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> In “Scenarios,” a special edition from 1995, the guest editor Douglas Coupland took it upon himself to compile a “reverse time capsule,” which he deemed “not

by zeveb 10y ago

> In “Scenarios,” a special edition from 1995, the guest editor Douglas Coupland took it upon himself to compile a “reverse time capsule,” which he deemed “not a capsule directed to the future, but rather to the citizens of 1975.” What artifacts, he asked, “might surprise them most about the direction taken by the next 20 years?” Included in the capsule—alongside non-tech items such as a chunk of the Berlin Wall, Prozac, and a Japanese luxury sedan—were a laptop (“more power in your lap than MIT’s biggest mainframe”), an Apple MessagePad (“hand-held devices are replacing secretaries”), and a cellular phone. Scanning my apartment, I can spot progeny of all three. One suspects that, were we to engineer our own reverse time capsule today and ship it back to the citizens of 1995, they might not be all that surprised by the direction we’ve taken. I remember 1995 pretty well; I think 2016 has a lot more in common with it than 1995 has in common with 1974. Honestly, I don't think life has changed all that much in the last twenty years. Sure, everyone has a smartphone, and back then almost no-one had a _cell_phone, and the Internet is faster, and computers can do more and are more reliable, but things really aren't fundamentally different. We had the Web then, and we have it now. We had internet communities than, and we have them now. We listened to music then, and we listen to it now. Computers have been integrated far better into our lives, but they're doing essentially the same things (I still remember watching a QuickTime video of The Spirit of Christmas back in 1996; that's no different in kind than Hulu or Netflix, just in degree).

