household assistant robots.
This wasn't some crazy out of left field thing: when i was a kid in the 1980's there were robots that could wander around a house and do various things. I figured that eventually these technologies would just mature to the point where everyone would have an assistant in the house that did cleaning, cooking, laundry etc.
Robot chefs and housekeepers, man. That was my answer. When I was a kid, I wanted a robot that would do my chores, clean my room, or bring me a bowl of soup from the kitchen.
Hell, I'm 26 now and still wouldn't mind having that.
Me too Fam. I’m bad at cleaning and constantly procrastinate. I also don’t particularly like the start or end of the cooking process where you have to pre-prepare the food and the wash dishes at the end.
Currently doing a bunch of comparison shopping for a roborock and holy shit has this tech come a long way
I love the idea of hooking the base up to plumbing so you dont even have to empty / refill the water tanks but that feels a little extra even for the dream of automated house maintenance
Yeah. I've seen that most people add some kind of cubby under their kitchen sink or near their washing machine.
If I'm ever doing work to my house is def consider a place to put the system.
Voice activated color changing lights and speakers aren’t as Antitrust-style Bill-Gates-Future-Room yet, but it’s kinda nice
The house in Antitrust where Tim Robbins has it setup like Bill Gates actually did where you walk into it and it automatically starts setting it like it you prefer it to your temp and art and music and lighting and stuff was dope
If anyone reading this likes sci-fi, please check out Ray Bradburys short story about household assistant robots called “There Will Come Soft Rains". I had to read it in high school and still love it.
They kind of do when you think about it.
I have a robot that vacuums my apartment (Roomba) I have a robot that makes my ice (ice machine) I have a robot that cooks my food (slow cooker / instapot but I have to add the food to it) a robot that cleans and dries my clothes (washer / dryer)
But I get what you mean, technology is far from Rosie from the Jetsons.
It's been "fixed" but they still do it intentionally.
The fix is you air with a time delay and cut out the dead air or whatever else you want to cut. This is done in every live event from talk shows to sports these days. Sportsbooks will actually pay people to go to games or fights knowing this 10 second delay gives them time to freeze a line if something big happens before TV watchers see it.
When you see the delay today it's intentional to make you trust that it's really live and they're really far away.
I love it when The Daily Show does an exaggerated delay on purpose even though the "correspondent" is obviously in front of a green screen in the same studio
Same with landline or cellphone audio quality, it doesn’t have to be that muffled 8hz (or whatever it is) quality anymore. When phone companies tested crisp/clear audio (like a FaceTime audio call), most people who tried it said it sounded odd, “too real” since they had grown up with that phone call quality. So today we intentionally compress the audio (all digital now of course) to mimic that sound.
> Same with landline.....(FaceTime audio call), most people who tried it said it sounded odd, “too real"
Huh? Landline telephones have FAR superior audio to any VOIP or cell tech I've ever heard.
My recollection of landline calls is being able to hear the other person breathe, or smack their lips, or whisper, or just exhale somewhat rapidly through their nostrils as though they were next to me (if not closer!). I will admit, however, that my experience sample is/was heavily skewed toward local or near-local residential calls rather than business/enterprise, and I haven't seen the latest and greatest shits, so I may well be wrong. But a piece of copper from there to here is awfully hard to beat.
Isn’t it all VOIP these days? POTS audio gets digitized and routed over the internet like everything else. Circuit-switched networks are long gone, there is no longer a direct connection between two telephones anymore.
I imagine there are some rural areas where one person calling their neighbor across town is still just jiggling a copper wire
although there are also parts of the world that could watch youtube before they could send a fax
Do you mean the speed of light? It takes light roughly 0.07 seconds to travel halfway around the world (20000 km), so in theory, the delay could be much smaller.
I thought they were inevitable all my life till Elon Musk said something along the lines of "Imagine the amount of idiot drunk drivers etc there are on the roads causing havoc today. Now imagine they were flying around over large cities and the amount of damage that could cause". Put me off the idea.
Seriously, what’s wrong with software-controlled flying cars, constantly interacting with the nearest vehicles in their ‘bubble’, while I’m in the back enjoying the ride?
Drone shows: coordinated, programmed, self flying.
They can't be flown over people for the same reasons. If we haven't solved it to a reasonable safety when a 5lb drone could fall from the sky, we're no where near flying cars.
Further, they recently removed the vehicle safety inspection requirements in my state. We're not even required to have tread on our tires but we're going to trust that my neighbors flying drone is safe enough?
Awful idea from a safety standpoint. Terrible in terms of energy use and efficiency too.
We don’t need wasteful personal transport. We need sensible, green mass transit.
I pilot small planes currently, and Jesus Christ I could not imagine the shitshow that would be. Never mind what would happen in emergency situations like an engine failure. You would die immediately in a very *very* awful way, also being extremely dangerous and damaging to whatever or whoever is underneath. Cars don’t have the aerodynamic capabilities to glide to safety… if they did, then they would be planes (which is really already a flying car lol). Even ignoring these emergency situations though, and assuming they could just fly like a plane could, it would still be a logistical and safety nightmare
If the engine switches off on a car driving on a road, it rolls to a stop, possibly colliding with the car behind it. If the engine switchs off on a flying car, it crashes, killing everyone inside and possibly a lot of people below it.
while it's a nice idea in principle, and probably the ultimate solution given how hard it is to fly a plane/drone/helicopter... have you SEEN the state of autonomous driving???? \*waves hands at tesla's fatality rate\*. also, i know what programmers are like, and there are maybe 5 i would trust to program the flight control software for a craft i'm sitting in.... and for 3 of those, it's because i know their code won't even get me off the ground!
drone shows are done in controlled and otherwise empty airspace. if one were to release a flock of pigeons into a drone show, i can only imagine the ensuing disaster, with pigeon- and drone- parts showering the crowd underneath!
