , sometime soon .


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 11:02 pm
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I remember a late 60s / early 70s edition suggesting that we’d have yellow ,reflective, rear number plates on vehicles , sometime soon .


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 11:03 pm
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Back in the 80s we had ICL come into our offices to show off their "one on a desk" concept. Everyone would have their own computer. Oh how we laughed.


 
Posted : 07/09/2022 11:04 pm
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"Logging" in to an internet forum and typing messages to people you've never met about imagining your reaction to a hypothetical situation on an episode before you were born of a TV programme that no longer exists.

That was difficult to type.


 
Posted : 08/09/2022 1:39 am
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being able to go from an emerging disease to an RNA Vaccine in ~18 months.


 
Posted : 08/09/2022 2:44 am
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VHS will be obsolete cos DVDs are little shiny disks containing a whole film and they will be obsolete cos you can think of a film, type it into your trimphone, and send it to play on your 50 inch flat telly that weighs about the same as your toaster. But yeah, we'll still have toasters.


 
Posted : 08/09/2022 12:00 pm
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