5 ms·

What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008?

40 points by pg 18y ago

pg 18y ago
"When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies “buy,” and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance." One-click online ordering in 1968. The only difference is that the info is stored on the client rather than the server. This makes it pretty clear how badly the Amazon patent fails the nonobviousness test.
- river_styx 18y ago
  Eventually the legal world will catch up with technology, and those kind of silly patents will be no more.
  - nuclear_eclipse 18y ago
    We can only hope...
  - palish 18y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China
ca98am79 18y ago
and life in 2048? Kurzweil predicts the Singularity occurs around 2045.
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  It's Monday August 25th, 2048. You are old. Kids around you are fed up of your stories with no point, your failed dreams of longevity, rejuvenation and mental uploading sound like all fifty year old future predictions have ever done. There is technology everywhere, but like I said, you're old and it's all Greek to you (and after the cheap nervous system splice, you can't stop your hands shaking enough to coherently access the menus and change it back). Your colleagues aren't phoning you to ask for a boat impeller design as magnetohydrodrives became popular after the rise of the room temperature semiconductor and your firm went under a dozen years ago. There is still no one-pill-meal and the first moon base plans (all autonomic) are only 3 to 5 years from approval by the Brazilian Government. The eleventy o'clock bell rings. Everyone stops what they are doing and switches to the two-minute-hate channel for a good rant and to diffuse a daysworth of anger. Today's figure was picked for raising hopes too high and contributing to the misery of millions. It's Ray Kurzweil. You vent your spleen all over (there's surgery that can fix that now, but you couldn't afford it if you sold your left kidney, assuming you hadn't already done so). Amazingly, you do live in a dome-covered city. It's stiflingly hot and muggy year round.
DaniFong 18y ago
People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn’t totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder’s spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments, on the average, about two hours of home study a day. Intriguingly, this is probably true. The difference is that 'home study of new developments' actually just takes place at work, and the 8 hour workday is still going strong, if only as an illusion. The pattern seems to be that the predictions for technology, especially anything requiring complicated physics or engineering, are wildly inaccurate, while the predictions for social, organizational, or behavioral change are either on the money, or too conservative. Since consumer programs are usually meant to aid existing behaviors, the authors predictions don't overshoot the mark by nearly so much. Sometimes, social institutions are completely ignored as subjects of change. "Other conveniences ease kitchenwork. The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use." How quaint. What on earth is said 'the housewife' supposed to do? not be a housewife, perhaps?
- gills 18y ago
  To paraphrase: "in the future, we will be able to consume more than we produce." The physics and engineering are fuzzy because nobody with the requisite knowledge would proclaim such a thing.
  - pchristensen 18y ago
    I think that the "we" means the average Joe and Jane Schmoes, not the aggregate society. Or maybe we just outsourced out production to other, poorer countries that don't have domed cities and still vacation on land.
    - blogimus 18y ago
gaius 18y ago
Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs. That looks quaint to us, but at the same time we're busily shoveling everything we can into the cloud.
- KirinDave 18y ago
  Touche! We managed to liberate our data and computation from big blue and then all we can think about is putting it back! But maybe the difference is that we're all packing supercomputer heat at home and super-extra-duper-distributed-computers up in the cloud. Most futuretalk articles from back in the day always assumed the equivalent of a dumb terminal, and even well after Moore's law was established very few people seemed to realize those implications for the average home's computing power.
prakash 18y ago
The average work day is about four hours. Take that 37signals ;-)
notauser 18y ago
http://www.paleofuture.com/ http://www.paleofuture.com/ is a great source for this kind of stuff.
petercooper 18y ago
If you like this sort of stuff, also: The Usborne Book Of The Future http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefutureindex.php http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefuture... It has excellent illustrations and is, as far as I can tell, a lot closer to reality than this other one.
- Agathos 18y ago
  I still have my copy of Star Travel somewhere. I loved that book.
pmsaue0 18y ago
It's 8 a.m. Monday August 25, 2008, you are headed to your cubicle 30 miles away. You throw your briefcase into your Camry, throw yesterday's Starbucks cup behind the driver's seat, turn on the radio to Bob and Tom in the morning. The car accelerates to 40 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 45 mph in the less built-up areas. You lurch past endless strings of billboards and strip malls. Traffic is heavy, but there is no need worry -- it has been like this forever. Suddenly your cell-phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting our for sports boats. You hit silent. You hate that he calls you before you get to work. Ninety minutes after leaving your home, you arrive at your office. You silently organize your desk and then watch 30 break.com videos. You think, it's so wonderful to be alive in 2008.
- Agathos 18y ago
  (that looks like fun...) Medical research has marginally improved the chance that babies born in the 21st century will live long and healthy lives, assuming their parents have health insurance. Heart disease has become an epidemic as people consume more high-calorie, processed foods and get much less exercise, thanks to the innovations described above. If hearts or other major organs do give trouble, the patient may be lucky enough to get a transplant, if he doesn't die waiting for a donor. Medical examinations are a matter of sitting in a waiting room for an hour or two, then receiving a five-minute examination that is similar to one performed in 1968, but much more hurried. Blood and urine samples will be analyzed in the lab later that day, but by that time the patient is back in his cubicle and the doctor, who regrets every day that he went into primary care, will not be paid to bring him back and discuss the results in person.
dangoldin 18y ago
Surprising how accurate the predictions are for computers but entirely off for other technologies.
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  "Yeah", he replied using his pencil-thin infrared flashlight input device.