dragonwriter 10y ago
> > One suspects that, were we to engineer our own reverse time capsule today and ship it back to the citizens of 1995, they might not be all that surprised by the direction we’ve taken. Well, yeah, though I think the changes wrought on the average persons way of life from 1995 to 2016 were in some ways greater than 1974 to 1995, the things that have changed the most aren't so much the kind of bits of kit that would go in a reverse time capsule. The ubiquity of digital communication is a huge change, and the software and services that the average person regularly consumes based on them are -- but the bits of kit that we use to access them, at least in outline, wouldn't be all that surprising in 1995. > We had the Web then, and we have it now. We had internet communities than, and we have them now For vastly narrower definitions of "we" in 1995 than in 2016.
- ghaff 10y ago
  And, perhaps especially in 1974, after they got over the shock of using an iPhone or modern laptop to access the Internet, they'd be equally flabbergasted to see that voice access to this "Star Trek computer" still doesn't really work.
- ghaff 10y ago
  >For vastly narrower definitions of "we" in 1995 than in 2016. Yep. I was probably still just using BBSs at home in 1995. I probably had access to the Internet with Mosaic running on a workstation at work by then but I don't think I did at home. (Some of the commercial BBSs became ISPs but that was probably a few years later.) Wikipedia tells me that AOL was still charging hourly fees in 1995 as, presumably, was Compuserve and others. So in 1995, we were on the cusp of more broad-based Internet and Web access but it was still pretty limited. As a general statement, it's probably fair to say that owning a PC was increasingly the norm by 1995 but very few were online in any significant way.
- protomyth 10y ago
  802.11 wireless would be a pretty big add to your point. It didn't show up until after 1995 and has made a rather large difference.
rsync 10y ago
"I remember 1995 pretty well; I think 2016 has a lot more in common with it than 1995 has in common with 1974. Honestly, I don't think life has changed all that much in the last twenty years. Sure, everyone has a smartphone, and back then almost no-one had a _cell_phone, and the Internet is faster, and computers can do more and are more reliable, but things really aren't fundamentally different." I think I would be genuinely surprised and delighted by uber/lyft ... mainly because I was genuinely surprised and delighted by them just a year or so ago. To a lesser degree, VRBO and airbnb. We have a workable, fully electric car that isn't chintzy and dorky. Unlimited calling, without long distance fees. We didn't have that in 1995. ALSO, look at who got disrupted - there are zero record stores, lots of bookstores are gone, video rentals no longer exist. Circuit city is gone, Best Buy is struggling ... But people still play M:TG just like 1995 - who would have guessed!?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > ALSO, look at who got disrupted - there are zero record stores There are fewer record stores, but a lot more than zero. > video rentals no longer exist. Even leaving aside streaming rentals and Netflix's disc business, video rental kiosks are in grocery stores. Dedicated video rental storefronts are a lot more rare than in 1995, but video rental is very much still a thing.
  - rsync 10y ago
    "There are fewer record stores, but a lot more than zero." Well yes, of course I realize that there exist stores within which I can buy a CD/record. I mean, there are no more of the Sam Goody / Tower Records / etc. stores that used to be everywhere.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > I mean, there are no more of the Sam Goody / Tower Records / etc. stores that used to be everywhere. There also remain chain entertainment media stores of that type, though those particular chains are now gone (Sam Goody having been purchased by fye, which is one of the surviving chains.)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jameshart 10y ago
You're underestimating what a difference of degree we're talking here. For a quick refresher of what 'cutting edge' technology was like in 1995, go back and rewatch Hackers. See those guys phreaking payphones (remember payphones?), gushing over 28.8k modems, and rocking Mac powerbook 150cs, which feature such awesome tech as a 600x400 pixel color LCD screen, and a trackball, and where major plot points hinge around floppy discs. Any computer which is sitting on a desk boasts a maybe 15 or 17 inch CRT monitor on top. There are fax machines. 20 years later, I'm surrounded by devices which have thin, black, glassy screens, each with megapixels of display resolution. Many of them respond to touch input. Half of them have tiny cameras mounted nearby which can capture high definition video. With wireless networking I don't have to wait for someone to get off the phone before I can dial a modem - I'm already connected to the internet (and the GPS network) and bandwidth is so plentiful I can enjoy high definition video phonecalls with people on another continent, essentially free. Send back a 70 inch 4K TV, an iPhone, a photo of the Shanghai skyline, and a gay couple's marriage certificate, and I think you'll handily surprise someone from 1995.
- vacri 10y ago
  '95 back to '75: - no mobile phones - no personal computers (and punchcards and 'computer time' were still a thing) - internet didn't exist at all, apart from a handful of people - civil rights for minorities and women still in it's infancy (much more difference 75-95 than 95-15) - cold war at it's height, no 'pax americana redux' - blue collar work was still very common, and poorly paid as a result - the 90s was when the trades started to make serious money - fitness craze of the late 70s + 80s not in view yet; smoking wasn't seen as unhealthy - portable music players didn't exist - international travel eased considerably (though maybe as much again to 2015?) - 24 hour trading came in in the '80s and early '90s. In the 70s, if you hadn't done your shopping by Sunday, you would go hungry... - exotic food amongst anglos was 'stroganoff', 'stroganoff', and 'stroganoff' - the food revolution kicked off in the '90s :) The thin glassy touchscreens we have now are seen in scifi at least as far back as the '60s; they're not all that suprising, I wouldn't think. China's industrialisation might not be so surprising either, given the amazing things Japan managed to do in the relatively short time after the Meiji Restoration - in only 50 years they were sitting at the big players' table in naval treaties limiting size of fleets, for example.
raldi 10y ago
I couldn't disagree more; in June 2011 I wrote a post about how wildly technology had progressed in the 16 years since 1995, and it doesn't even include anything from the five years since then: https://www.reddit.com/r/raldi/comments/i91og/todays_real_life_is_yesterdays_science_fiction/ https://www.reddit.com/r/raldi/comments/i91og/todays_real_li...
aaroninsf 10y ago
I think things are different, just in ways that are not necessarily apparent to e.g. normal Americans living out their lives. Our awareness of what has changed is largely confined to the specifics of our individual lives (profession, community, subculture)... but as with newspaper reporting, we make assumptions about the parts we don't interact with as deeply, only noticing acute change when it's right in our domain. I call this the 'postmodern Potemikin village'– the constructed and maintained illusion that the world we live in is in large part unchanged from the one we lived in in e.g. 1995 (and most definitely 1975). The clearest way to clarify what I mean is in this HN venue is maybe to say that: the B2B realities that back to the B2P experiences of most people are radically different than the ones we grew up, in many industries, unrecognizably different. It is only the 'last mile' to our doors and into our pockets that maintains the same branded feel. The footnote to this is of course the ubiquity and centrality of the internet (including by mobile), I don't know if there's ever been such a radical change introduced so quickly and then so uniformly renormalized to. In this one case it's less a lack of obvious change, but a change that brought with it such a deep sense of inevitability and obviousness that we forget it's new. But back to the change thing. Good examples are probably Amazon and Walmart. Depending on your social stratum, the role that these play is probably equivalently profound in your life. And the core logistics behind both business [models] is predicated on a set of technologies and integrations with other related industries that is radically unlike what came before it. In our normal human lives, we don't see the scale of that change. We just 'order a bit more for home delivery' than our parents did. Or shop at a store that's yes, a little bigger. But that sense of familiarity about the sourcing of our lives from those places is false. Other examples include the slow-boil but now nearly complete homogenization of the commercial landscape in the US. If you didn't grow up in e.g. the 70s or earlier, the ubiquity of a couple hundred brands and the insignificance of anything but large regional competitors (aside from in a few exceptional industries perhaps) is actually a very different and quite new reality. Again, we still e.g. stop for fast food. It's the scale and sophistication of consolidation that is genuinely new. This is btw in no way a value judgment, just an observation. The point is simply, the rate of change has not actually diminished... ...it's just that the majority of its effects are in domain outside the public sphere, and hence forgotten, discounted, or invisible a lot of the time.
- 10y ago
slyall 10y ago
The Coupland article is here: http://archive.wired.com/wired/scenarios/capsule.html http://archive.wired.com/wired/scenarios/capsule.html Unfortunately all the images are broken.

