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There was an interesting but obvious point made on an archeology [sic] program about how far back could you go and still think things were “normal”.
I think there's a well know idea that suggest that the time difference of 'future shock' is shortening. So some-one from the 11th or 12thC could be transported to say the 15th and even 16thC and still more or less get on, and like wise someone from the mid 18thC could be landed in say mid 19thC and still more or less cope, that time frame is certainly getting smaller and smaller in so much that I think anyone from before mid 20thC would think "it's all just magic, and we live like royalty" if they landed in the early 21stC
The ability to travel around the world with all you need about where to go, how to get there, what to see, where to stay, what to eat and how to speak / read the language all in you phone. Amazing.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy made real.
yeah, it’s just you! There’s a lot of people here not quite made it to the 21st century yet, let alone the “modern world” – just check out any tech related thread
Yeah, I kind of get what your saying.
But on the other hand, I think most of the time when people say they don't understand or can't use some type of 'new' technology then what they mean is they can't be bothered learning because it is simply not relevant enough for them to make the effort.
There are some complete idiots who are very adept at using technology. I think the difference is they are motivated to learn.
I think there’s a well know idea that suggest that the time difference of ‘future shock’ is shortening. So some-one from the 11th or 12thC could be transported to say the 15th and even 16thC and still more or less get on, and like wise someone from the mid 18thC could be landed in say mid 19thC and still more or less cope, that time frame is certainly getting smaller and smaller in so much that I think anyone from before mid 20thC would think “it’s all just magic, and we live like royalty” if they landed in the early 21stC
I'm assuming this is a thought experiment.
I'm not sure everyone would struggle to use modern technology. Once they had figured out the touch screen then it's not really that much of a leap to make the link from 'paper' to 'screen'. Although, of course, many wouldn't have had any interactions with paper so the link might not be there.
Certainly the advent of universal education was a major change in the way society runs. That is something that I would say was undoubtedly an advancement. Universal education is what takes away the 'magic' of new technology.
Sure, there are lots of new tools (or more often better versions of existing tools) but I'm struggling to see anything in society that looks that different to someone from 50 years ago.
It's not like someone from today being transported to a Culture novel and trying to work out how anything got done without the 'work or starve' economic model we currently use.
A thought suddenly occurs to me, so I type a few words into my phone and the entire sum of human knowledge is instantly available. Amazing. Also, buying useless shit from Amazon on top of a mountain just in case I forget to do it later.
The internet seems to obvious and inevitable now, but I’ve yet to come across an old sci fi book that really imagines it in its full horror and glory.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think there has been much advancement in the last 20 year.
in 2004 you were still 1 year away from google maps (as a webpage to print out written directions from)
and a year away from youtube (mainly as weirdos uploading 360p home videos)
Now everyone has a phone in their pocket which comes with real time gps navigation, traffic, public transport schedules etc.
any media worth watching with the possible exception of live sport is streamed on demand.
Last year on top of an Alp, my bottom bracket started to creak. I thought it was amazing that I could ring and book it into the bike shop whilst I was waiting for the other people to catch up.
I think anyone from before mid 20thC would think “it’s all just magic,
Indeed. I'm from mid 20th C thanks, and I think it's all magic.
I mean as a boffiny kid i could use a transistor to make single logic gate and do sums in binary. And I can go blah blah quantum computing (doesn't quite exist yet). But I actually fully let go of how stuff works a loooong time ago and just use it. As do 99.9% of us once outside our immediate domains of expertise (if unlike me you have such a thing). Frankly it is magic. And I don't think it would take someone literate from any age longer to get to grips with it than it does us.
in 2004 you were still 1 year away from google maps (as a webpage to print out written directions from)
and a year away from youtube (mainly as weirdos uploading 360p home videos)
Now everyone has a phone in their pocket which comes with real time gps navigation, traffic, public transport schedules etc.
any media worth watching with the possible exception of live sport is streamed on demand.
True, although in 2004 I was still able to find my way around and watch TV.
I will admit though, smart phones have changed pub arguments forever. It used to be you could argue for hours about what historical thing happened when, where, and by who. Now someone gets their phone out. All that's left to argue about is the why.
Probably why pubs are dying.
Real time, hour by hour, weather forecasting for my exact location is pretty mind blowing to me, especially as it allows us to get outside in "bad" weather when we're away on holiday.
When you think about the granularity of the data that's available to us, especially compared to how it used to be, it's amazing for decision making.
I will admit though, smart phones have changed pub arguments forever. It used to be you could argue for hours about what historical thing happened when, where, and by who. Now someone gets their phone out. All that’s left to argue about is the why.
And in exactly the same way, arguments about facts can never happen on the internet.
@johnx2 when I was learning to code, my mind was blown when I realised that apps and websites used mostly the same data from the same source, just presented in slightly different ways.
