
Today's real life is yesterday's science fiction. - raldi
http://www.reddit.com/r/raldi/comments/i91og/todays_real_life_is_yesterdays_science_fiction/
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burgerbrain
I enjoy on occasion pointing out to people how the worlds most popular drink
is a rather acidic stimulant infused with CO2 that comes in pressurized
aluminium canisters.

The present is _weird_.

~~~
cantbecool
Coffee?

~~~
shii
What kind of coffee are you drinking that comes in aluminum canisters?
Genuinely interested.

~~~
megablast
Very common in Japan, where you can buy all manor of drinks from vending
machines on the side of the road, everywhere you go.

~~~
TheOnly92
I've seen not only drinks but food as well. Even soup and gold can be bought
through vending machines.

~~~
masklinn
And underwear.

~~~
yid
_used_ underwear

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to3m
Must admit, the example story did not impress. Today is not exactly science
fiction, compared to 1995, more like a better version of it that ran with some
stuff. You'd have to go a bit further back, I think, for today to truly appear
to be science fiction. Putting myself in my 1995 shoes, on reading this story,
I'd probably have sniffed and gone,

"Surely there will be something better in the future than a Psion Series 3
with a colour TFT (like on my dad's old laptop) that runs Dragon Dictate and
links up to GPS? This story is so unimaginative.

"The author can't even be bothered to invent new musicians. Trent Reznor!
Hahaha. Like he'll still be popular. What next, the Rolling Stones? They
should do what they did in Dune - set the story in 20011, then make shit up.
Much less embarrassing.

"Besides, it isn't even vaguely realistic. Americans... in hatchbacks?"

~~~
to3m
To save my post from seeming too sarky, my 1990 self would probably have been
impressed. 1992 1/2... maybe. 1995... not really.

In 1995, I had a pocket computer. I had heard of GPS. I had used Dragon
Dictate. My dad's OLD laptop was good enough to play Doom on, using the
inbuilt screen. My mother had a mobile phone, my father had a mobile phone.
(Not as practical as a carphone, but they had them nonetheless.)

From my perspective... 1995-2011 was hardly science fiction, though of course
there's always time for (say) 1996-2012 to count ;)

Progress, yes.

"Science fiction"? Well... personally, I set the bar for that rather higher.

~~~
ugh
Well, “the future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.”

I was seven in 1995 so I don’t remember all that much but we had no computer†,
no VCR and certainly no mobile phones. My dad got a car phone for his company
car around that time. I think we also just got our first cordless phone around
the time (the batteries were constantly empty and it never worked quite right)
and we bought our first CD player two years earlier. I sometimes played Tetris
on my aunt’s Game Boy and Super Mario Kart as well as SimCity on a friend’s
SNES.

You seem like a terribly early adopter, even of technologies that in the end
went nowhere. I would be surprised if you experience were in any way typical.

—

† Not just at home but also at work: My dad is a construction engineer
responsible for all water supply projects in a small to mid sized engineering
firm and didn’t routinely use a computer for his work in 1995. I always
thought that was kind of funny considering he did learn how to program
(rudimentary, mostly for structural analysis) at college in the late 70s and
early 80s.

~~~
to3m
Well, I live in the UK, so maybe things were different? I was under the
impression we were pretty backward round here, though. I was 18 in 1995, so I
(think I) remember it fairly well.

It's true that my dad was always a bit of an early adopter. We had a VCR in
1983, and a CD player in 1986, and a home computer in 1982 - now all that WAS
unusual.

But that was then. By 1995, all par for the course. Almost everybody I knew
had a VCR, pretty much everybody had a CD player, and basically everybody had
a computer (and it was always a PC - very different from even 2-3 years
previously). I wasn't even the only person I knew to have a computer small
enough to fit in my pocket (and I think my Psion was old hat by 1995 anyway).

Mobile phones weren't terribly common in 1995, but nor were they particularly
rare, and people were certainly familiar with the notion. (I vaguely remember
mobile phones being used in the early series of the X-Files, and that this was
noted in the press at the time.) By late 1998 (if I remember correctly?)
pretty much everybody had one, so even if 1995 is too early for mobile phones
to truly count as common technology it is not a stretch to class them as being
common "around that sort of time".

I stand by my statement: you have to start further back than 1995, if 2011 is
to seem like science fiction! Even if you're going to call me on my privileged
upbringing (I blame the parents...), and perhaps suggest that this was not the
case for the majority of the population (you tell me...), the technologies
were common enough and well-known enough, that there's not enough difference
between 2011 and 1995 to count!

Go back ten more years, maybe.

(But then, maybe not. Perhaps if I had been 18 in 1985, today would seem like
a smooth transition? Hard to say. But I'll stand by my statements, from my
perspective, which I'm afraid is the only one I've got ;)

