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15 Current Technologies A Child Born Today Will Never Use
Yahoo/Laptop Mag ^ | 5.14.12 | Avram Piltch

Posted on 05/13/2012 10:12:38 PM PDT by DemforBush

From the moment that I found out my wife was pregnant with our first child, a son, I’ve thought of his development in terms of tech...

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Arts/Photography; Business/Economy; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: technology; thefuture
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar
My Great-grandpa was the same. He was born in 1868.....Saw the invention of movies, Tanks, planes, radio, telephone, block long computers, automobiles, Hiroshima and Nagasaki lit up, then died the year the B-52 bomber was accepted for service.

I think that people who were born near the turn of the 20th century saw much more paradigm-shifting technological change than those who came afterwards.

In our time, we've mostly witnessed the refinement of technologies that were born in earlier eras. There's no doubt that we've seen a lot of new and amazing things come into being in our lifetimes, but how many of them are truly paradigm-shifting? I'd say, not many. Today, it's the tweaks, improvements, and new applications that move us forward.

81 posted on 05/14/2012 9:28:56 AM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: stayathomemom
My father was born in 1906 too. He was a math teacher. When the first calculators came out, he was amazed that this box, the size of a typewriter, could do what we now consider just the basic mathematic functions: + - × ÷.

I can remember my grandfather proudly showing me his first hand-held calculator (they'd just come on the market). He, too, marveled at that small device. I was a young teen, and thought he was a genius for just knowing how to work the thing :-)

82 posted on 05/14/2012 9:38:20 AM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Oatka
She grew up in a Nebraska sod buster home and said they prayed every day for rain for their crops or face starvation - and now people could just walk outside and turn the tap to water grass.”

One forgets about the simple things.

You've got a point, there. How about something as simple as the disposable razor? Such a small thing, but it improved the quality of life for men all over the planet.

Both of my grandfathers had razor strops hanging in their bathrooms, but I don't think they ever used a straight razor in my lifetime.

83 posted on 05/14/2012 9:43:31 AM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: DemforBush

Major bookmark!


84 posted on 05/14/2012 10:03:27 AM PDT by llandres (Forget the "New America" - restore the original one!!!)
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To: llandres

I’ll turn 70 this summer. I’ve seen a LOT of changes in these decades. For me, the biggest changes have been in my chosen career, communications. I started off in the Air Force, which in 1960 still used a lot of Army protocols. I learned the Morse code at Goodfellow AFB, TX, and went to “copy” code throughout my long career. Sadly now, the only time I hear any code is in the background on the Military Channel. I also learned HF radio teletype operations. I doubt now if there are any single-channel FSK tty circuits anywhere in the civilized world. It’s as if all the data being transmitted anywhere in the world were being forced into a single straw and now it is a virtual flood of 1s and 0s. And no more Birely’s or Nesbitt’s orange pop.


85 posted on 05/14/2012 10:29:40 AM PDT by Ax
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To: Williams

“My grandfather was born 1899 and grew up in a world where people were not assigned numbers. Telephone calls were made by asking for the Smiths in such and such town, postal service had not yet assigned street addresses”

It wasn’t just in your grandfather’s time (my own grandfather was born in 1888).

Growing up in Weston, Connecticut in the mid-1950’s, we didn’t have “house numbers”. The address was simply “RFD 3...”

Forward to the late 1980’s, not all that long ago.

I became friends with someone who lived in rural/central Pennsylvania, in a tiny town that had gotten bypassed by “the main road” in the 1920’s because the main street of the town (where the highway once ran through) was too narrow and curvy, so they re-built the road through the nearby farm fields.

As recently as 1988, the houses in town didn’t have numbers. There was no “mail delivery” — you walked to the post office and got your mail. Deliverymen just “knew where you lived”. This even applied to the U.P.S. guy, from 20+ miles away in Northumberland.

Of course things have changed, even there, and the houses now have street numbers. But I can still walk down the street there and have complete strangers smile and wave as they drive by. As much as “modern trends” have changed a large part of America (mostly urban and suburban), there still remain isolated areas where “the old ways” still exist. If the collapse comes, this town is where I’m headin’!


86 posted on 05/14/2012 10:51:23 AM PDT by Road Glide
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To: smokingfrog

“His Master’s Voice”....memories.


87 posted on 05/14/2012 11:11:16 AM PDT by Churchillspirit (9/11/2001. NEVER FORGET.)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

A lot of what you address, while correct, will become edge cases.

Wired Home Internet - “microcell” tech may dominate, bringing a small cell to your neighborhood rather than installing wire to each home, and balancing the convenience of wireless with its lack of capacity/speed. For many/most, wired internet runs at speeds on par with wireless providers. Only re-wiring the country for seriously high-speed service (a la >100Mbit fiber) will preserve that paradigm.

Dedicated Cameras and Camcorders - people are willing to shell out a few days’ pay for several cubic inches of the best imaging technology that can be crammed therein. When cell cameras get on par with current dedicated ones, the tech will shift to other non-tiny products (light field, 3D, etc.). Good lenses are big, bulky, and expensive - and there will always be a market for them; it’s a matter of physics, not Moore’s Law.