When you think about the granularity of the data that’s available to us, especially compared to how it used to be, it’s amazing for decision making
Definitely the amount of data available is great.
However, most of us are so constrained by our cash rich (by historical standards) time poor existence that we can't really make use of this data. We might be able to identify the best time to do something but if it doesn't happen to fall into one of our narrow windows of free time it doesn't really do us much good.
I think that technology has given society the potential to change significantly but that change just does not seem to be materialising.
I’m still amazed that a phone that is the same size as my first transistor radio when I was 13 can connect me with someone the other side of the world in NZ instantly.
Back in the mid-90's I was sat in a bar in Germany, my mobile rang, I answered, chatted and then it back in my pocket.
German chap sat next to me asked whether I'd been speaking to someone in England, and was gobsmacked when I confirmed I had been.
But here's a thing, my average mobile bill back then was £500-600 PER MONTH!
I travelled a lot with work overseas, but the mobile was justified on normally spending up to £1000 a month on hotel phone bills (including email using a standalone modem). Replaced with a Nokia and a PCMCIA modem.
My own TV is still a cathode ray in a big box bought in 2003, with a £20 Freeview box balanced on top, so as I stay in hotels for work I have a similar experience quite often! I sometimes find the whole big screen thing almost intimidating and dislike the whole having to turn my head to watch thing on the really big ones.
I am definitely old, and have been known to shake my fist at the sky.
However tech in the car and mobile phones I am pretty up to date with and find a lot of it rather useful. Still want to change gear manually though!
arguments about facts can never happen on the internet
😲
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Google translate photo thing – you can use your camera to view a menu in Thai (& any other language) and it automatically translates it to English. Pretty handy if you like to know what your eating.
This STILL blows my mind and I've been using it for years now.
I no longer need to prick my finger to test my blood sugar levels. My phone does it for me.
I've still listen to music on an old gramophone player, because I think using modern technology for pure entertainment is a vile indulgence.
WhatsApp group share real time location still amazes me
The what now?
That sounds quite handy actually.
I think dating apps will have to be my nomination.
Man has walked on the moon
I can't get my head around how incredible that is.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think there has been much advancement in the last 20 year.
There has, but a lot of it happens behind the scenes now. This is how you're able to watch telly when you want to watch it, not when it's on. And you can watch more than a couple of shows a week that you're interested in.
I agree with @BruceWee in so much as that we still 'mostly' do a 9-5, we still mostly will have the same hobbies - football, cycling, fishing, we still do a shop in much the same way (although it'd just be one shop rather than half a dozen) and make food that they'd recognise, and drive a car, or catch a train or bus in the same way. They would have a shock about maybe how we do, but not what we do.
There's lots that on the surface is similar just how it works underneath that that's changed fundamentally.
One that I forgot earlier - 3D printers/additive manufacturing, call it what you will.
I have my own 3-D printer that that I have owned for about 6 years. It is already a dinosaur because the tech has moved on so fast, but my needs are simple & it does the job. It cost me the princely sum of £225.
I can go from having an idea, to designing it & printing it in a matter of hours.
Some of the industrial systems out there are bonkers.
My father-in-law popped round on Friday afternoon just gone (to bring us a pork pie, so I was happy to see him).
He also happened to mention that his shower rail had come down as the bracket has cracked. He hurls his towel over it to dry, so not entirely unexpected. He can get a whole new thing, but not just the brackets so could I sort him some replacements?
By Saturday afternoon, I had designed & printed out replacement parts.
I have a multitude of things around the house that have been fixed or improved with the addition of a 3-D printed widget.
And it still boggles my mind when I see it working, even though I understand the process & what it is doing.
Man has walked on the moon
the computer processing power that got him there, now fits on a device in your pocket, and most children can operate that device.
To watch videos of other kids opening boxes with toys in.
In reference to the original subject it's only ever BBC nature programmes that make me think that maybe it's time to get a new telly, this old one's missing some stuff.
I mentioned in my first post being able to login to British government web sites with the chip in a French passport. Admin has changed radically thanks to the Net. When I worked in Barcelona I had to visit London in person and join a long queue to get a bit of paper from the foreign office then drive all the way back to Spain. To renew a passport I had to find a consulate. Self employed in France I spent hours every month filling in forms and posting them to administartions, Junior fills in one on-line declaration a quarter and that's it.
I'm approaching my UK retirement having already retired in France. My whole career is online with details of my employment and the years I've paid voluntary class 3 contributions for. All dealt with from my living room with all the information I need on my phone rather than someone who has even less of a clue than me on the other end of a telephone suggesting I go into the office nearest where I last worked. Even the civil servants are no longer clueless because they have the same info on a screen in front of their noses as me on my phone.
So sometimes I'm gob smacked at how easy things have become.
Junior's mate bust the snow chains on my car, five minutes on line and I've found some brand new unused ones second hand I can pick up for 35e this evening. Booking ferry tickets took about 5 minutes, paying a bill took less than a minute.