~~~
ugh
Very few people I knew in 1995 had a computer. We got our first one Christmas
1998 and a 56k modem in January 2000. Everyone had a VCR, we were pretty much
the exception so that doesn’t really count. But the mobile phones of 1995
really are a far cry from the mobile phones of 2011. It’s ridiculous to even
compare. The concept of calling everywhere might have been possible in 1995,
the concept of using a smartphone? Our family, by the way, got their first
mobile phone in 2001. A cheap Nokia 3410 that could do nothing.

------
ChuckMcM
People ask me why I like to keep around some old computers. My response is
that you can't see where you are going unless you know where you have been.
This is my version of 'those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it'
(or the more modern 'repatent it')

------
cowboyhero
It's a good post and it reminds me a little bit of those old tv commercials
from Qwest and AT&T about how you'll be able to "watch any movie ever made in
any language" in a dumpy roadside motel or 'send a fax from the beach' that
were run in the 1990s.

But that's not really science fiction to me. That's just iterative and
incremental improvements on a global network.

There's not a whole helluva lot functionally different between Windows 3.1 and
Windows Whatever (in that they're all WiMPs).

There's not a whole helluva lot different between a Mac Performa and the iMac
I'm using to type this message (drive bay, hard drive, ram, cpu, etc. Similar
designs and similar interfaces).

Yeah, Google Maps and GPS are neat but a real "the future is now!" moment to
me would be man walking on Mars or being able to fly from LA to Paris in 45
minutes.

~~~
bradleyland
Yes, and running a marathon is just putting one foot in front of the other
over and over. Everything is incremental. It's how we get from "here to there"
in every conceivable sense, but it's ok to step back sometimes and marvel at
how far we've come. Just because we're not colonizing planets doesn't diminish
all of our other accomplishments.

The glass is half full. I'm certain of it.

~~~
wging
This glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

------
russell
I marvel how the world changed during my mother's lifetime, 1910-1999. Her
family was the first to get electricity in the town and her uncle was the
first to get a car. It died after a couple of thousand miles. No one had told
him to change the oil. Airplanes were in their infancy. If you wanted to go to
Europe, you took a steamer, but of course no one she knew ever did anything
like that. In her lifetime she saw transcontinental telephones, radio,
antibiotics (she was a nurse), nuclear weapons, airliners, television, the
interstate highway system, 4 states added to the union, a man on the moon,
computers, and the internet, although she never did try that.

I started reading science fiction in the 1960s and the authors didnt come
close to reality. Heinlein wrote a novel that featured an automatic drafting
machine, but it was a robot, not autodesk. The societies were often quite
dystopian, American dictatorships or theocracies. An the flying cars,
automated households, and colonies on mars never came to pass.

~~~
candeira
I tell a similar story for my grandfather, who lived pretty much the same
years as your mother. When my grandfather was born, his father's business was
a horse changing station for the Madrid-Bilbao stagecoach. Eventually my
great-grandfather sent his older kid (my grandfather's brother) to France to
study cars at Renault, so he could turn the business into an automobile repair
shop and service station. In the 70s my grandfather would fly to the US on a
Jumbo jet. From stagecoach to trasatlantic flight in one generation.

Heinlein's novel: I think you are talking of Door Into Summer. It also
contained a precursor to the Roomba. It was called something like the
Mechanical Maid, but the description is of a vacuum-cleaning creeper.

------
DanielBMarkham
On one hand the present is so strange as to be beyond sci-fi.

On the other hand, most everything he mentions is internally-directed tech:
computers get smarter and we are more and more self-absorbed in them. "Big"
sic-fi, like jet packs and field propulsion are still nowhere in sight.

So yes, if you want to plug a computer into your neocortex in 20 years and
become one with the collective, life is looking awesomely like sic-fi. But if
you want to visit the moons of Saturn, or have a Mr. Fusion power your time-
machine car, it ain't happening.

