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KIRK: Yes. (Notices the piles of books everywhere) What is all this? COGLEY: I figure we'll be spending some time together, so I moved in. KIRK: I hope I'm not crowding you. COGLEY: What's the matter? Don't you like books? KIRK: Oh, I like them fine, but a computer takes less space.
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> What people didn't predict: Clickbait, e-mail phishing, viral fake news Didn't need to predict those. Analog equivalents always existed. > and people preferring SMS to a voice or facetime call. Who wouldn't ;-) Thanks to the transition to asynchronous message based communication I can have more and more meaningful communication with a larger part of my family than I would if I had to FaceTime or call them. In busin…
Analog equivalents existed, but did anyone care to extrapolate from the analog to the digital?
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That movie is very special. A lot of it’s predictions like flat LCD screens, personal IFE on airplanes, iPads, and kids messing around on FaceTime are so mundane now it’s easy to overlook them when watching the film with a 21st century set of eyes
Yet its central “prediction”: that human travel into space would progress forward at a comparable rate to what was accomplished in the early 60s, was wildly off.
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That’s incredible.
I have always thought science is inspired by fiction. Cellphones are nothing less than a better communicator, Bluetooth badges are even available on thinkgeek!
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I have always thought science is inspired by fiction. Cellphones are nothing less than a better communicator, Bluetooth badges are even available on thinkgeek!
But a communicator is primarily a voice communication device. If I were to say a cellphone is like a star trek device, I'd say it's more like an undersized PADD (and yeah, I maybe agree that the Apple engineers may have a lot of TNG. The 'too lazy to make actual buttons' set designers, I think, actually inspired apple; it really is a lot easier to design a muti-use interface if the "buttons" are all behind a glass to…
I think the iPhone was more inspired by existing products and their obvious drawbacks. The Newton was more like a PADD than the iPhone is.
The story I've heard about the TNG set design is "Gene Roddenberry thought it looked more futuristic". Calling it laziness is insulting.
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I have always thought science is inspired by fiction. Cellphones are nothing less than a better communicator, Bluetooth badges are even available on thinkgeek!
But a communicator is primarily a voice communication device. If I were to say a cellphone is like a star trek device, I'd say it's more like an undersized PADD (and yeah, I maybe agree that the Apple engineers may have a lot of TNG. The 'too lazy to make actual buttons' set designers, I think, actually inspired apple; it really is a lot easier to design a muti-use interface if the "buttons" are all behind a glass to…
Visually, it's pretty similar [0], and even the name recalls Star Trek.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Startac_130_Movistar.jpg
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> "The global demand for automobiles will not exceed one million - at least because of a lack of available chauffeurs." Such quotes are helpful to ask what are possibilities if we subvert the imposed limitation. E.g. I got a thought what if we switch the subject to some other invention e.g. a medical equipment: The global demand for gamma knifes will not exceed one million - at least because of a lack of available su…
There is no evidence that Bill Gates said "640K ought to be enough for anyone." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/
At my university there are several ironic and funny posters with quotes about mispredictions on display at the walls of the big lecture hall of the mechanical engineering building. My favorite one is from Gottlieb Daimler 1901: "The global demand for automobiles will not exceed one million - at least because of a lack of available chauffeurs." [1] He is the founder of the predecessor of todays Daimler AG, which owns…
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
https://mobile.twitter.com/benklaasen/status/874543989004881...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alston_Scott_Householder [2] https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=578384
And here's Isaac Asimov predicting a few things about the (best part of the) Internet of today in years when most people in the world had not even heard of it yet. https://www.wimp.com/isaac-asimov-predicted-the-internet-of-... (the interview is from 1988, so it's now dated over 30 years) I believe there are much older references to a worldwide library accessible by anyone from home in his writings, but I can't recal…
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_...
It is fascinating what people did predict and what they didn't predict. Smartphones, smartwatches, e-books, face-time calls was all predicted. What people didn't predict: Clickbait, e-mail phishing, viral fake news and people preferring SMS to a voice or facetime call.
Have you ever seen newspaper headlines from, say, the early 20th century?
> e-mail phishing,
The Nigerian prince scam started in regular postal mail ...
> viral fake news
Again, early 20th century newspapers... Remember the Maine!
> and people preferring SMS to a voice or facetime call.
Telegrams and voice calls overlapped in existence.