Book or CD aficionado? Got an iPhone/iPad?
Listen very carefully I will say this only once.
Take a picture of your CD cabinet or bookcase. or better still a row of them, allow it to be saved to the photos app.
Open your photos app, and search for the title and or author. Up pops the photo with the writing required with a highlighter effect across the text! Imagine five bookcases to look through in a charity shop. Click, click, click, click, click. Pause. Search. Done!
If someone knows how to do it on android, please tell, but I carry my iPad quite often, but have an android phone me all the time.
Mine was being in Sainte Foy in a powercut, suddenly perfectly dark clear skies, realised I could pop open an app and it'd tell me what all the stars and planets and even some satellites were, just felt amazing, to have such a random technology failure out-of-time moment of the perfect sky enhanced with a star trek tricorder thing
Modern Tv’s may be be amazing but its compensated by 97.6% of anything on TV being rubbish, and maybe on average a handful of films worth watching a year… and one or two streamable series max….
Got to call you out on this. We’re living in an age of amazing TV programmes. Long form storytelling is absolutely fantastic now and there are some truly epic series out there. Documentaries are great too, as are wildlife programmes. The last fifteen years or so have been bloody amazing. So much choice now.
I wouldn’t know about terrestrial Tv as I’m not my grandma so don’t watch it. In regards to the OP, streaming. When you sit back and think about it, it has completely changed how we consume media. From music, to films, books and video games. Everything at the touch of a button if you so desire.
we must have the same TV! Have the same experience whenever we're at someones house or hotel with a fancy TV. It's almost too HD though right.
I drive a 15 year old Mondeo, in an old job I drove a 'fancy' hybrid Mondeo pool-car - Genuine spaceship vibes.
Even from my shoebox in the road I can communicate with hundreds of thousands* of people in this thread from a computer that fits in my pocket. Worth remembering where we are now compared to just 15 years ago.
*Optimistic upper estimate
I miss those pub arguments over really serious stuff I used to have with my mates in the early 70s . We had been talking about Four Feather Falls 😁and what each of Tex Tuckers magic feathers did , never got to the bottom of it now Google it and hey presto instant answer 👍
I recently got a new TV. a Samsung 'The Frame' 65" QLED(currently on the wall, im sitting about 10' from it) and upon switching on i was astounded by the picture quality, but also in that programs and films especially look 'different'. I don't know how best to describe it but they looked too real if that makes any sense. Prior on my last tv all progs/movies seem to have a misty effect, which i think is like the actors and background sort of meld together, but on the new one they stand out more.
I picked the QLED over the OLED as i also use it as a computer monitor, and OLED can have a problem called 'screen burn in' where if you have something that occupies one part of the screen, it sort of leaves an residual image there, no matter what the screen is showing. Being my main pc screen i was worried something like the task bar or bookmark menus would cause this problem.
The soundbar and woofer thingy make a big difference to the sound quality. They were well worth the extra.
I think AI will be the largest singular "wow" moment of my life. Doubt anything is likely to come along in my lifetime that will have a bigger impact on humanity.
Mind you, I'm hoping to be around to see humanity set foot on Mars. That will be very cool. Hopefully they have better cameras this time! 😁
I don’t know how best to describe it but they looked too real if that makes any sense
Did you leave it with the 120Hz upscaling/interpolation feature turned on? For some reason this is the default on most tellies and it's awful, makes everything look like a 1980s soap but in super high resolution.
I think AI will be the largest singular “wow” moment of my life
Again, it should be, but it's not.
We all still own cars that spend 99% of their time doing nothing. Self driving cars was supposed to be one of the easy wins when it came to AI, but it seems no closer to becoming a reality now than it did 10 years ago. If anything it seems further away.
So many jobs are supposed to be getting done by AI and/or automation now but instead we seem to be creating more and more bullshit jobs to use up people's time. And people are in a race to the bottom against technology to keep themselves competitive against machines which is never going to end well.
I hope the promised Fourth Industrial Revolution comes to pass and it genuinely changes the world (in a positive way) but so far I'm seeing no evidence of it. Society is still fundamentally exactly the same as it was 50 years ago. It's just doing the same things in a more efficient way.
And doing things more efficiently does not always mean better. Especially if society's economic model relies on keeping people cash rich (by historical standards) and time poor.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
I think when it comes to change Henry Ford was right (which is ironic because I believe private car ownership is responsible for many of our current problems because it allowed people to live one place and work somewhere else). People see the same thing being done faster and assume that's progress.
Real progress is a fundamental change in the way society functions. I haven't seen any of that. Yet.
it’s awful, makes everything look like a 1980s soap but in super high resolution.
That's almost exactly what I said when I first saw it 😀
Made a Hollywood film look like Eastenders, in a disturbing and uncanny way.
Can't remember if I changed the settings or just got used to it though.