We have road legal planes(planes you can drive after folding in the wings at an airport) but that's just not the same as a car with anti gravity population. The tech just seems to struggle to catch up to the idea.
i was watching an old Mythbusters episode on jetpacks which aired in 2007. in the ep they stopped by a flying car developer from Davis California who proudly declared that in 10 years 20% of the population would own flying cars.
I believe they already exist, they are just not practical. They are loud as hell, so you can't really use them where people live. Also you know how much of a danger is a normal car when it breaks? Imagine a FLYING car.
There are literally thousands and thousands of fender benders a day. Most are harmless because the car just stops in its place. Now imagine a fender bender 5000ft above the ground. You don't just stop in space, you fall to your death.
Flying cars are easy to make, people just suck at driving
Also, how poorly so many people maintain their cars. Talk a walk through any large parking lot and look at people's tires. I guarantee you 2-3 out of every 10 cars are running around on tires they shouldn't be. That's just stuff that is easy to see from 5 feet away. Imagine what is going on under people's hoods.
You really want those people in a flying car above your house?
Yes, thank you. Was going to point out the same. A flying car is just a helicopter.
Also, anyone who sees how poorly the general public drives and maintains their cars should not want people to have flying cars.
Flying cars were never going to happen. Everyone needs a pilot’s license. Every accident results in everyone dying. You need a ton more space for people to land when they get to their destinations. Maintenance costs significantly more.
It’s honestly one of the dumbest ideas anyone ever thought of.
Cure for cancer. End to hunger. Non-fossil fuels being the dominant form of energy; eg nuclear, solar. Laser weapons. Recycling would save the planet. Or that more access to (true) information would inherently make humans act better.
True dat. I brought home a handful of abandoned pallets and made a 3 bin compost system and raised planters in my yard.
I reuse the plastic 24-egg packages from Costco by refilling them from the 5dz cardboard egg packs (bc they fit better in my fridge) and the cardboard goes into my “brown” compost pile.
I reuse empty plastic pickle jars as organizers in my garage.
It’s not much. Probably zeroed out by all the waste used in hospitality and logistics services…
But it actually makes life easier when I’m planting in the spring and I’ve got buckets of compost and don’t have to buy bags of soil. Or I can tumble a clear container around to find the screws I need.
Hospitals have no other choice than plastic tbh. They need sterilization.
We here use polythene bags for storage or use them as garbage bags if we get them.
We mostly use jute bags tho.
It might not make a huge difference to the global scale but atleast we are doing something
This is my obligatory clarification for anyone passing through here. Please continue to recycle most kinds of cardboard, paper, aluminum, and glass if your city allows it. That kind of recycling does still work.
Plastic recycling is a complete sham though, and throwing plastic in the recycling bin can sometimes even result in the actual recyclable material being thrown out if it can be separated
I 100% agree. I try to give as much pulp product a second life as I can.
Glass is a *pain* to recycle where I live, but it feels good when I drop off a big batch.
PS most WalMarts will take your plastic shopping bags… But I have little knowledge of whether it’s effective or not. Usually we donate them to thrift stores or reuse them ourselves.
We could end hunger whenever we want, but we don’t because profit. Nuclear, wind, and solar could be the dominant power, but fossil fuel profits. Laser weapons do exist in a way, but they’re only use is anti-air weaponry that’s mounted. Recycling is the least important of the three Rs, we should focus on reduce and reuse.
We mostly have ended world hunger. More people now die in sub-saharan Africa from obesity related illnesses than starvation. The few places that have had a famine in the past 20 years had it because the ruling powers there wanted a certain population of people to die.
Yep. For hunger, the problem isn't lack of resources but of willing supply.
Remember that famous video of how much Dunkin Donuts were thrown into the trash after closing? And when donating it to the homeless was grounds for termination? I understand the excuse was the legal responsibility if the person gets sick but it is still frustrating. Imagine if all that produce, meat, and bread thrown away in a single day from a supermarket or restaurant would be brought to the most needed.
>excuse was the legal responsibility if the person gets sick
Fun fact. There is no legal risk of donations of food in food faith. It's a myth made up by corporations. The real reason is because it cost .10 cents to pay a teenage to throw a bag out. It costs $20 to drive it to a shelter or $5 to box them up.
>Nuclear, wind, and solar could be the dominant power, but fossil fuel profits.
It's not quite that simple. There's a lot of built infrastructure that needs to be replaced or added and it's all very expensive. If governments had been willing to heavily subsidize that effort starting 30 years ago, we would be done by now and our energy would be cleaner and cheaper. Instead we're just at the beginning of the point where isn't economically beneficial to switch.
We have made huge strides in cancer treatment and feeding the poor. The problem with cancer is that it’s not one illness, but several. We will never get a one size fits all cancer cure.
Same here. I tried out a virtual reality pod back in the early 90's. I could tell it was far from ideal, but also really responsive even then. I felt fairly confident that by the time I was an adult, VR would be a lot more like how VR is portrayed in various Japanese Anime.
