Low Tech Nostalgia
By Keith McNamara
So apparently the venerable Commodore 64 has reached its 25th birthday. Ah, the memories...well, mostly memories of bitter jealousy of my neighbor being the only one on the block to have one. (At least until our household scraped some pennies together and upped the ante with an Apple IIe- now that was a workhorse!)
It's amazing to think people could get nostalgic about something that has been obsolete for so long, yet so many technologies (typewriters, eight track cassette players, rotary dial phones- hell, almost any phone with a wire connection at this point!) conjure up images of days long gone. As we've become so accustomed now to our cellphones, iPods, and MacBook Google searching, it's easy to forget how little we needed this stuff before it existed. So here's a thought experiment:
What do you think will be the next technology to come along that will be so life altering we will soon be unable to think about life without it?
(Note: I'm thinking of things that haven't yet made an impact-the very-soon to happen iphone revolution being the exception.)
Comments involving vivid science fiction imaginations welcome!
Comments
Post a comment:
Head First Servlets & JSP, Second Edition, Head First JavaScript, and Head First Software Development are now available.
Buy 2 Books, Get the 3rd FREE! Use the discount code OPC10 when you buy direct from O'Reilly.
I've always felt that Star Trek:TNG did a really good job in fleshing out a lot of potential future technology concepts, unfortunately most of that technology wont be realized until after our lifetimes. :(
As far as The Next Great Thing © I think it will be a long the lines of social interactivity using technology.
I think the demand of the Nintendo Wii is the first glimpse of this. Although it is a somewhat basic interactive implementation I believe it does its job well; I think Nintendo has yet to fully realize it's full potential.
Microsoft's interactive coffee table also looks promising.