CCCToad on 3/10/2010 at 00:19
Correct, and government use "smartphone" type devices date back even further, complete with "apps" that you can use to process various kinds of data.
While processing technology has advanced, the real advancements in smartphones are in image and marketing. It took apple to figure how to make such devices so hyped that they increase the user's sex appeal instead of destroying it.
Harvester on 3/10/2010 at 00:58
This thread reminds me of a remark in the System Shock 2 manual, that in the far, far future, they have route directions displayed in text on your car windshield. The manual writers couldn't have guessed back then that in less than ten years time since writing the manual, we'd already have something far easier and far less dangerous to achieve the same thing (GPS navigation). That's funny to me.
Martin Karne on 3/10/2010 at 03:19
For some reason never ever there are movies that hit the nail with guessing future technologies.
I would however content with just 10 years less of age in order to switch my career to computer sciences or programming.
ZylonBane on 3/10/2010 at 03:27
Quote Posted by Harvester
This thread reminds me of a remark in the System Shock 2 manual, that in the far, far future, they have route directions displayed in text on your car windshield. The manual writers couldn't have guessed back then that in less than ten years time since writing the manual, we'd already have something far easier and far less dangerous to achieve the same thing (GPS navigation). That's funny to me.
Umm, heads-up displays are still a better option. Eventually our quaint little GPSs will be full augmented-reality HUDs integrated into the car's windscreen. So instead of just listening to a voice saying "TURN RIGHT HERE", you'll see an actual blinky quest arrow pointing it out.
(
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/10/springteq-introduces-wego-hud-gps/) We're getting there.
Tocky on 3/10/2010 at 05:33
It's nice to see they are no longer pretending you need a special windsheild and offer it as an add on. Now if we can just bring back the "lights are on" chick from the Maxima days it will seem futuristic as we try to survive in Mad Max land post world economic collapse. With zombies.
demagogue on 3/10/2010 at 06:13
How many newer gizmos actually help you be a better person though? A lot of things just seem to encourage you to be lazier and not think or work as hard bettering yourself. I'll give credit to things like better health care and transportation and communication giving more people more opportunity to be better people, and maybe tools to let them do it more efficiently; but they still have to put the work in and do it.
That also reminds me of something else I read recently; some essay was asking what's the best way to live your life. Is it better to do self-discovery and figure out what brings out your best and try to become that person; or is it better to do world-discovery and figure out where the world is right now, and then find the way you can best fit into it?
The punchline was that so many people go the self-discovery route and find themselves constantly fighting the world around them, trying to transform it, or being disappointed by not finding where they fit, and expecting some entitlement or feeling the world owes them a better chance to live the perfect life ... Whereas people that go the world-discovery route find themselves perfectly matched to their time & place, and manage to flourish as if destiny is constantly on their side. I don't know how much to buy that argument; it seems like you should do both self
and world discovery and try to match the two. But he makes the point that people flourish when they're most in tune with the world around them. Every period has its hidden machinations and opportunities, and people flourish when they tap into them and have the mindset that they couldn't have been born at a better time.
Or Nietzsche probably summarized it best: amor fati, "love your fate". Rather than try to explain that, probably better to just let the man speak for himself:
Quote:
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it.
Sulphur on 3/10/2010 at 08:35
Oh, it'll be interesting all right. In an unnerving alway-looking-over-your-shoulder sort of way, if we let it happen.
SubJeff on 3/10/2010 at 09:25
ZB - having the same form factor means nothing. You're showing your blinkered thinking here. Airplanes have the same forum factor as the first planes. I knew you were being this blinkered, that's why i asked for an explanation.
I'm talking about the unified devices that smartphone have become; phones, music and video players, gps devices, radios, net connected, email machines, cloud storage portals, games machines, cameras, app enabled and so on. Form was the last thing on my mind.
