French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000 • Hacker News Board

Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#141

Post by shiroiushi » Thu, Mar 07, 2024, 1:17 AM UTC

Sebb767 wrote: post #47

simonsarris wrote: post #9

One of the interesting things about these photos is that, aside from all the under-water ones, many of the contraptions exist. We just call them Roomba, Kubota tractor, Audible, Philips All-In-One Trimmer, etc. One consistent facet is that many of our modern technologies are a lot more complex on the inside, but simpler in appearance. There really is one guy pushing buttons to harvest thousands of acres. There's a co…

> Another observation is that we've abstracted away the robot-ish nature of a lot of these machines. In some ways, this is also limited by the format. It would have been easy for people back then to illustrate a Roomba or a modern sound setup (instead of the old-school speakers), but it would have been a pretty boring picture and confusing to people at the time, without additional explanation at least. The way these…

That's a good point. When I saw the robotic symphony, I thought it was pretty ridiculous, because you don't need separate speakers to play the sounds of different instruments. But a normal person in 1900 wouldn't have understood this from a picture, and if they saw a picture of a normal rock concert today, they wouldn't know what it was or how anyone could hear the instruments (though they'd recognize the drums and guitars as such).

Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#142

Post by redeeman » Thu, Mar 07, 2024, 1:36 AM UTC

joks wrote: post #136

redeeman wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to downvoters: are you suggesting it was illegal for women to wear pants back then? (and no, the paris decree does not count). There were female marketed "trousers" appearing in the 1850s, so it is clearly completely retarded to suggest that the french artists "couldnt envision women wearing pants". But carry on with the official party line, but do so knowingly that it is fake.

Something does not need to be illegal for it to be unacceptable at the time

that might depend on your definition of unacceptable, if it is something that people do not like, but dont take so much offense to as to make illegal, i would say that it is simply discouraged or looked down upon, but not "unacceptable" or "unimaginable".

I also highly doubt there was a 100% universally shared view on female pants at the time.

Re: French artists in 1899 envisioned what life would look like in the year 2000

#143

Post by Affric » Tue, Mar 12, 2024, 4:45 AM UTC

timeon wrote: post #133

Affric wrote: post #2

It’s interesting because they got so much right but they just couldn’t quite imagine the computer so they have humans pulling levers, remotely operating machinery, being carried by advanced surveillance helicopters… Perhaps this hints that our vision of the future should have us doing less.

> Perhaps this hints that our vision of the future should have us doing less. People in Matrix movies were not doing much.

Good catch.

It's unskilled. People will still be performing feats of dexterity, strength, courage, and genius in the future. They won't be shoving books into a woodchipper.