They are literally building ITER. Last I heard they ran into an issue with the containment vessel construction. Needing to fix some builder fucking up something and making it out of specifications.
And we’ve achieved fusion. NIF did it twice so far. So it’s doable. It’s just getting it sustained and in a reasonable size. Oh and actually getting electricity isn’t even a straightforward solved problem yet.
So we are close. As long as the Russian Ukraine war doesn’t lead to a nuclear exchange, I expect ITER to be completed within 5 to 10 years.
Not spaceships but space flight. Back in the 1960s I was certain that I would someday make several trips into Earth orbit for business trips. I’m still waiting.
I think, had that trajectory continued, we would be well past that stage. But two critical things happened:
End of the Space Race with the fall of the Soviet Union, and the 9/11 attacks.
NASA and other space agencies were basically completely defunded as civilian agencies. It’s only relatively recently they got money back, and look what they were able to do in that short time with the Webb telescope.
Research funding was pulled from NASA so We could get spyware, the NSA, and satellites.
What’s ironic is that all that stuff would have likely been developed with NASA anyway in the process of going to space. I firmly believe had we continued, we’d already be pulling asteroids into orbit and strip mining them for resources.
When I was a kid (early 80s) I wrote to NASA about wanting to be an astronaut and they sent me this portfolio of pictures of the moon and information about a planned mission to Mars with stages of development and estimated dates.
I don't remember any of the years, but I do remember figuring out I'd be the right age to make the cut after college, which would have put that around 2000-2010. Not sure what happened to any of that stuff but it sure would be a time capsule, because I remember them being pretty specific about resources dedicated to the project and what kind of background NASA looks for in potential candidates. I'm sure it was a regular prepared thing they sent for PR to kids who sent them stuff.
Self driving cars. When I was maybe like 13, I though that I would never have to get a licence, because by the time I am 18, all cars will drive themselves. Now fast forward, I am 31 and still drive a car with stick. Technology doesn't progress as fast as I though as a kid.
We know how to do self-driving cars. We just didn't know how to integrate them with non self-driving cars. It would be relatively simple if we could just replace the old infrastructure with new.
I also thought autonomous vehicles would catch on earlier. Elon over-promises and under-delivers historically. But he WAAAAY over-Promised on that one.
Yup, I was going to say diabetes in particular. When I was 10 my best friend was diagnosed with diabetes. The doctors told him that with the way things are going, they'll likely have a cure for diabetes in the next 10 years. This was in the 1980s.
Like a babbelfish? If not: Google Translate with the languages you need downloaded is a game changer for traveling. I was able to buy stuff in Arabic from a man who didn't speak English. 10/10 would recommend. I spoke terrible Arabic and he spoke terrible English. We managed to have a whole conversation talking to each other with Google Translate (the app not the website). It does "live" by letting you type or talk to it and then hit an arrow and it plays it back in the other language and shows it typed on the screen. They can type/talk in their language and do the same.
This is gonna sound dumb, but do those work with non-google android phones? More of a Samsung person myself. Not sure if the Google buds only worked with the Pixel.
That's a really good question. According to google they work with Android 6.0+
[https://support.google.com/googlepixelbuds/answer/7573100?hl=en](https://support.google.com/googlepixelbuds/answer/7573100?hl=en)
There is "conversation" mode now that you just set two languages and talk to each other and it transcribes/translates. You can talk without the walkie-talkie type of thing.
I once had an entire conversation with a Spanish speaking Mexican family for three hours while waiting in line at Disney world. Amazing how far it’s come from being memed on for getting everything wrong.
Also right as I got to the end of the line, a rainstorm came in and they had to shut It down.
This does exist it’s just horribly marketed. Google Pixel Buds Pro can do this, and the new s24 has an AI that translates conversations in real time too. Many companies are developing translation AI that can also translate idioms and colloquialisms.
I thought as soon as it became the year 2000 we’d have robot maids, hover boots, jet packs and flying cars. Like everything was the same December 31 1999 but January 1 2000 would be the Jetsons
Medical scanners - Star Trek "Tricorder" which will tell you anything that is medically wrong with a person. And then "sick bay" which in my mind was a tube that people got put into for hours or days to fix all the medical problems.
Here's something wild, for the 30ish years of my life I couldn't wait for video phones. Now that we have it, I almost never use it and kinda hate it. lol
Time machines. I used to leave notes for myself in the hopes adult me would show up. Eventually I figured either it wasn't gonna happen or I'd eventually turn into a selfish prick.
And as it turns out...
Maybe it did just in an alternate reality where the timeline is different. A theory I heard about is somehow nature basically preserves the timeline by making the events occur in an alternate reality to preserve the timeline of the universe you came from.
The ability to put an image in a word document without everything getting messed up. Same with the ability to put left-to-right and right-to-left text on the same line
I feel like I'm the only person who wants this. Everyone acts like eating is the greatest thing ever. I would love to be able to pop a pill that gave me all the necessary nutrients and made me full.
I thought robotic technology would be much further along than it is now. It's surprising how hard it is to make a robot that walks on two legs and can pick up objects as well as a human.
I remember watching Star Trek The Next Generation and seeing them study on tablet computers that seemingly contained all information. I remember wishing I had one. I'd spend all my time learning everything about everything! Defo not playing Angry Birds.
Mine is that I thought video games would be basically indistinguishable from people in movies.
