14 ms·
“When we all have pocket telephones”
- huseyinkeles 4y agowhat's more interesting to me is at the date of this comic, even the landline phones were not fully adopted :)
- bsza 4y agoYet it predicted the future more accurately than Blade Runner (1982) where people still use pay phones in 2019.
- eesmith 4y agoPicking nits while skipping how we don't have off-world colonies or replicants? In that case, the comic got things wrong too. You'll be hard pressed to find people wearing those clothes these days, especially the nurse's headgear. Canes and briefcases are also rare, though I suspect that those rare few wearing a bowler hat might still use them. Also, few people use a bell as their ringtone.
- LeonM 4y ago> Also, few people use a bell as their ringtone. I have always used a bell ringtone, I like it because I find it less-invasive then all the other abstract modern ringtones that only give me alarm clock PTSS. Unfortunately, Samsung removed the classing bell ringtone in their latest models :(
- dleslie 4y agoMotorola, too. But you can always add ring tones.
- eesmith 4y agoSure. Mine's a bell too. But it's still uncommon, yes? Plus, I know a lot of people who only have it on vibrate.
- themanmaran 4y agoRelevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/479/ https://xkcd.com/479/
- sidewndr46 4y agoMy understanding is in the blade runner universe the off world colonies aren't somewhere you'd want to live & the replicants are banned on earth. In other words, two things to be avoided. So we could easily advance past those points without touching them entirely.
- ekianjo 4y agoBlade Runner was never about predicting the future. It was what could become if technology went in certain ways. Japan did not end up ruling the west either.
- bena 4y agoBlade Runner isn't about the technology per se. It's about our reactions to the technology. If we create a completely autonomous artificial life, is it "a person"? Does it deserve personhood? The source book is a little better about the question. The major difference between Replicants and people is that people have empathy and Replicants don't. In the book there's a device that allows people to essentially get into this weird empathy group mind thing. It's been a hot minute since I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" so forgive the details. And that's what the Voight-Kampf device measures. That's what the questions are designed to test. It's why the first Replicant flips out on the turtle question. He can't process the need to flip over the turtle. He can't empathise with the turtle. But he's kind of still a child. Which is a little understandable, because Replicants have a 3-year lifespan. They are babies. Toddlers. He flips out because he's throwing a tantrum. Roy Batty and Pris are closer to the end of their life, they've developed empathy, as any person would. That's what gets Deckard. He realizes Replicants are fully people and what we do to them is wrong. Batty was never the bad guy. But that's all tangential. Blade Runner is set 37 years in the future. Which is now 3 years in the past. It was trying to guess when the relevant technology will be available. I think that's a better way of thinking about it. Science Fiction isn't trying to predict what will be available in X years, it's trying to predict in how many years X will be available.
- nurettin 4y agoI think it might be an aesthetic choice. Pay phones and perpetual night scenes are more detective-noir than cellphones.
- Melatonic 4y agoDefinitely this. Bladerunner is all about being a future Noir set in Los Angeles where it is perpetually night and often raining. Surely they knew when filming it or it being written that LA is extremely sunny and never rains.
- seydor 4y agoAnd rotary phones in the matrix. I mean it s not like people don't buy record players. The cities of our future will have payphones out of boredom
- Eleison23 4y agoStar Wars did a horrible job at documenting the past, too! They invented laser beams and all the hokey religious dudes thought energy swords were better?
- lrvick 4y agoMy primary phone number rings a payphone in my office. I missed having them around.
- account42 4y agoBut the inevitable retro-futurism is one of the charms of old sci-fi!
- dfxm12 4y agoIt's like how hacking or computer UIs are depicted in 80s/90s movies. When the general public doesn't have a good understanding of a technology or the technology doesn't have a good foothold in peoples' lives, you can make these crazy fantastical representations of what (the future of) these technologies might be. I'm sure some people had the imagination when they first saw radios and how they were removing wires from some devices to think about what this meant for any device with wires.
- taylorius 4y agoNow there's a futurologist worth listening to!
- nuggetys 4y agoWhen we all have telephones embedded into our brains, linked in to our neural circuitry. When Google advertises to you in your dreams, daydreams and nightmares. When Huawei gives their government control over their citizens' thoughts, and feelings and desires. When Samsung kills millions with a botched over-the-air firmware upgrade.
- trashtester 4y ago> When Google advertises to you in your dreams, daydreams and nightmares. If we let them wire something into our brains, it's a lot easier to connect it to the happiness centres: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3984894/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3984894/ If you can gain networked control of such a device, you could easily gain complete control of their motivations and disires. Much more strongly than with any drug. Not only would you be able to make these people hand over everything of value to you (bypassing any needs to advertise), you could even make them WANT to work for you (and even go to war for you) with fanatical motivation and effort.
