i’m talking about things we use without a second thought that might seem utterly ridiculous or inefficient in 50-100 years. like landlines or vhs players seemed to us. what’s your pick?
Please, you have to stop
like landlines or vhs players seemed to us.
Us? Us??
I’m pushing 40 and I’ve never owned my own VCR. When I was at university a landline was thrown in with our internet connection but we did have a use for it. Landlines have been irrelevant my entire adult life.
Key in the ignition
Nespresso pods.
I think you need to think about the rate at which technology has advanced in the last hundred years in general, then look at how it changed in the 10 year increments in that period then extrapolate out what has plateaued vs ramped up.
Broadly speaking, there have been major changes but the telephone existed in 1925, so did refrigeration, powered flight, and cars.
Medical tech is really where I think the biggest difference has been, and where I think we will continue to see major changes. If you compare our medical knowledge of diseases, cancer, and genetics today vs 1925 it seems huge (to an outsider). The difference between a computer in 1950 and today is largely scale and computer power, yeah, its improved but it still fundamentally does math in the same basic manner. Quantum computers may change that some but its still essentially math.
Plastic and social media.
Net connected everything. The cracks are already showing but it’s going to get worse, and then it’ll swing back.
like landlines or vhs players seemed to us
Ouch, hurtful. You know lemmy skews older, right?
Anyway, here’s my answer: Toilet Paper
This feels right but I’m very curious what’s going to replace it. And no, it’s not bidets. I have one that I use and it helps, but I still need TP to finish up, and not just to dry yourself off.
You don’t know how to use the three seashells?
Hey everyone, that guy doesn’t know how to use the three seashells lol
teleport the poo right outta your colon
He died in a freak transporter accident.
The cars that you have to drive, people already can’t drive.
Analog clocks. Digital is so much easier.
Fillings and crowns. The dentist will regrow teeth.
Flashlights. You mean you carry a lighting device that does nothing else, when your phone can do that plus a million other things?
Keys. We’ll likely carry a fob for most things. They’ll be programmable to allow us to adapt to our locks, like a universal TV remote.
Fax machines in government. Someone in government will finally realize scan to email is so much cleaner.
Digital clocks might be easier for you, but not everyone. I chunk my time and looking at an analog clock helps me to visualize everything I’m going to be doing. I can’t do that with a digital clock. I will be the dinosaur clutching my analog clock when I’m old lol.
You still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea? How amazingly primitive.
I think you are totally wrong about all of these except the dentistry (and for that I simply don’t know enough).
Analog clocks are not going away. They’re aesthetically pleasing, all the luxury watches are analog, all the smart watches have analog modes… I don’t think this is changing any time soon. One caveat: I hear there’s a trend where younger people (e.g. today’s teens and younger) often don’t know how to read analog clocks. So perhaps I can be convinced on this, but I still think they’re here to stay.
Flashlights produce orders of magnitude more light than any smartphone. Headlamps provide light while keeping your hands free. Phone flashlights are useful in a pinch but flashlights are not ever going to seem alien, they might be more niche but not strange. In any event, this has already happened so you’re describing the present, not the future.
Keys? No way. Every electronic locking system includes a mechanical backup for a reason: power outages happen, batteries don’t last forever, and electronics fail a lot more often than mechanical lock mechanisms. None of these facts will change. People don’t really like being locked out of their home then the power’s out, so you bet they’ll keep carrying keys.
Fax machines are already out. A story made the rounds maybe a year or two ago about how Japan was finally going to stop using faxes, and before that Japan was one of the few (if not the last) to still be using fax. So again this is the present, not the future.
Lastly, dentistry: man I hope that happens, it sounds great. But it doesn’t really fit the question, it’s not something we “use” every day, it’s a treatment to a medical problem. Advances in medicine aren’t they here IMO.
Flashlights produce orders of magnitude more light than any smartphone.
Flashlights can definitely put out a lot more light (and store more power) than a cell phone light, but for a lot of close-up stuff, the cell phone is fine.
I’m skeptical that flashlights will go away, as @[email protected] is proposing. But I do think that smartphones are a partial replacement.
In urban areas, I don’t need a bright flashlight much, because there’s fixed lighting all over, but in more rural areas, if you’re outside at night and walking around, you do tend to need a flashlight.
I also don’t know how much more change there will be. Like, people already have smartphones pretty much everywhere. I think that most of the replacement that will happen has probably already happened.
Dentists will regrow teeth for the wealthy. The rest of us are just losing our teeth.
Holding a thing to your face to talk to another human will seem like cave-men aping for a mate in the future. If I forget my bluetooth headset in the morning my day is shot - I’m sure the future is much brighter.
Floppy disks. Oh, wait…
Floppy disks will forever be used the way they are currently used: as the save icon.
Maybe not entirely but the pretty much everyone uses it everyday part. Cars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQz4VBablAM
Waymo’s starting to roll out self-driving robotaxis onto the freeway in the San Francisco Bay Area; news coverage from today.
My expectation is that there will be a lot more autonomous cars out there in the future.
Not the advancement in looking for
Phones, probably. At some point we’re not going to be carrying these things around. Whether replaced by an implant or some kind of wearable, I have no idea.
Everything connected to your phone. In less than 50 years they’re gonna laugh about how we had apps for our washing machines and dishwashers.
I think you’re partially right, but only about everything having a separate app.
The reality is connected devices will be so ubiquitous and commonplace that the interface will become standarfized and totally tansparent. Connecting to any arbitrary device will be as simple as connecting to an arbitray web server through a browser.
Every device needing its own app is temporary and unsustainable.