40 points by pg 18y ago

pg 18y ago

"When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies “buy,” and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance." One-click online ordering in 1968. The only difference is that the info is stored on the client rather than the server. This makes it pretty clear how badly the Amazon patent fails the nonobviousness test.

river_styx 18y ago
Eventually the legal world will catch up with technology, and those kind of silly patents will be no more.
- nuclear_eclipse 18y ago
  We can only hope...
- palish 18y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China

ca98am79 18y ago

and life in 2048? Kurzweil predicts the Singularity occurs around 2045.

jodrellblank 18y ago
It's Monday August 25th, 2048. You are old. Kids around you are fed up of your stories with no point, your failed dreams of longevity, rejuvenation and mental uploading sound like all fifty year old future predictions have ever done. There is technology everywhere, but like I said, you're old and it's all Greek to you (and after the cheap nervous system splice, you can't stop your hands shaking enough to coherently access the menus and change it back). Your colleagues aren't phoning you to ask for a boat impeller design as magnetohydrodrives became popular after the rise of the room temperature semiconductor and your firm went under a dozen years ago. There is still no one-pill-meal and the first moon base plans (all autonomic) are only 3 to 5 years from approval by the Brazilian Government. The eleventy o'clock bell rings. Everyone stops what they are doing and switches to the two-minute-hate channel for a good rant and to diffuse a daysworth of anger. Today's figure was picked for raising hopes too high and contributing to the misery of millions. It's Ray Kurzweil. You vent your spleen all over (there's surgery that can fix that now, but you couldn't afford it if you sold your left kidney, assuming you hadn't already done so). Amazingly, you do live in a dome-covered city. It's stiflingly hot and muggy year round.

DaniFong 18y ago

People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn’t totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder’s spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments, on the average, about two hours of home study a day. Intriguingly, this is probably true. The difference is that 'home study of new developments' actually just takes place at work, and the 8 hour workday is still going strong, if only as an illusion. The pattern seems to be that the predictions for technology, especially anything requiring complicated physics or engineering, are wildly inaccurate, while the predictions for social, organizational, or behavioral change are either on the money, or too conservative. Since consumer programs are usually meant to aid existing behaviors, the authors predictions don't overshoot the mark by nearly so much. Sometimes, social institutions are completely ignored as subjects of change. "Other conveniences ease kitchenwork. The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use." How quaint. What on earth is said 'the housewife' supposed to do? not be a housewife, perhaps?

gills 18y ago
To paraphrase: "in the future, we will be able to consume more than we produce." The physics and engineering are fuzzy because nobody with the requisite knowledge would proclaim such a thing.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  I think that the "we" means the average Joe and Jane Schmoes, not the aggregate society. Or maybe we just outsourced out production to other, poorer countries that don't have domed cities and still vacation on land.
  - blogimus 18y ago

gaius 18y ago

Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs. That looks quaint to us, but at the same time we're busily shoveling everything we can into the cloud.

KirinDave 18y ago
Touche! We managed to liberate our data and computation from big blue and then all we can think about is putting it back! But maybe the difference is that we're all packing supercomputer heat at home and super-extra-duper-distributed-computers up in the cloud. Most futuretalk articles from back in the day always assumed the equivalent of a dumb terminal, and even well after Moore's law was established very few people seemed to realize those implications for the average home's computing power.

prakash 18y ago

The average work day is about four hours. Take that 37signals ;-)

notauser 18y ago

http://www.paleofuture.com/ http://www.paleofuture.com/ is a great source for this kind of stuff.

petercooper 18y ago

If you like this sort of stuff, also: The Usborne Book Of The Future http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefutureindex.php http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefuture... It has excellent illustrations and is, as far as I can tell, a lot closer to reality than this other one.

Agathos 18y ago
I still have my copy of Star Travel somewhere. I loved that book.

pmsaue0 18y ago

It's 8 a.m. Monday August 25, 2008, you are headed to your cubicle 30 miles away. You throw your briefcase into your Camry, throw yesterday's Starbucks cup behind the driver's seat, turn on the radio to Bob and Tom in the morning. The car accelerates to 40 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 45 mph in the less built-up areas. You lurch past endless strings of billboards and strip malls. Traffic is heavy, but there is no need worry -- it has been like this forever. Suddenly your cell-phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting our for sports boats. You hit silent. You hate that he calls you before you get to work. Ninety minutes after leaving your home, you arrive at your office. You silently organize your desk and then watch 30 break.com videos. You think, it's so wonderful to be alive in 2008.

Agathos 18y ago
(that looks like fun...) Medical research has marginally improved the chance that babies born in the 21st century will live long and healthy lives, assuming their parents have health insurance. Heart disease has become an epidemic as people consume more high-calorie, processed foods and get much less exercise, thanks to the innovations described above. If hearts or other major organs do give trouble, the patient may be lucky enough to get a transplant, if he doesn't die waiting for a donor. Medical examinations are a matter of sitting in a waiting room for an hour or two, then receiving a five-minute examination that is similar to one performed in 1968, but much more hurried. Blood and urine samples will be analyzed in the lab later that day, but by that time the patient is back in his cubicle and the doctor, who regrets every day that he went into primary care, will not be paid to bring him back and discuss the results in person.

dangoldin 18y ago

Surprising how accurate the predictions are for computers but entirely off for other technologies.

jodrellblank 18y ago
"Yeah", he replied using his pencil-thin infrared flashlight input device.