by zeveb 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

> > One suspects that, were we to engineer our own reverse time capsule today and ship it back to the citizens of 1995, they might not be all that surprised by the direction we’ve taken. Well, yeah, though I think the changes wrought on the average persons way of life from 1995 to 2016 were in some ways greater than 1974 to 1995, the things that have changed the most aren't so much the kind of bits of kit that would go in a reverse time capsule. The ubiquity of digital communication is a huge change, and the software and services that the average person regularly consumes based on them are -- but the bits of kit that we use to access them, at least in outline, wouldn't be all that surprising in 1995. > We had the Web then, and we have it now. We had internet communities than, and we have them now For vastly narrower definitions of "we" in 1995 than in 2016.

ghaff 10y ago
And, perhaps especially in 1974, after they got over the shock of using an iPhone or modern laptop to access the Internet, they'd be equally flabbergasted to see that voice access to this "Star Trek computer" still doesn't really work.
ghaff 10y ago
>For vastly narrower definitions of "we" in 1995 than in 2016. Yep. I was probably still just using BBSs at home in 1995. I probably had access to the Internet with Mosaic running on a workstation at work by then but I don't think I did at home. (Some of the commercial BBSs became ISPs but that was probably a few years later.) Wikipedia tells me that AOL was still charging hourly fees in 1995 as, presumably, was Compuserve and others. So in 1995, we were on the cusp of more broad-based Internet and Web access but it was still pretty limited. As a general statement, it's probably fair to say that owning a PC was increasingly the norm by 1995 but very few were online in any significant way.
protomyth 10y ago
802.11 wireless would be a pretty big add to your point. It didn't show up until after 1995 and has made a rather large difference.

rsync 10y ago

"I remember 1995 pretty well; I think 2016 has a lot more in common with it than 1995 has in common with 1974. Honestly, I don't think life has changed all that much in the last twenty years. Sure, everyone has a smartphone, and back then almost no-one had a _cell_phone, and the Internet is faster, and computers can do more and are more reliable, but things really aren't fundamentally different." I think I would be genuinely surprised and delighted by uber/lyft ... mainly because I was genuinely surprised and delighted by them just a year or so ago. To a lesser degree, VRBO and airbnb. We have a workable, fully electric car that isn't chintzy and dorky. Unlimited calling, without long distance fees. We didn't have that in 1995. ALSO, look at who got disrupted - there are zero record stores, lots of bookstores are gone, video rentals no longer exist. Circuit city is gone, Best Buy is struggling ... But people still play M:TG just like 1995 - who would have guessed!?

dragonwriter 10y ago
> ALSO, look at who got disrupted - there are zero record stores There are fewer record stores, but a lot more than zero. > video rentals no longer exist. Even leaving aside streaming rentals and Netflix's disc business, video rental kiosks are in grocery stores. Dedicated video rental storefronts are a lot more rare than in 1995, but video rental is very much still a thing.
- rsync 10y ago
  "There are fewer record stores, but a lot more than zero." Well yes, of course I realize that there exist stores within which I can buy a CD/record. I mean, there are no more of the Sam Goody / Tower Records / etc. stores that used to be everywhere.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > I mean, there are no more of the Sam Goody / Tower Records / etc. stores that used to be everywhere. There also remain chain entertainment media stores of that type, though those particular chains are now gone (Sam Goody having been purchased by fye, which is one of the surviving chains.)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jameshart 10y ago