~~~
Murkin
The strange thing is how some things took a huge leap (3g Internet on a
cigarette pack sized computer with GPS) while others are stagnant (my car is,
comparatively, barely changed).

The trick is to guess what will stay the same and what will jump eons forward.

They have been speaking about nano-tube based building materials, alternative
fuel and better batteries for decades now.

And then you have Kinect..

~~~
gte910h
My car gets 50-55 MPG and could auto-route me places if I want. It starts when
I shove a piece of plastic in in and push a button. It makes no noise below
10mph, later models of this car make no noise below higher speeds.

My car has changed loads.

~~~
robinduckett
I drive an Audi A1 Petrol with no electric hybrid motor and get more than 55
MPG, which begs the question, why do you drive your car like a maniac?

P.S. A friend of mine drives a Citroen C1 Petrol and gets 70MPG regularly,
sure it's a tiny car, but still, I don't see how 50-55 MPG is so mind blowing.

~~~
gte910h
That's not typical of your car Robin. <http://www.fuelly.com/car/audi/a1/2011>

I see you're Welsh(or at least living there), Perhaps you're using imperial
MPG in your post? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_MPG>

I'm using american gallons. Multiply your figures times 0.83 to get american
gal.

In imperial gallons, my figures are 60-66 MPG-imp.

If you were using american gallons, here are some substantive things that
probably offer a difference or two in our relative inefficiencies:

I live in the southeastern US (Atlanta, GA), which is basically a sauna for
150+ days a year (today is 82% humidity, with a "Feels like" temp of 37 C/99
F), so constantly run the air (which is actually more efficient than opening
the windows for my particular car, a 2005 Toyota Prius).

The Audi A1 is a mini-cooper sized car (which my wife has). My car (a prius)
is a mid-sized sedan (comparable in size to a Ford Fusion, which gets 22 MPG
City/32 MPG highway). You can easily fit 2.5 as "person" and 4x as much stuff
in my car as you can hers.

I take very short trips (living in Midtown, which as it sounds, is in the
middle of town), so the engine is only at maximally efficient thermal profile
for a short part of the time.

My car is actually 6 years old (although newer models don't really have higher
overall MPG it seems). But to someone from 1995, my 2005 Prius getting 52 MPG
would seem strange indeed, seeing 27 MPG in the city and 34 MPG highway was
typical gas mileage for a 1995 Nissan Sentra, a popular midsized car of that
year.

------
jeggers5
Loved reading that, especially the comments. Really makes you think how far
we've come over the years, and we haven't really noticed. Suppose it's been so
gradual that it's hard to. A cure for cancer would really be a massive
milestone for me in the future (and maybe teleportation!)

~~~
Vivtek
I dunno, my stepfather just finished having prostate cancer. The "cure" is
getting here, bit by bit.

~~~
jeggers5
That's fantastic :D ye hopefully we'll have a definitive cure in a few years,
even for the people who only notice they have cancer when it's in its later
stages.

Of course by the time we have a cure, there will be some other disease we have
to deal with :P

~~~
jeggers5
wait, by 'finished' do you mean he died? because I didn't mean to say that's
fantastic at all I assumed you mean he was cured?