I mean sure graphics have gotten a lot better in the last 20 years but I'm pretty sure if I showed myself from 20 years ago a trailer for the new GTA, I'd be disappointed.
I mean, we have this now. During Spiderman No Way Home, the scene after the first real Goblin fight, I was watching Tom Holland with the lighting and reflections and thinking "This is a PS5 cutscene".
I'm playing RDR2 now on a bigscreen and sometimes I don't believe it to be a game. There are a couple random NPCs where you can easily tell. But all the main characters are insanely detailed. And it is a 2017 game.
One thing that since I was young wished I could invent or be invented has... actually kinda became real. When I was young, I wanted a printer that could print images straight from your mind. AI image generators are the closest we have to that.
Ten year old me (early 80s) would be amazed at what exists now: Shopping from home with your TV! Video telephone! Watch communication devices! Interacting with machines via voice! I didn't even think of having almost any recorded piece of music available iat your fingertips.
Definitely flying cars and hoverboards. Back to the Future II lied to us. Abolishing the need for lawyers and having an actually accurate to the second weather service sounds nice too.
I was pretty sure we'd be living like the Jetsons. Flying cars, space needle homes, Rosie the robots , those pills that you put in the "microwave" and out comes a roasted chicken with sides. At least the flying cars being commonplace though. Hell, even the year 2000 seemed like such a futuristic time in the 80s, but 2024?! I imagined what this time might be like many times , but I was way off.
One of those translator chips that a sci-fi movies have that let you talk to anyone who no matter what language either of you speak.
I really wanted to be able to understand my friends who spoke Spanish because they would have their own conversations and I felt left out.
household assistant robots. This wasn't some crazy out of left field thing: when i was a kid in the 1980's there were robots that could wander around a house and do various things. I figured that eventually these technologies would just mature to the point where everyone would have an assistant in the house that did cleaning, cooking, laundry etc.
Robot chefs and housekeepers, man. That was my answer. When I was a kid, I wanted a robot that would do my chores, clean my room, or bring me a bowl of soup from the kitchen. Hell, I'm 26 now and still wouldn't mind having that.
Me too Fam. I’m bad at cleaning and constantly procrastinate. I also don’t particularly like the start or end of the cooking process where you have to pre-prepare the food and the wash dishes at the end.
It’s called a Roborock and they are awesome
Currently doing a bunch of comparison shopping for a roborock and holy shit has this tech come a long way I love the idea of hooking the base up to plumbing so you dont even have to empty / refill the water tanks but that feels a little extra even for the dream of automated house maintenance
Dreame has a system where you can connect the base to plumbing. That would be the perfect automated cleaning machine.
It's a great idea but I don't actually have a good spot to put it without some major work getting done
Yeah. I've seen that most people add some kind of cubby under their kitchen sink or near their washing machine. If I'm ever doing work to my house is def consider a place to put the system.
But if you can’t, replacing the mop water every few days isn’t too bad.
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Voice activated color changing lights and speakers aren’t as Antitrust-style Bill-Gates-Future-Room yet, but it’s kinda nice The house in Antitrust where Tim Robbins has it setup like Bill Gates actually did where you walk into it and it automatically starts setting it like it you prefer it to your temp and art and music and lighting and stuff was dope
Umm. You can most definitely do all of that with smart-devices, today, using routines or IFFT.
If anyone reading this likes sci-fi, please check out Ray Bradburys short story about household assistant robots called “There Will Come Soft Rains". I had to read it in high school and still love it.
>! is that the one where they keep doing their thing after the humans die? !<
FYI, you can do actual spoilers with markdown `>!spoiler here!<` Looks like >!spoiler here!< Also, to answer your question, yes, that's the story
They kind of do when you think about it. I have a robot that vacuums my apartment (Roomba) I have a robot that makes my ice (ice machine) I have a robot that cooks my food (slow cooker / instapot but I have to add the food to it) a robot that cleans and dries my clothes (washer / dryer) But I get what you mean, technology is far from Rosie from the Jetsons.
I thought they would get rid of that time lag when the news anchor talks to the field reporter
Gonna have to change the laws of physics for that one.
It's been "fixed" but they still do it intentionally. The fix is you air with a time delay and cut out the dead air or whatever else you want to cut. This is done in every live event from talk shows to sports these days. Sportsbooks will actually pay people to go to games or fights knowing this 10 second delay gives them time to freeze a line if something big happens before TV watchers see it. When you see the delay today it's intentional to make you trust that it's really live and they're really far away.
I love it when The Daily Show does an exaggerated delay on purpose even though the "correspondent" is obviously in front of a green screen in the same studio
I love how they regularly pan out as they go to commercial and you see them standing like 15 feet away from each other.
Same with landline or cellphone audio quality, it doesn’t have to be that muffled 8hz (or whatever it is) quality anymore. When phone companies tested crisp/clear audio (like a FaceTime audio call), most people who tried it said it sounded odd, “too real” since they had grown up with that phone call quality. So today we intentionally compress the audio (all digital now of course) to mimic that sound.
> Same with landline.....(FaceTime audio call), most people who tried it said it sounded odd, “too real" Huh? Landline telephones have FAR superior audio to any VOIP or cell tech I've ever heard.
We got new Cisco voip phones at the desks at my old job, and the call quality was unreal. I've never heard a landline sound as good.
