I just parked my car in a random carpark in winchester and rushed to meet my family somewhere in the centre. Don’t know the city at all. Realised that I hadn’t really paid that much attention to where I had parked then discovered Google appears the have tracked my every movement today, even highlighting when I went from being in a car to being on foot. Hey presto, found my car. magic.

Letting the car drive and steer itself is pretty mind blowing.

I love science too so CRISPR

We survived without it quite happily for thousands of years.

We did?

Who exactly has lived in iron age Britain and the 21st century to compare? Personally, I really don’t think I’d have enjoyed living even 50 years ago. My life would have been massively limited compared to today. I sure as hell wouldn’t have been having a discussion about sexism with people all over the country.

1994. As a ten year old I saw both SEGA’s Virtua fighter and Daytona USA on a ferry to france.

Having been subjected to only 2d megadrive and SNES sprites these games blew my mind. Daytona especially. What a game.

That was when arcade tech was way ahead of home tech.

I’d never be wowed again by graphics.
Especially now when everything is small steps in improvement.

I don’t really game anymore.

I’m also impressed by my nest thermostat. Brilliant bit of kit.

You’re using that as an example of the positive benefits of technology? 😆

On the gaming theme, Tekken 1 on the PS1.. a lad from school had a PS1 immediately after release in the UK and it blew me away! Moving in 3 dimensions on a computer game was a different world.. the next biggest jump in gaming for me was PGR3 on the 360. As above, we’ll never see such step changes ever again IMO. Mind you that VR shit is impressive especially as it’s only early days

Especially unimpressed with the way tech has become the norm

the irony of posting that on the internet from your PC or phone is fairly impressive

the irony of posting that on the internet from your PC or phone is fairly impressive

Yep I was watching the cricket yesterday on my phone and laptop at times live from Perth, with the commentary from TMS and discussing parts of it here with people all over the place.
You can now take yourself off to the ends of the world but still be in contact with what is going on all around it.

..unfortunately.

To me its not so much singular tech that blows me away its how we are starting to see it being integrated (i.e. the IoT of things), for example the cell phone and the Tesla above.
Facial recognition software, its been around for years but with the advent of cheaper hi-res cameras and matching processing power its amazing how this can be used to tie in with a lot of other tech.
Having played around with some software recently aimed at the retail market, lets hope we don’t lose some of those valuable privacy laws or it will nearly be impossible to sneak of for a craft pint when you are meant to be Christmas shopping.

Another vote for Oculus Rift, amazing and scary at the same time.

@bearnecessities the good thing is you can, you can also close the doors, switch it off and read a book etc. it’s up to you how you deal with it

We survived without it quite happily for thousands of years.

We survived. ‘Happily’ is hard to gauge though.

‘Always hungry and alway scared’ might be a better reflection of most of humanity’s timeline. Even in relatively modern times we’ve only been one bad harvest away from a global catastrophe. Now we’d just be complaining that there were a few less jaffa cakes in the packet.

10 minutes ago.

Is that the new ‘Plumbus X’ ?

I think it’s the whole wireless network thing that still impresses me.
Last year I was watching a live concert, on my tablet. The concert was in Australia, and someone in the audience was recording it on their phone, and uploading it in real time to the web. (This was one of many feeds I could have watched).
Just the phone bit is a staggering piece of technology. Shame it’s used for sending ‘I’m in the pub’ text messages most of the time.

Amazon Web services – not the store but the tech of cloud computing.

The rate of progression of AWS in particular is pretty impressive. This is the tech upon which increasingly large amounts of other tech is being built.

1994. As a ten year old I saw both SEGA’s Virtua fighter and Daytona USA on a ferry to france

I used to work in R&D for Sega’s coin-op division. About 1999 they did F355 Challenge which wasn’t a great game but used GPS data for the tracks, and the ‘deluxe’ cabinet with 3 monitors, h pattern shifter and clutch was pretty amazing at the time, hard to drive until you got used to it. We played it *a lot* and the department lap record for Monza proved unbeatable.
Later, as a publicity thing, we delivered it to Barrichello who lived near Cambridge and set it up in his gym. He confessed he wasn’t really into video games but got in the thing and went for a spin around Monza for the cameras. The bastard smashed our record on his second lap.

Nice story.

My vote, though it’s in its infancy, is the quantum computer.

Deep Thought indeed.

Doing a FaceTime call to my parents when they were in the back of beyond in NZ and I was dropping the kids off at Beavers in Bristol.
Not just the technology but that it was easy enough for my folks to use

Quickpar. No one knows how it does what it does.

Last Christmas when I fired my vinyl player up

… the music actually being printed in wave form on a plasticy surface and a tiny needle reading the actual analogue signal… no 1s and 0s involved..mind blown!

the music actually being printed in wave form on a plasticy surface

Yep – never ceases to amaze me either. Especially as high end hifi shows are still full of it.

I’m working on an EPSRC project with 4 universities and multiple industry partners that amazes me for two reasons.

It’s for ‘smart’ materials – specifically concrete. Concrete’s not actually that strong, it’s the steel in it that gives strength, but steel rusts. So if concrete cracks (and in most cases it will, eventually) and moisture gets in to the interior it will freeze and thaw and crack worse, until it reaches the steel which rusts, and expands, and cracks worse. So bridges and tunnels have to undergo the civil engineering equivalent of dentistry, drill out the decay, patch it up, etc. Costly, dangerous, and in some areas (undersea, nuclear, etc.) almost impossible.

So we are working on self sensing and self healing materials, that sit dormant until a crack starts (at microscopic scale) at which they can sense the crack, and inform the highways agency or whoever (avoids need to inspect as frequently in case); but then they are filled with microencapsulated material (our part) that ruptures as the crack propogates through it which releases a catalyst which enables the concrete to bridge over the gap.

It’s real Tomorrows World stuff, but it actually works on a lab scale. And that’s the second part that amazes me – we’re working on stuff that might be 20 years before it is in the market (the industry currently isn’t a ‘take a punt’ mindset) so many on the project won’t see the fruition – and the expected lifespan in 80-90 years, so it’s pretty likely none of us will actually find out if it worked or not.

We survived without it quite happily for thousands of years. Stuff that makes us live longer is screwing our population, anything using electrics is screwing the environment and tech costs jobs. Ask the weavers!

So your definition of tech is anything with electronics in it? Seriously? You don’t include the development of ever more sophisticated metalworking, looms, transportation, like boats and ships, communications, etc?
Sorry son, you really ought to get out more. 🙄

After 90 minutes in sleety rain watching my lads team taking a 4-1 drubbing, it has to be heated car seats.

I was in Scarborough recently, and walking around came to the big graveyard. Saw Bronte’s grave, and decided to look her up on Google. I only managed to type in the letter ‘A’ and Google instantly came up with Anne Bronte.

Facebook, again. I’m playing NIN via Alexa. Just looked onto my Facebook feed, and it is full of adverts for NIN tour dates. How do they know!!

Facebook, again. I’m playing NIN via Alexa. Just looked onto my Facebook feed, and it is full of adverts for NIN tour dates. How do they know

I walked past a restaurant today for the first time ever and paused for 15 seconds to read the menu in the window. I hadn’t searched on the internet for the restaurant or anything to do with it.

Within 40 minutes said restaurant was appearing in my Facebook feed as a sponsored advert 😯