Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics)

acidcow.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 111 posts

Re: 2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics)

#71

Post by VladRussian »

Zak wrote: post #58
51Cards wrote: post #13

They weren't so wrong... sure their form factors were way off but they had all the ideas down... 1. Electronic Books 2. High speed aerodynamic trains 3. Computer aided manufacturing 4. Motorized personal transport 6&7. Ok no one is letting a robot cut their hair or do makeup, but we're using robots for surgery 9. Aerodynamic motorcycles 10. Webcams 11. Where's my flying car! 12. Tanks 13. Electronic news etc. etc. If…

Personalized flight on the whole was really the only big miss. I think the main reason that isn't more mainstream is that even with small planes, we chose to emphasize safety far more than with road vehicles. I don't know why that is; I'd gladly trade some amount of safety if it meant I could afford to own and operate a plane. A Cessna 172 is no more complicated than an economy car. It costs $275,000 due to regulatio…

with all this modern priority of safety over everything else, man on the Moon is impossible. Heck, even bringing an open fire into a cold dump cave full of people would be a grave safety violation.

Re: 2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics)

#72

Post by dirtyaura »

51Cards wrote: post #13

They weren't so wrong... sure their form factors were way off but they had all the ideas down... 1. Electronic Books 2. High speed aerodynamic trains 3. Computer aided manufacturing 4. Motorized personal transport 6&7. Ok no one is letting a robot cut their hair or do makeup, but we're using robots for surgery 9. Aerodynamic motorcycles 10. Webcams 11. Where's my flying car! 12. Tanks 13. Electronic news etc. etc. If…

I think the true wisdom in past future predictions is something that people didn't get right. For example another (my) take on the three first predictions, that you listed as successes, are: no practical text-to-speech(1), no truly intercontinental trains(2), no robots on construction sites(3)

If you look it from that perspecive, there's something to be learned. It's easy to vision, but it's difficult to understand what things are truly hard or things that surprisingly worked against all odds.

For example, people have been waiting for practical home robots for decades, but operating autonomously in the real world is really difficult problem, much harder that it intuitively feels (because we are so good at it).

On the otherhand, I think very few people predicted something like Wikipedia (or HN, Quora etc): free, quality information, produced by volunteers. It's hard problem too, but it just worked.

My gut feeling is that it's the social phenomena that we underestimate in our future predictions.

Re: 2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics)

#73

Post by wnoise »

a-priori wrote: post #46
pluies wrote: post #38

There's an interesting pun in this one: http://acidcow.com/pics/20110225/future_11.jpg The label next to "concierge" reads "descenseur". It's a reference to the French word for a lift, "ascenseur", from "ascension", "to go upwards". A descenseur would then be the exact opposite of a lift - an apparatus to go downwards. :)

My theory is that this isn't a pun, but rather a term that's no longer in use. I seem to remember that some early elevator systems had two connected shafts and two cars, instead of one car and a counterweight like modern elevators. In this arrangement, cars go in a loop around a pulley at the top and bottom, always in the same direction. Thus, one shaft is the "up" shaft and one is the "down" shaft. This image depict…

> some early elevator systems

E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternoster

Re: 2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics)

#74

Post by rumblestrut »

kenjackson wrote: post #63
51Cards wrote: post #13

They weren't so wrong... sure their form factors were way off but they had all the ideas down... 1. Electronic Books 2. High speed aerodynamic trains 3. Computer aided manufacturing 4. Motorized personal transport 6&7. Ok no one is letting a robot cut their hair or do makeup, but we're using robots for surgery 9. Aerodynamic motorcycles 10. Webcams 11. Where's my flying car! 12. Tanks 13. Electronic news etc. etc. If…

Ok no one is letting a robot cut their hair Although we are using a electric mechanical device to do so. In particular with shaving we have devices that do all the cutting and make it virtually impossible to cut yourself. So kind of similar even there.

Flobee. Enough said.

http://www.flowbee.com

Re: 2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics)

#75

Post by joeyo »

kenjackson wrote: post #65
jodrellblank wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MP3 players, etc. seem far beyond what the futurists of the last century were imagining. Yes; the servant carrying a wax cylinder for the gramophone device was a huge miss. It missed electronic amplification and loudspeakers, it missed miniaturisation of audio players, it missed room sized personal libraries of vinyl/tapes/CDs, and of course it missed digitisation of music and electronic or wireless transfer of infor…

Yes; the servant carrying a wax cylinder for the gramophone device was a huge miss. Yeah, I don't get that one. What was the advance here supposed to be? I would have imagined that's what rich people did in 1910.

My interpretation is that the wax cylinder is being used as a calling card to announce a visitor. If so, it's a miss for at least two reasons: 1. Why would you choose to listen to a calling card rather than read it and 2. social customs changed, eliminating the custom of leaving calling cards.