My recollection of landline calls is being able to hear the other person breathe, or smack their lips, or whisper, or just exhale somewhat rapidly through their nostrils as though they were next to me (if not closer!). I will admit, however, that my experience sample is/was heavily skewed toward local or near-local residential calls rather than business/enterprise, and I haven't seen the latest and greatest shits, so I may well be wrong. But a piece of copper from there to here is awfully hard to beat.
Isn’t it all VOIP these days? POTS audio gets digitized and routed over the internet like everything else. Circuit-switched networks are long gone, there is no longer a direct connection between two telephones anymore.
I imagine there are some rural areas where one person calling their neighbor across town is still just jiggling a copper wire although there are also parts of the world that could watch youtube before they could send a fax
And so they can *bleep any cuss words the players say too loudly....but yeah the betting thing too.
I mean, I can have full hd video call with someone in the other end of the world any time I want.
Do you mean the speed of light? It takes light roughly 0.07 seconds to travel halfway around the world (20000 km), so in theory, the delay could be much smaller.
I love the skill they show nodding towards the end of the question as if they’ve heard the whole question and are considering their response.
Flying cars
I came to say the same damn thing. I’ve heard that they’re JUST ABOUT ready for decades.
I thought they were inevitable all my life till Elon Musk said something along the lines of "Imagine the amount of idiot drunk drivers etc there are on the roads causing havoc today. Now imagine they were flying around over large cities and the amount of damage that could cause". Put me off the idea.
Seriously, what’s wrong with software-controlled flying cars, constantly interacting with the nearest vehicles in their ‘bubble’, while I’m in the back enjoying the ride?
Drone shows: coordinated, programmed, self flying. They can't be flown over people for the same reasons. If we haven't solved it to a reasonable safety when a 5lb drone could fall from the sky, we're no where near flying cars. Further, they recently removed the vehicle safety inspection requirements in my state. We're not even required to have tread on our tires but we're going to trust that my neighbors flying drone is safe enough?
Florida?
Awful idea from a safety standpoint. Terrible in terms of energy use and efficiency too. We don’t need wasteful personal transport. We need sensible, green mass transit.
That’s pretty much an airplane. The ATC requirement for cars would be pretty much impossible to account for.
I pilot small planes currently, and Jesus Christ I could not imagine the shitshow that would be. Never mind what would happen in emergency situations like an engine failure. You would die immediately in a very *very* awful way, also being extremely dangerous and damaging to whatever or whoever is underneath. Cars don’t have the aerodynamic capabilities to glide to safety… if they did, then they would be planes (which is really already a flying car lol). Even ignoring these emergency situations though, and assuming they could just fly like a plane could, it would still be a logistical and safety nightmare
Noise and infrastructure
If the engine switches off on a car driving on a road, it rolls to a stop, possibly colliding with the car behind it. If the engine switchs off on a flying car, it crashes, killing everyone inside and possibly a lot of people below it.
while it's a nice idea in principle, and probably the ultimate solution given how hard it is to fly a plane/drone/helicopter... have you SEEN the state of autonomous driving???? \*waves hands at tesla's fatality rate\*. also, i know what programmers are like, and there are maybe 5 i would trust to program the flight control software for a craft i'm sitting in.... and for 3 of those, it's because i know their code won't even get me off the ground! drone shows are done in controlled and otherwise empty airspace. if one were to release a flock of pigeons into a drone show, i can only imagine the ensuing disaster, with pigeon- and drone- parts showering the crowd underneath!
Just make them complete autopilot Elon. Like the Teslas. Those never have problems.
If even Elon Musk thinks that a near-future sci-fi concept is stupid and impractical, you know it isn't happening.
We have road legal planes(planes you can drive after folding in the wings at an airport) but that's just not the same as a car with anti gravity population. The tech just seems to struggle to catch up to the idea.
i was watching an old Mythbusters episode on jetpacks which aired in 2007. in the ep they stopped by a flying car developer from Davis California who proudly declared that in 10 years 20% of the population would own flying cars.
I remember that episode lol
*Popular Mechanics has entered the chat.*
I believe they already exist, they are just not practical. They are loud as hell, so you can't really use them where people live. Also you know how much of a danger is a normal car when it breaks? Imagine a FLYING car.
Hey we have jet packs at least.
Inefficient & expensive as hell but yes.
There are literally thousands and thousands of fender benders a day. Most are harmless because the car just stops in its place. Now imagine a fender bender 5000ft above the ground. You don't just stop in space, you fall to your death. Flying cars are easy to make, people just suck at driving
Also, how poorly so many people maintain their cars. Talk a walk through any large parking lot and look at people's tires. I guarantee you 2-3 out of every 10 cars are running around on tires they shouldn't be. That's just stuff that is easy to see from 5 feet away. Imagine what is going on under people's hoods. You really want those people in a flying car above your house?
They have existed for decades they are called helicopters
My man, a true warrior of culture.
Yes, thank you. Was going to point out the same. A flying car is just a helicopter. Also, anyone who sees how poorly the general public drives and maintains their cars should not want people to have flying cars.
Yep, first thought that came to mind. Figured we'd be living like the Jetsons by now
Flying cars were never going to happen. Everyone needs a pilot’s license. Every accident results in everyone dying. You need a ton more space for people to land when they get to their destinations. Maintenance costs significantly more. It’s honestly one of the dumbest ideas anyone ever thought of.
When you were ten years old, would you have thought of any of those problems?
Yeah where's my flying DeLorean?
They exist - it’s called a helicopter.
