Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • Replies 32 replies
  • Subscribers 533 subscribers
  • Views 2163 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Have you ever been way off on your technical predictions?

dougw
  • Were you one of the many who thought the computer mouse would never catch on because it was slower and less precise than a keyboard?
  • Did you really expect a 2 TB microSD card to be available this year for $4 ?
  • Did you expect digital cameras to completely make film and videotape obsolete?
  • Did you expect an 85 inch UHD TV to be available weighing just 41 kg?
  • Did you ever expect to see PCBs fabricated in low volume for less than $1?
  • Did you ever expect a 3D printer to be available and cost less than $150?
  • Did you ever expect to see a smart phone with a 100 mpixel camera?
  • Did you find GPS to be a mind-altering revolution in navigation?
  • Did you predict that Apple's iphone would unseat all the big phone companies and make Apple the largest company in the world?

Some of these things simply blow my mind.

What technology blows your mind or surprises you?

  1. When do you expect to see dwellings built with automated enclosed landing ports that have security beacons for drone deliveries?
  2. When do you expect driverless aerial Uber drones to be legalized?
  3. When do you expect most people to have an AI as their family physician?
  4. When do you expect the majority of people to spend more time in the metaverse than they do in the real world?
  5. When will you have a digital ID that allows you to vote with your phone? (some places already have this)

Would you bet money that your predictions of any of these 5 dates are accurate?

    • Did you expect digital cameras to completely make film and videotape obsolete?  

    Sure. But I didnt expect the cell phone to replace a stand alone camera. 

    I also didnt expect streaming video cameras to look like a medium size tablet with a RED/Green LED to annunciate if the camera was actively being used as a feed.  

  • in reply to gordonmx

    Bubble memory was a really interesting technology, and had it come out just a few years earlier would have probably gotten a lot more investment as it was superior to both core and disk at the time.

    Also reminds me of the Wankel engine; I had an Rx-7 in the early 80s and that seemed like a real game-changer (though I never predicted it would be incredibly successful, I did think it would make a bigger impact given the lower parts count/reliability compared to piston). Again, had it been on the market about 10 years earlier (than it was, I hardly had the first), it may have been more widely adopted.

  • in reply to bradfordmiller

    It was a nice idea, but they never really finished it. There were leaks around the sides and over the tops of the vanes resulting in high oil consumption and expensive servicing and repair bills. Ten to twenty years later they might have been able to use ceramics, and manufacturing processes would have been far more accurate. I had an NSU Prima 3KL when I was a poor broke student, soon to become even poorer and broker when the clutch and gearbox failed due to excessive tinkering.

  • in reply to dougw

    Does anyone remember the Amstrad battery portable? I forgot what it's name and number were. The power supply was about ten rechargeable 'D' cells in series that were housed in one long cylinder across the back of the computer. The main problem we had with it was that the carrying handle was at one end. Carrying it from, say, car park to office was ok, but if you put it down on the office floor with anything more than an indetectable jolt the spring at the negative end of the battery pack would compress very slightly and the button at the positive end would lose contact momentarily. If you hadn't saved your hours, possibly days, of your calculations, best-selling novel chapters, or terrabytes of data, you lost it! It took us ages to figure out what was going wrong. It was with no regret at all Mr Sugar, but - you're fired.

  • in reply to electronicbiker
    electronicbiker said:
    Does anyone remember the Amstrad battery portable? I forgot what it's name and number were.

    Amstrad PPC512/PPC640 ?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_PPC_512

    Battery compartment:
    https://oldcomputer.info/pictures/gal/Museum/Portable/Amstrad_PPC512/16.jpg

  • in reply to bradfordmiller

    Your timeline for AI management hasn't quite happened yet, it can't be far off, I'm hoping it will be very soon. After all, there's plenty of data concerning lots of bureaucratic failures for AI to get it's teeth into during the learning process, unfortunately not many successes. I don't like having to say this but using AI as government has now reached the point where we should give it a go. It can't do any worse and will probably do a lot better, decisions will be reached in a fraction of the time, and the Houses of Parliament could be sold off or demolished. Finally, if any human intervention is required it will be carried out by experts, none of whom will have had anything to do with politics since the day they were born. Bah, humbug. Oh, sorry, wrong forum...

  • in reply to bradfordmiller

    They are still used in the Mazda MX-30.

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    Thanks for the info beacon_dave, it brought back a few memories! Looks like my memories of the battery compartment and cell size were a little bit out (by between 50% and100% for every parameter mentioned) but hey, it was a long time ago.The department bought several of them, all 640's, I wonder what happened to them? Actually, I don't want to know...

  • in reply to md_steve

    I am a Pi fan too, I have several ranging from an early one with the short I/0 strip up to the Pi 4. As well as Python two of them have BBC BASIC loaded, it's great to have that as I've been using it since the early 80's when the BBC Microcomputer was released. I still use it because it is quick and easy and sometimes I have needed that. I've been learning Python too, there are similarities as well as things that are completely different.

    I have mixed views about Linux as the operating system. It's a bit slow but I have not tried anything yet where a large increase in speed would be a major benefit. Something that really bugs me though is the constant tinkering with the operating system where most of the changes require updating it for some parts of it to work. This takes ages especially when there's 6 or 7 Pi's to update. Once that's done there's all sorts of parameters that need re-entering with the old values, e.g. loads of router parameters in all of them.

    One of my favourite programming exercises was to add the metadata to about 5,000 digitised recordings of old gramaphone records. It took a while, but typing the information in by hand would have taken months!

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    Flying cars will be used at the Paris Olympics.