- jsrcout 4y agoI'd be stunned if there aren't well-funded groups working on this as we speak.
- trashtester 4y agoIt's already deployed to some extent medically. As for the dystopian applications, I would not be suprised if there are some dr Mengele wannabies in some dark corners of the world experimenting with how to control prison inmates or similar "disposable" people using such tech.
- a_wild_dandan 4y ago> It's already deployed to some extent medically. Can you say more about this? I wonder what's feasible in the near future. I recall excitedly watching a Gabe Newell interview on BCI. Having struggled with major depression and anxiety, his speculation on using BCI to control sleep/mood/etc seemed like a mental panacea. Of course, with that level of control over one's brain, my delight about potential emotional stabilization feels akin to lionizing computers as a newfangled bookkeeping tool -- while true, it's comically myopic. Here's a hard turn into wild speculation for ya: The Great Filter is either 1) endosymbiosis or 2) inventing BCI.
- azik123 4y ago
- nonrandomstring 4y agoLately, stand-up comedians have been saying they're out of a job, because the absurdity of reality is escaping parody. Nothing stays funny for long, because soon enough it's true, and then banal. In a world where all things are absurd, ipso facto nothing is absurd. An interesting question becomes what remains? What are the solid relations that underpin our humanity? Having a boss that tells you what to do? No, long since passed the point where I have to tell my boss what to do - it's called being the consultant in a clueless, inverted meritocracy. People wanting to take your money? No. The insane conceit of a "cash-less society" has already created situations where you cannot physically force someone to take money from you. I'm honestly struggling to see what is cast in stone. Even death and taxes are looking worried. <shakes fist at clouds>
- ekianjo 4y agoTaxes have never been as high as now in recent history. You dont have to worry about them going away.
- throw827474737 4y agoIf that just be true for every tax group we would be in a much fairer world with less issues...
- ThunderSizzle 4y agoNo, that is insane. If anything, sending arbitrary amounts of money to be spent on the interest to pay for the debt of corrupt and failed political ventures is not fair in any regard. If taxes actually paid for government services, you might have a point, but they do not.
- pavlov 4y agoIn the US, the highest marginal tax rate for individuals was 70% as recently as 1981. It was 92% in 1952. Today it's 37%. So it's really the other way around — taxes have never been as low as now in recent history.
- darkwater 4y agoI think the joke is still good, because it's still a bad manner to have your phone ringing and buzzing in many situations (a concert, at the opera etc). I mean, it's actually an impressive comic, it imagines a possible future tech and correctly identifies some real misuses, 70-80 years before it became reality.
- quickthrower2 4y agoIt is great. I think they got there by extrapolating a home phone interrupting dinner table conversations, and similar. The urgency of a ringing phone dominating all else. Like a fire alarm alerting that this is the most important conversation to be had!
- account42 4y agoUnlike the home phone, mobile phones can at least be set to vibrate so I guess there is some improvement.
- lrvick 4y agoMost modern DECT wireless home phones can also be set to vibrate.
- account42 4y agoI see, but is that different from a slightly more quiet ring tone? The point of setting mobile phones to vibrate is that (ideally) you can feel it (because you have it in your pocket) without others arround you being interrupted.
- lrvick 4y agoSure. Many home DECT phones are small enough to pocket or have belt clips. If it is on a desk or nightstand next to you the vibration will be noticed though.
- 4y ago
- OJFord 4y ago> when the novelty and prestige of cellphones (to say nothing of their gratingly simple ringtones) I don't think I'm just projecting when I say we've pretty much reverted to that? As far as I can tell it's not 'cool' among schoolchildren any more either to have some song or joke sound or whatever. The vast majority I hear (i.e. if it rings at all, not just vibrating!) I would say are 'simple'; it's the 'songs and joke sounds or whatever' that grate.
- ricardo81 4y agoI'd bet the majority of phone interactions are Internet based, though- not people wishing to text/talk but notifications from apps telling you about the latest inconsequential thing to promote interaction with them.
- usrusr 4y agoThat blog post seems weirdly anachronistic: that cartoon might have predicted 2005 astonishingly well, but in 2022, how often do we really use our phones for two-way real-time audio? How often do you actually hear a ringtone begging for immediate attention?
- jagged-chisel 4y agoPretty flippin’ often.
- 867-5309 4y agoah the flip phones of 2005..
- godshatter 4y ago> How often do you actually hear a ringtone begging for immediate attention? More than I would like. Apparently there is a problem with my SSN and my warranty is about to expire.
- quickthrower2 4y agoQuite a bit for 2 way audio. I think people don’t choose garish ringtones (e.g. crazy frog, nokia ringtone) so much now and they pick up a lot quicker these days. Someone leaving their phone at a desk and it ringing and ringing seemed more common back in the day. Might be modern phones don’t let that happen.