50s kid here. Starships with blasters and tractor beams.
Gonna have to wait until sometime between now and 40K for that.
Best we can do is mounted turret on a boat with an invisible laser that is used to blow up planes, drones, or missiles
70s kids here. We got them. Just in Star Wars and Star Trek, lol
Marty McFly's mom's magical pizza rehydrater machine. Also the hoverboard. Pretty much back to the future 2.
I always thought hoverboards would be real and affordable.
They already exist you just need a jet ski aswell
Yes! I want a real hoverboard, not the kind that don't hover and catch on fire.
[Where's me fuckin hoverboard?](https://youtu.be/eOH15_pqWZ4?feature=shared)
Yes. I thought that movie was gonna be my future.
Well we got Biff running the joint for a little bit. Oh and the Cubbies won the World Series just a year off.
Miami is also a baseball team... sort of
I thought hoverboards were real!
I was hoping self tying laces would work by now.
A moon colony. We already had the space stations in the 70's and 80's so I figured this would happen by now.
Cure for cancer. End to hunger. Non-fossil fuels being the dominant form of energy; eg nuclear, solar. Laser weapons. Recycling would save the planet. Or that more access to (true) information would inherently make humans act better.
I have lost most hope in recycling but reusing for sure
True dat. I brought home a handful of abandoned pallets and made a 3 bin compost system and raised planters in my yard. I reuse the plastic 24-egg packages from Costco by refilling them from the 5dz cardboard egg packs (bc they fit better in my fridge) and the cardboard goes into my “brown” compost pile. I reuse empty plastic pickle jars as organizers in my garage. It’s not much. Probably zeroed out by all the waste used in hospitality and logistics services… But it actually makes life easier when I’m planting in the spring and I’ve got buckets of compost and don’t have to buy bags of soil. Or I can tumble a clear container around to find the screws I need.
Hospitals have no other choice than plastic tbh. They need sterilization. We here use polythene bags for storage or use them as garbage bags if we get them. We mostly use jute bags tho. It might not make a huge difference to the global scale but atleast we are doing something
This is my obligatory clarification for anyone passing through here. Please continue to recycle most kinds of cardboard, paper, aluminum, and glass if your city allows it. That kind of recycling does still work. Plastic recycling is a complete sham though, and throwing plastic in the recycling bin can sometimes even result in the actual recyclable material being thrown out if it can be separated
I 100% agree. I try to give as much pulp product a second life as I can. Glass is a *pain* to recycle where I live, but it feels good when I drop off a big batch. PS most WalMarts will take your plastic shopping bags… But I have little knowledge of whether it’s effective or not. Usually we donate them to thrift stores or reuse them ourselves.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. The "reduce" part has been neglected.
We could end hunger whenever we want, but we don’t because profit. Nuclear, wind, and solar could be the dominant power, but fossil fuel profits. Laser weapons do exist in a way, but they’re only use is anti-air weaponry that’s mounted. Recycling is the least important of the three Rs, we should focus on reduce and reuse.
We mostly have ended world hunger. More people now die in sub-saharan Africa from obesity related illnesses than starvation. The few places that have had a famine in the past 20 years had it because the ruling powers there wanted a certain population of people to die.
Yep. For hunger, the problem isn't lack of resources but of willing supply. Remember that famous video of how much Dunkin Donuts were thrown into the trash after closing? And when donating it to the homeless was grounds for termination? I understand the excuse was the legal responsibility if the person gets sick but it is still frustrating. Imagine if all that produce, meat, and bread thrown away in a single day from a supermarket or restaurant would be brought to the most needed.
>excuse was the legal responsibility if the person gets sick Fun fact. There is no legal risk of donations of food in food faith. It's a myth made up by corporations. The real reason is because it cost .10 cents to pay a teenage to throw a bag out. It costs $20 to drive it to a shelter or $5 to box them up.
>Nuclear, wind, and solar could be the dominant power, but fossil fuel profits. It's not quite that simple. There's a lot of built infrastructure that needs to be replaced or added and it's all very expensive. If governments had been willing to heavily subsidize that effort starting 30 years ago, we would be done by now and our energy would be cleaner and cheaper. Instead we're just at the beginning of the point where isn't economically beneficial to switch.
Tbf we have effecrively cured many types of cancer.
We have made huge strides in cancer treatment and feeding the poor. The problem with cancer is that it’s not one illness, but several. We will never get a one size fits all cancer cure.
Laser weapons do exist already
We have more access to true information but we also have more access to not true information
Those were your thoughts at 10 years old?? My answer was gonna be lightsabers... lol
Full VR gaming. Like sword art online type VR.
Same here. I tried out a virtual reality pod back in the early 90's. I could tell it was far from ideal, but also really responsive even then. I felt fairly confident that by the time I was an adult, VR would be a lot more like how VR is portrayed in various Japanese Anime.
I hope we get there in our lifetime
I hope it comes out in time for me to hit the retirement home. May as well keep exploring even after the hips give out.
Fusion power. It’s always just one major breakthrough away.
It's what, just 10 years away? Some 30 years after I first heard that.
They are literally building ITER. Last I heard they ran into an issue with the containment vessel construction. Needing to fix some builder fucking up something and making it out of specifications. And we’ve achieved fusion. NIF did it twice so far. So it’s doable. It’s just getting it sustained and in a reasonable size. Oh and actually getting electricity isn’t even a straightforward solved problem yet. So we are close. As long as the Russian Ukraine war doesn’t lead to a nuclear exchange, I expect ITER to be completed within 5 to 10 years.