Re: 2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics)

#76

Post by efnx »

51Cards wrote: post #13

They weren't so wrong... sure their form factors were way off but they had all the ideas down... 1. Electronic Books 2. High speed aerodynamic trains 3. Computer aided manufacturing 4. Motorized personal transport 6&7. Ok no one is letting a robot cut their hair or do makeup, but we're using robots for surgery 9. Aerodynamic motorcycles 10. Webcams 11. Where's my flying car! 12. Tanks 13. Electronic news etc. etc. If…

It really depends on how literal you take these pictures to be. You could say that picture three suggests "we will have computer aided manufacturing," but you could also say it suggests "robots will build our houses." I think what these pictures show more than anything, is the kind of tangential predictions people seem to make about the future. "Everything will be automated with lots of tiny mechanical arms and levers. Everything will fly (because flight is really hot right now." This is a great example of zeerust (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Zeerust). Though interpreted vaguely these predictions are for the most part pretty good IMO.

Re: 2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics)

#77

Post by [deleted] »

treeface wrote: post #59
Zak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personalized flight on the whole was really the only big miss. I think the main reason that isn't more mainstream is that even with small planes, we chose to emphasize safety far more than with road vehicles. I don't know why that is; I'd gladly trade some amount of safety if it meant I could afford to own and operate a plane. A Cessna 172 is no more complicated than an economy car. It costs $275,000 due to regulatio…

A Cessna 172 is no more complicated than an economy car. Not trying to sound snarky here, but have you ever piloted an airplane? The pre-takeoff checks take a little while, require a good bit of technical expertise, and are absolutely required if you want to be pretty damn sure that your airplane won't fall out of the sky. Safety is, at times, overemphasized, but then again your car won't fall from the sky when it st…

[deleted]

Re: 2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics)

#78

Post by silverbax88 »

treeface wrote: post #59
Zak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personalized flight on the whole was really the only big miss. I think the main reason that isn't more mainstream is that even with small planes, we chose to emphasize safety far more than with road vehicles. I don't know why that is; I'd gladly trade some amount of safety if it meant I could afford to own and operate a plane. A Cessna 172 is no more complicated than an economy car. It costs $275,000 due to regulatio…

A Cessna 172 is no more complicated than an economy car. Not trying to sound snarky here, but have you ever piloted an airplane? The pre-takeoff checks take a little while, require a good bit of technical expertise, and are absolutely required if you want to be pretty damn sure that your airplane won't fall out of the sky. Safety is, at times, overemphasized, but then again your car won't fall from the sky when it st…

It does sound like someone who hasn't experienced flight training. You don't have to know how to drive a car by instruments alone.

Re: 2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics)

#79

Post by zandor »

Zak wrote: post #58
51Cards wrote: post #13

They weren't so wrong... sure their form factors were way off but they had all the ideas down... 1. Electronic Books 2. High speed aerodynamic trains 3. Computer aided manufacturing 4. Motorized personal transport 6&7. Ok no one is letting a robot cut their hair or do makeup, but we're using robots for surgery 9. Aerodynamic motorcycles 10. Webcams 11. Where's my flying car! 12. Tanks 13. Electronic news etc. etc. If…

Personalized flight on the whole was really the only big miss. I think the main reason that isn't more mainstream is that even with small planes, we chose to emphasize safety far more than with road vehicles. I don't know why that is; I'd gladly trade some amount of safety if it meant I could afford to own and operate a plane. A Cessna 172 is no more complicated than an economy car. It costs $275,000 due to regulatio…

James May puts it very nicely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS0IxnxwJSU

Re: 2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics)

#80

Post by burgerbrain »

dirtyaura wrote: post #72
51Cards wrote: post #13

They weren't so wrong... sure their form factors were way off but they had all the ideas down... 1. Electronic Books 2. High speed aerodynamic trains 3. Computer aided manufacturing 4. Motorized personal transport 6&7. Ok no one is letting a robot cut their hair or do makeup, but we're using robots for surgery 9. Aerodynamic motorcycles 10. Webcams 11. Where's my flying car! 12. Tanks 13. Electronic news etc. etc. If…

I think the true wisdom in past future predictions is something that people didn't get right. For example another (my) take on the three first predictions, that you listed as successes, are: no practical text-to-speech(1), no truly intercontinental trains(2), no robots on construction sites(3) If you look it from that perspecive, there's something to be learned. It's easy to vision, but it's difficult to understand w…

"no practical text-to-speech"

Huh? How do you figure? I use text-to-speech all the time and besides sounding distinctly robotic, it works extremely well. And the current state-of-the-art stuff is damn near as good as HAL9000.

EDIT: and we do have practical home robots, they're called roombas and programmable microwaves. They just don't look like something out of the Jetsons, and we've seen the technology improve over time, so we don't think of it as anything special.

Post reply on HN