------
kleiba
_And I didn't even manage to cram in, "Technology exists that can let anyone,
anywhere, listen to any song or watch any movie ever made, instantly and in
excellent quality [...]_

\- well, I'm glad you didn't, because it is not true, at least not if you live
in Germany. Here, it's more like: "This content is not available in your
country." So much about _anywhere_...

~~~
rmc
Piracy allows you to do it. I know it's not legal, but you can easily and
quickly, and _for free_ get (almost) any TV show, film, or music album (and
soon, book) rapidly via P2P networks.

In '95 piracy meant buying dodgy low quality VHS tapes from the back of
someone's car in a car boot sale. The quality and selection was no where near
as good. Now you can pirate the TV show about 1 hour after they are first
shown and watch them before they are aired in your country. You can stream
loads of sports events as they happen live. You're an american in germany and
want to watch the superbowl live? no problem!

------
paulnelligan
16 years from now - I'm guessing we may be seeing the start of an energy
revolution ... which will be even more significant than the communications and
data revolution which just happened.

Also, a lot more progress will have been made in the area of genetics and
medicine ...

exciting times!

------
xradionut
I've read a good chunk of science fiction over the years, but the most
accurate Cassandra I've talk to in my life was my aunt and her colleges whom
were historians, futurists and history profs. Many of the recent big changes
in the national and international economies and political environment were
discussed/forecast by them over two decades ago. And a few science fiction
writers have gotten some of these trends right, while failing on the little
details like gadgets.

Yesterday's historian is today's prophet. Instead of tracking the evolution of
gadgets, tools and tools, it's more important to notice the social and
political changes in one's lifetime. Many of those have been impacted by
technology, not always a positive way when viewed on a macro-scale. While
technology advances, basically civilization/society is still the same bunch of
greedy primates that existed by the Tiber over two millennium ago.

------
v21
The difference between things that came true, and things that are still as far
off as ever seems to come down to how much energy they take to do, and (which
is much the same) whether the advance depends on Moore's law or not.

Tiny computers that auto-translate - not much energy, just raw computing power

Jetpacks - lots of energy, applied in a big dumb way.

------
te_chris
One of the things that really gets me is the fact that we're now disappointed
when we go to a place and they don't have a way for me to open up my nicely
designed aluminium computer and just browse the internet with nothing more
than a password.

And then further than that, that we're getting to a point where that is
beginning to matter less and less thanks to advances in cellular technology.
When I stop to think about what we can do with cell phones and their networks
it's just mind boggling - from what the cellphone can do, to the fact that you
press a button, and suddenly my laptop and my friends are browsing broadband
internet sourced through my cellphone (which has a processor core 3 times more
powerful than the machine that my dad paid $5000 NZD for in 1998 - which was
super top of the line, PII 300, 3d accelerator, video capture and
EVERYTHING!).

Proliferation of wireless and cellular technology is just so damn cool.

~~~
noonespecial
I tap a button on the side of a pendant sized device and say the name of the
person I want to talk to and it happens. Not quite Trek, but damn close.

------
Dove
Yeah, well. I still want my flying car.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Flying cars would come in 4 more years (according to "Back to the Future").

It's more likely though that instead of flying cars in 2015 we would get self-
driven cars.

------
shahan
Good post, but it would have been difficult to write without including IT (or
media). You'd have to use the year 1795 or something. There are probably lots
of fields today where Aristotle, if he would be brought back to life, would go
"meh". (But he would think it was damn cool that he could be brought back to
life.)

~~~
omaranto
I don't know about other fields, but math has made amazing progress. In my
undergraduate studies I couldn't really tell because aside from some cute but
not overly impressive graph theory I didn't learn anything more recent than
the 1930s (some basic algebraic topology, a little functional analysis, some
ergodic theory, some differential topology, ...). Most of the stuff I learned
was, of course, much older. But know that I know some of what mathematicians
have been up to since then I am constantly amazed.

------
Vivtek
I've been having lots of 21st-century moments lately, yes. This illustrates
them rather well.

------
redthrowaway
I hate this submission, but only because it lead my to use a proxy to bypass
"reddit.com" in my hosts file. Now that I've experienced how easy it is, I'm
sure I'll be going back.

So much for productivity.

~~~
starpilot
Looks like you should add HN to your hosts file as well.

~~~
redthrowaway
We've already established that it does no good.

~~~
sorbus
In that case, either add the proxy to your hosts file, find the willpower to
resist distraction, or establish a system of incentives to stop you from
getting distracted (unblock Reddit from your hosts file, then write a program
to, for every minute you spend on Reddit, donate a dollar to a charity that
you hate).

------
JohnnyBrown
I hate how HN is turning into Reddit.

