Saturday, May 20, 2006
I got a groovy new pink cell phone for my birthday. Slim with a big screen, it accesses the Internet, checks my e-mail, lets me talk and text and use a day planner. It comes with a matching wireless pink earpiece that lets me use voice commands to call people. So I started thinking about how current technology has surpassed the technology we saw in science fiction. My earpice works a lot like a Star Trek communicator pin from Next Generation. Only, I think it does more. I was talking to a friend about how I thought the Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy movie came out much too late since now you really can access nearly all the information in the known universe on palm-sized computers that you carry with you.
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3 comments:
Sounds like a great present, Cyn!
As for current technology having surpassed sci-fi, doesn't that seem to apply only to wireless communication devices? Where are the hover cars? Where's the consumer space travel? For that matter, what happened to the space program? What happened to the futuristic promises of the 1965 world's fair? The only time I feel like I'm living in the future - and it is, after all, 2006, is in the presence of cell phones.
About the space program - when doing research last night about life in space, I came across something about plans for a new NASA moon and Mars program. Ok, maybe this is old news to anyone better informed than I am, as it started in 2004. And who knows when, if ever, it will actually happen.
Tim often demands to know where his flying car is. But I think they actually do have hover vehicles, it just that they aren't particularly practical. Neither are the flying cars. Can you imagine traffic control in five directions? And instead of silver jumpsuits, people are wearing bellbottoms and peasant blouses.
Yes, I can imagine said traffic control, because I have seen Corascant, the city-planet in Star Wars Episodes I-III. (Ok, I usually get the spellings of things like that wrong, to be corrected by a fan more devoted than I am. I once spelled Major Kira's given name Norice instead of Neurys. Goodness.)
As for the bellbottoms & midriff tops... don't get me started. I hated the 70's the first time around. I look horrible in hip huggers but thought the problem was my body and not the $#!@# style, and I don't appreciate those styles coming back! That's one aspect of the future I did not anticipate, although the origination of miniskirts in the 20's should have been a clue - I did not expect the future to resemble the past!
At least "That 70's Show" is finally coming to an end.
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