Landline Phones - sound quality is a matter of the service. Whenever I use Skype over cellular 3G people comment on how remarkably clear it is. The one benefit of landlines is assurance that the darned thing will STAY PUT and BE ON; having kids, I’m considering installing one (which is little more than a nailed-down cell phone) just for 911 and other emergency availability. Keeping pocket phones handy & charged seems a challenge for some people.

Slow-Booting Computers - I’ve long wondered why computers aren’t instant-on. It’s not a matter of hardware, it’s a matter of SOFTWARE designed to get the user-facing activity up & running ASAP while letting further back-end stuff take longer to set up in the background. No excuse, coders!

Windowed Operating Systems - It’s a convenient paradigm, akin to books. Will continue to dominate but will cede much territory to touchscreens. I’m more expecting/desiring expansion of “tablet” interfaces to cover the entire desk & wall.

Hard Drives - maybe for seriously large-scale storage, but personal-use storage will give way to flash & cloud storage.

Movie Theaters - nostalgia is the only thing that will keep ‘em going. Lots of us have given up on theaters save for rare movies demanding 3D and/or BBBIIIGGG screens. That’s a lot of space to commit to diminishing profits.

The Mouse - looking at a long slow fade. Other tech translating tiny gestures will arise.

3D Glasses - just 5 years away for the last 30. For about 6 months I used a set as my sole TV screen; tech just hasn’t improved enough since.

Remote Controls - MUST DIE. A box of badly-designed buttons sucks. Here’s hoping Steve Jobs did, in fact, have a brilliant breakthrough.

Desktops - there will always be a need for computing power 10-100x beyond phone/tablet tech. In fact, methinks the tablet has saved the desktop by making mobile whatever one needs mobile, with cloud/wireless tech making ubiquitous instant integration with massive multi/huge-screen multi-core multi-terabyte physically-large-whatever staying at your desk.

Phone Numbers - will fade away, but take a long time to.

Prime-time Television - the brain-dead TV model has yet to be replicated. TV on-demand will dominate (many of us have gone there), but nothing has equated to “turn it on, watch whatever’s there” brain-dead model.

Fax Machines - just about gone. Ubiquitous coordination is still a challenge.

Optical Discs - with terabyte drives fitting in a pocket, and cloud storage making wireless transfer trivial, little need for physical media will remain. But it will remain - bandwidth of a case of discs way exceeds any streaming connection. We’ll want to own tangible copies of at least some content. But note that even Timbuktu will get internet & wireless, and you’ll with ease carry in a small box containing all the content you’ll want.


88 posted on 05/14/2012 11:37:33 AM PDT by ctdonath2 (Cloud storage? Dropbox rocks! Sign up at http://db.tt/nQqWGd3 for 2GB free (and I get more too).)
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To: dfwgator

I would lay in bed in wonder when I listened to BBC


89 posted on 05/14/2012 12:53:49 PM PDT by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink)
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To: Mad Dawgg

what’s happening in July?


90 posted on 05/14/2012 3:59:51 PM PDT by mowowie
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To: DemforBush; a fool in paradise; Slings and Arrows

My dear old dad, who, chances are, has been baptized by Bishop Romney’s Mormons, or will soon be, never thought that I, his, son, would be riding in a flying automobile!


91 posted on 05/14/2012 4:03:54 PM PDT by Revolting cat! (Let us prey!)
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To: varyouga
Remember that the CD was first released when plain handheld calculators were only for the very rich.

Mmm....don't think so. The first CDs appeared in stores around 1988 or '89. Hand held calculators had already been around for twenty years or more by that time, and were far reduced in cost from what they were originally. They were even cheap, as a matter of fact.

92 posted on 05/14/2012 7:59:40 PM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: mowowie
RIAA chief: ISPs to start policing copyright by July 1

You can get your connection; disconnected/throttled just for being "accused" by the RIAA/MPAA. No court, no appeals.

93 posted on 05/14/2012 9:18:08 PM PDT by Mad Dawgg (If you're going to deny my 1st Amendment rights then I must proceed to the 2nd one...)
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To: Mad Dawgg

Thanks for the info.


94 posted on 05/14/2012 9:32:26 PM PDT by mowowie
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To: Windflier
The first electronic hand-held was probably the Bowmar Brain, from 1971. It cost $240 and had four functions and an eight-digit LED display (bad for battery life). Shortly afterward, HP rolled out their HP-35 ($395), which could do scientific functions and replace slide rules.

Nowadays, adjusted for inflation, the Bowmar's price would buy four gigabytes, lots of functions, more computing power than existed in the world, and (soon) a retina display.

95 posted on 05/15/2012 1:25:56 AM PDT by cynwoody
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To: varyouga

Ping to post 95.


96 posted on 05/15/2012 11:51:18 AM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: cynwoody
The first electronic hand-held was probably the Bowmar Brain, from 1971.

Thanks, woody. That matches my recall nearly perfectly.

97 posted on 05/15/2012 11:53:06 AM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Windflier

A few years ago, I read an account by a woman who had asked her grandmother what she considered the greatest technological achievement of her lifetime.

She expected the answer to be something like telephones, or airplanes, or spaceflight.

The actual answer was “hot, running water”.


98 posted on 05/18/2012 1:01:04 PM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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