You're underestimating what a difference of degree we're talking here. For a quick refresher of what 'cutting edge' technology was like in 1995, go back and rewatch Hackers. See those guys phreaking payphones (remember payphones?), gushing over 28.8k modems, and rocking Mac powerbook 150cs, which feature such awesome tech as a 600x400 pixel color LCD screen, and a trackball, and where major plot points hinge around floppy discs. Any computer which is sitting on a desk boasts a maybe 15 or 17 inch CRT monitor on top. There are fax machines. 20 years later, I'm surrounded by devices which have thin, black, glassy screens, each with megapixels of display resolution. Many of them respond to touch input. Half of them have tiny cameras mounted nearby which can capture high definition video. With wireless networking I don't have to wait for someone to get off the phone before I can dial a modem - I'm already connected to the internet (and the GPS network) and bandwidth is so plentiful I can enjoy high definition video phonecalls with people on another continent, essentially free. Send back a 70 inch 4K TV, an iPhone, a photo of the Shanghai skyline, and a gay couple's marriage certificate, and I think you'll handily surprise someone from 1995.

vacri 10y ago
'95 back to '75: - no mobile phones - no personal computers (and punchcards and 'computer time' were still a thing) - internet didn't exist at all, apart from a handful of people - civil rights for minorities and women still in it's infancy (much more difference 75-95 than 95-15) - cold war at it's height, no 'pax americana redux' - blue collar work was still very common, and poorly paid as a result - the 90s was when the trades started to make serious money - fitness craze of the late 70s + 80s not in view yet; smoking wasn't seen as unhealthy - portable music players didn't exist - international travel eased considerably (though maybe as much again to 2015?) - 24 hour trading came in in the '80s and early '90s. In the 70s, if you hadn't done your shopping by Sunday, you would go hungry... - exotic food amongst anglos was 'stroganoff', 'stroganoff', and 'stroganoff' - the food revolution kicked off in the '90s :) The thin glassy touchscreens we have now are seen in scifi at least as far back as the '60s; they're not all that suprising, I wouldn't think. China's industrialisation might not be so surprising either, given the amazing things Japan managed to do in the relatively short time after the Meiji Restoration - in only 50 years they were sitting at the big players' table in naval treaties limiting size of fleets, for example.

raldi 10y ago

I couldn't disagree more; in June 2011 I wrote a post about how wildly technology had progressed in the 16 years since 1995, and it doesn't even include anything from the five years since then: https://www.reddit.com/r/raldi/comments/i91og/todays_real_life_is_yesterdays_science_fiction/ https://www.reddit.com/r/raldi/comments/i91og/todays_real_li...

aaroninsf 10y ago

I think things are different, just in ways that are not necessarily apparent to e.g. normal Americans living out their lives. Our awareness of what has changed is largely confined to the specifics of our individual lives (profession, community, subculture)... but as with newspaper reporting, we make assumptions about the parts we don't interact with as deeply, only noticing acute change when it's right in our domain. I call this the 'postmodern Potemikin village'– the constructed and maintained illusion that the world we live in is in large part unchanged from the one we lived in in e.g. 1995 (and most definitely 1975). The clearest way to clarify what I mean is in this HN venue is maybe to say that: the B2B realities that back to the B2P experiences of most people are radically different than the ones we grew up, in many industries, unrecognizably different. It is only the 'last mile' to our doors and into our pockets that maintains the same branded feel. The footnote to this is of course the ubiquity and centrality of the internet (including by mobile), I don't know if there's ever been such a radical change introduced so quickly and then so uniformly renormalized to. In this one case it's less a lack of obvious change, but a change that brought with it such a deep sense of inevitability and obviousness that we forget it's new. But back to the change thing. Good examples are probably Amazon and Walmart. Depending on your social stratum, the role that these play is probably equivalently profound in your life. And the core logistics behind both business [models] is predicated on a set of technologies and integrations with other related industries that is radically unlike what came before it. In our normal human lives, we don't see the scale of that change. We just 'order a bit more for home delivery' than our parents did. Or shop at a store that's yes, a little bigger. But that sense of familiarity about the sourcing of our lives from those places is false. Other examples include the slow-boil but now nearly complete homogenization of the commercial landscape in the US. If you didn't grow up in e.g. the 70s or earlier, the ubiquity of a couple hundred brands and the insignificance of anything but large regional competitors (aside from in a few exceptional industries perhaps) is actually a very different and quite new reality. Again, we still e.g. stop for fast food. It's the scale and sophistication of consolidation that is genuinely new. This is btw in no way a value judgment, just an observation. The point is simply, the rate of change has not actually diminished... ...it's just that the majority of its effects are in domain outside the public sphere, and hence forgotten, discounted, or invisible a lot of the time.

10y ago

slyall 10y ago

The Coupland article is here: http://archive.wired.com/wired/scenarios/capsule.html http://archive.wired.com/wired/scenarios/capsule.html Unfortunately all the images are broken.