- mixmastamyk 4y agoSales still exists.
- theandrewbailey 4y agoThat comic got one small detail incorrect: in 2022, phones are rarely in pockets, because most people can't stop using theirs long enough to put it in a pocket.
- danudey 4y agoIf my phone is in my pocket I can't watch billionaires destroy society and the planet in real-time, and then I'll have to catch up on /r/outoftheloop later that week.
- IIAOPSW 4y agoAlso, they didn't foresee that particular style of mustache going heavily out of style in a few short years.
- masswerk 4y agoTo be fair, phones have become a bit too big for pockets. I'm looking forward to carrying handles. (If transistor radios could have them, why not phones?) ;-)
- lrvick 4y agoAnd this is why I choose not to own one anymore.
- WaitWaitWha 4y ago> Now, increasingly, cellphones are *day-to-day life*. Far from the literal “pocket telephones” envisioned a century ago, they’ve worked their way into nearly every aspect of human existence, including those Haselden could never have considered. It is now essential to be considered part of the society, to the point that someone who does not want to or cannot carry a cell phone is sneered at. Anecdotally, I was in the USA and during a few day lay-over, I wanted to get a hair cut. I was refused service at a hair cutting chain because I did not have a cell phone with me (it was in the hotel, did not want spam, would not get there and back on time, etc.). I offered credit card or cash, but was rejected, and explicitly told I have to have cell phone. I am not angry, just sad. As @nonrandomstring noted, "absurdity of reality is escaping parody".
- alistairSH 4y agoWow, that's a new one for me (only app payments accepted). In the US, at least.
- warner25 4y agoI haven't encountered that yet, but I'm starting to encounter mobile apps as required proof of membership for things. My family got a membership to a children's museum a few weeks ago, and the expectation is that my wife and I have their app on our phones to get inside. For our second visit, I brought our printed receipt, but my wife had to stand there downloading and installing their app so that we could use our guest passes. The person at the front desk didn't seem to have any other way to do it. Similarly, my neighborhood's community pool and fitness center requires the Brivo Mobile Pass app to get through the front door (and it's unattended, so there's nobody who can just look you up in the system and let you in).
- lrvick 4y agoAs someone that does not own a phone I have had to explain I cannot install apps many times. Normally when I bring up the word discrimination, they always find a backup path they do not advertise.
- schwartzworld 4y agoJust needs one more panel where the guy answers the phone only to hear a recording in Chinese telling them that their student loans or car insurance need vital attention.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- _thisdot 4y agoI remember when I was young, my dad came out of a Parent-Teacher meeting and showed his flip phone which showed 40 missed calls from work. He worked as a lead programmer in a bank which was very new to Internet Banking. He was clearly annoyed with the calls, but as a kid I was amused and a little jealous of the fact that in such a short time so many people wanted to get hold of him. I also remember signing up for all kind of email newsletters just to get more emails! Have to admire the vision of this artist in an age when even land lines weren't in wide use!
- mmcdermott 4y agoI recently read Fritz Leiber's "The Creature From Cleveland Depths" (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23164 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23164) and it gives off a very similar vibe.
- bloomingeek 4y agoI can remember arguments in the airport because people didn't like it when you didn't step away to carry on a conversation in public. Candy Bar phones, anyone? I now use the Samsung Flip and love how small it fits in my pocket, but I still enjoy the large unfolded screen.
- layman51 4y agoThis comic really reminds me of the pilot episode of the cartoon "A Kitty Bobo". It's the same sort of premise where the main character gets a cell phone before his friends do and he ends up falling into awkward situations even though he thinks it's very cool he has a cell phone now.
- codetrotter 4y agoReminds me of one of the pilot episodes of my own life as well :p When I was in elementary school, my father gave me a cell phone so me and him could call each other. No one else in my class nor in most other classes at school had a phone. So it was kind of cool. But still for many years the only thing I could do with the phone, since no one else had mobile phones yet, was to talk with my father XD It was a blue and black Siemens phone with an antenna. No games, no GPRS/WAP, no nothing other than phone call and SMS ability mainly.
- timonoko 4y agoThey are now banning cellphones in schools in Nordic countries. But alas, parents are buying standalone smartwatches for their precious brats. Which reminds me of me in 1950s. I always tried to get seat by the window where the heat pipes run. My crystal set needed ground wire and the antenna could be hidden by the curtains.
- makeitdouble 4y agoDidn’t know about that ban, but doesn’t seem to go that well… https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775719303966 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727... > In Sweden, we find no impact of mobile phone bans on student performance and can reject even small-sized gains.
- insane_dreamer 4y agoAmazing considering the scarcity of landlines at that time. Just missed it by vibrate-only mode.
- Briggs958 4y ago[dead]