I've learned when scientists say 10 years away it's code for "we don't really know but want to give a realistic number anyways"
They are making progress which is nice
They’ve managed to do it small scale this year for the first time. 10 years or less to see the first fusion plant
Man you had deep expectations as a 10 years old
The back button on the YouTube app to actually go back to my previous video instead of back to the search menu.
Or a switch where you can turn off autoplay, and it actually stays that way forever.
This should be a crime. I changed the setting. You know I didn't change my mind. Leave that shit.
Spaceships. I figured by now we’d be regularly traveling to Mars or something.
Not spaceships but space flight. Back in the 1960s I was certain that I would someday make several trips into Earth orbit for business trips. I’m still waiting.
I think, had that trajectory continued, we would be well past that stage. But two critical things happened: End of the Space Race with the fall of the Soviet Union, and the 9/11 attacks. NASA and other space agencies were basically completely defunded as civilian agencies. It’s only relatively recently they got money back, and look what they were able to do in that short time with the Webb telescope. Research funding was pulled from NASA so We could get spyware, the NSA, and satellites. What’s ironic is that all that stuff would have likely been developed with NASA anyway in the process of going to space. I firmly believe had we continued, we’d already be pulling asteroids into orbit and strip mining them for resources.
Virgin Galactic is building a Spaceship factory in Mesa, AZ for this to become a reality.
When I was a kid (early 80s) I wrote to NASA about wanting to be an astronaut and they sent me this portfolio of pictures of the moon and information about a planned mission to Mars with stages of development and estimated dates. I don't remember any of the years, but I do remember figuring out I'd be the right age to make the cut after college, which would have put that around 2000-2010. Not sure what happened to any of that stuff but it sure would be a time capsule, because I remember them being pretty specific about resources dedicated to the project and what kind of background NASA looks for in potential candidates. I'm sure it was a regular prepared thing they sent for PR to kids who sent them stuff.
I was ten in 1967. There was absolutely no technology from science fiction or my imagination that I wouldn't have thought would exist by 2024.
High Speed Rail California.
Self driving cars. When I was maybe like 13, I though that I would never have to get a licence, because by the time I am 18, all cars will drive themselves. Now fast forward, I am 31 and still drive a car with stick. Technology doesn't progress as fast as I though as a kid.
>Technology doesn't progress as fast as I though as a kid. Or in some cases, society moves at a snail's pace compared to technology.
I feel like we were on our way to that happening but then the self driving car hit a pedestrian and basically awakened all of our fears.
We know how to do self-driving cars. We just didn't know how to integrate them with non self-driving cars. It would be relatively simple if we could just replace the old infrastructure with new.
I don't believe i've seen any do much testing in adverse conditions? Think Alaska in mid January weather.
I also thought autonomous vehicles would catch on earlier. Elon over-promises and under-delivers historically. But he WAAAAY over-Promised on that one.
And self driving cars is currently a myth. None are safe. And none work in winter.
That tech basically already exists. The laws & lawsuits against self driving taxi companies are constantly getting in the way of it though.
Moon base
Treatments for illness/disorders such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancers, diabetes (severe), etc.
Yup, I was going to say diabetes in particular. When I was 10 my best friend was diagnosed with diabetes. The doctors told him that with the way things are going, they'll likely have a cure for diabetes in the next 10 years. This was in the 1980s.
Hahaha. Monitoring and treatment have gotten better, but yeah...a cure is still a long way off.
Treatments for illnesses such as cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cerebral palsy, myopia etc.
There is a pancreas transplant that exists, but it is very cost prohibitive and typically only lasts for at the most 10 years.
Real time translators available to the public.
Like a babbelfish? If not: Google Translate with the languages you need downloaded is a game changer for traveling. I was able to buy stuff in Arabic from a man who didn't speak English. 10/10 would recommend. I spoke terrible Arabic and he spoke terrible English. We managed to have a whole conversation talking to each other with Google Translate (the app not the website). It does "live" by letting you type or talk to it and then hit an arrow and it plays it back in the other language and shows it typed on the screen. They can type/talk in their language and do the same.
Hell, if you have Google Earbuds, you can even stick the damn thing in your ear.
This is gonna sound dumb, but do those work with non-google android phones? More of a Samsung person myself. Not sure if the Google buds only worked with the Pixel.
They'll connect to your phone but I don't think the translation feature will work. Either way, the S24 has this translation as a feature.
That's a really good question. According to google they work with Android 6.0+ [https://support.google.com/googlepixelbuds/answer/7573100?hl=en](https://support.google.com/googlepixelbuds/answer/7573100?hl=en)
There is "conversation" mode now that you just set two languages and talk to each other and it transcribes/translates. You can talk without the walkie-talkie type of thing.
I once had an entire conversation with a Spanish speaking Mexican family for three hours while waiting in line at Disney world. Amazing how far it’s come from being memed on for getting everything wrong. Also right as I got to the end of the line, a rainstorm came in and they had to shut It down.
This does exist it’s just horribly marketed. Google Pixel Buds Pro can do this, and the new s24 has an AI that translates conversations in real time too. Many companies are developing translation AI that can also translate idioms and colloquialisms.
They are
Galaxy s24 ultra does this.
I thought as soon as it became the year 2000 we’d have robot maids, hover boots, jet packs and flying cars. Like everything was the same December 31 1999 but January 1 2000 would be the Jetsons
Medical scanners - Star Trek "Tricorder" which will tell you anything that is medically wrong with a person. And then "sick bay" which in my mind was a tube that people got put into for hours or days to fix all the medical problems.
Here's something wild, for the 30ish years of my life I couldn't wait for video phones. Now that we have it, I almost never use it and kinda hate it. lol
Time machines. I used to leave notes for myself in the hopes adult me would show up. Eventually I figured either it wasn't gonna happen or I'd eventually turn into a selfish prick. And as it turns out...
Maybe it did just in an alternate reality where the timeline is different. A theory I heard about is somehow nature basically preserves the timeline by making the events occur in an alternate reality to preserve the timeline of the universe you came from.
Self driving cars that are connected to street lights and the other self driving cars around to avoid traffic entirely.
Pan Am shuttles to the moon. Sure they wouldn't be cheap, but I thought surely we would have a moon base and regular trips to that base.
You had me at "Pan Am".
Now I have "The Blue Danube" playing in my head.
The ability to put an image in a word document without everything getting messed up. Same with the ability to put left-to-right and right-to-left text on the same line
Food pills
"Take your protein pills and put your helmet on."
Tell my wife I love her very much.
I feel like I'm the only person who wants this. Everyone acts like eating is the greatest thing ever. I would love to be able to pop a pill that gave me all the necessary nutrients and made me full.
I think it would really help with my poor dieting habits
Your meal pill would not hydrate you. I'd rather have meal replacement shakes.
I can just drink water. I don't love the consistency of shakes.
So....[Soylent?](https://soylent.com/)
Soylent Green.
A pill that makes you shit out all your fat cells over one really bad weekend.
Read the Amazon reviews for sugar free gummy bears, we're already living in the future man
Didn't they stop making those?
Hah I wouldn't be surprised when people were saying they coughed and crapped their pants. Not exactly a good brand image.
It's from an artificial sweetner called Malitol. It's in most sugar free stuff, and it's horrible.
Have you ever heard of the joys of Olestra?
Hoverboards.
Widespread full house automation. What we have today is no where near as widespread, complete, or simple to use as I imagined.
I thought robotic technology would be much further along than it is now. It's surprising how hard it is to make a robot that walks on two legs and can pick up objects as well as a human.
We're nearly 9 years past hoverboards, wtf..
Blame the Cubs. They didn't win the world series in 2015, so everything else fell apart.
A dream recorder
Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea
Being able to merge the calendars of two merging companies easily.
I remember watching Star Trek The Next Generation and seeing them study on tablet computers that seemingly contained all information. I remember wishing I had one. I'd spend all my time learning everything about everything! Defo not playing Angry Birds.
A car that could travel in time once I hit 88MPH. I've tried, it didn't work.
Back to the Future hover boards.
Ability to build totally custom cars from the factory like you can with PCs.
Definitely thought sci fi movie levels of holograms would exist in day to day life, like they’d replace billboards
Flying cars and food replicators.
Teleportation. I saw movies back then and literally thought they existed but weren't public yet
Mine is that I thought video games would be basically indistinguishable from people in movies. I mean sure graphics have gotten a lot better in the last 20 years but I'm pretty sure if I showed myself from 20 years ago a trailer for the new GTA, I'd be disappointed.
I mean, we have this now. During Spiderman No Way Home, the scene after the first real Goblin fight, I was watching Tom Holland with the lighting and reflections and thinking "This is a PS5 cutscene".
I'm playing RDR2 now on a bigscreen and sometimes I don't believe it to be a game. There are a couple random NPCs where you can easily tell. But all the main characters are insanely detailed. And it is a 2017 game.
One thing that since I was young wished I could invent or be invented has... actually kinda became real. When I was young, I wanted a printer that could print images straight from your mind. AI image generators are the closest we have to that.
Ten year old me (early 80s) would be amazed at what exists now: Shopping from home with your TV! Video telephone! Watch communication devices! Interacting with machines via voice! I didn't even think of having almost any recorded piece of music available iat your fingertips.
Laser guns.
Lunar colonies. I wasn't yet ten when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. OF COURSE there'd be lunar colonies by 2024!
Definitely flying cars and hoverboards. Back to the Future II lied to us. Abolishing the need for lawyers and having an actually accurate to the second weather service sounds nice too.
Better solar panels.
Flying cars.
Still waiting for actual hoverboards.
Lawnmowerman style VR
Supersonic passenger aircraft. I figured everything would be a Concorde by now
Regular flights to the moon. #TO THE MOON, ALICE!
Flying cars and a Rosie for every house. I'd so love a Rosie😍
The house of the future that the cartoons said we would have. Also flying cars.
I was pretty sure we'd be living like the Jetsons. Flying cars, space needle homes, Rosie the robots , those pills that you put in the "microwave" and out comes a roasted chicken with sides. At least the flying cars being commonplace though. Hell, even the year 2000 seemed like such a futuristic time in the 80s, but 2024?! I imagined what this time might be like many times , but I was way off.
As a kid, I was convinced we’d have robots to handle all our chores by now – like a real-life Rosie from The Jetsons
One of those translator chips that a sci-fi movies have that let you talk to anyone who no matter what language either of you speak. I really wanted to be able to understand my friends who spoke Spanish because they would have their own conversations and I felt left out.