"before 1990" ffs. I was expecting "before 1960"
When I was a kid, Commander Data from Star Trek TNG was the height of technological possibility. TNG was set in the 2300s.
It looks like hard drives are selling for about 20 bucks a terabyte now. Commander Data had a storage capacity of 100 petabytes.
So today, to buy hard drives equivalent to the capacity Commander Data would cost about $2 million. You would have to be very wealthy to afford that as an individual, but the cost will only get lower. It will still be quite awhile before a random laptop will have a Commander Data's worth of storage space. But you're talking decades, not centuries.
Though, this calculation is for the Data that appeared in the original TNG run. His more recent appearance in Star Trek Picard may be different, as his specifications there may canonically differ.
This calculation was only meant to detail the capacity of the original Commander Data, not the more recent Big Data.
I like to re-read my favorite science fiction classics and giggle at the author's mistakes.
In "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" a self-aware computer struggles over creating a CGI face for him/herself. Also, iirc, the computer uses tape.
William Gibson has done essays about how much he got wrong in 'Neuromancer," but my personal favorite is the spaceship pilot who never heard of a computer virus.
My favorites are in Asimov. In the Foundation series, one product the traders sell is a nuclear powered ash tray. They employ advanced nuclear plasma manipulation to...quickly atomize cigarette butts.
Or the time there's this couple. They are traveling to another planet, and they get aboard their personal interstellar spaceship. The society is advanced enough, that that is just something you can own.
What happens as soon as they get onboard their personal FTL interstellar ship? The husband commands his wife to get dinner started.
Ah yes the people who ran their video games on DOS are being left behind.
Help son, how do I open this app?!? With my finger???
It hasn't been that hard in my experience. Ignore shifts in the social landscape until the yung'ins reach a consensus about it, and always remember that time just before the dotcom crash when a company got venture funding to deliver tuna subs by mail.
The elders had to rewind the movies after watching
I still own a VCR and a vast collection of VHS tapes. I mean, I also pay for streaming services, but without the old 90s commercials for Disney World and previews for movies that were released in 1995, the movies just don’t hit the same.
8th grade teacher got pissed at us on 9/11 because he thought we were laughing at the fact that a plane had hit the WTC. We were laughing because one of the girls didn't know what the WTC was. We turned on the TVs to see the second one get hit.
6th grade we had napster while some of us were still bringing in cases of floppies to play games that'd run on the computers
Goddamn I'm not that elder! But also true
I feel both cuddled and attacked
If only the pace of technology was the only paradigm shift to have to worry about since the 80s/90s
I stood in line for VHS tapes. I also know that the blockchain is slow as hell and that cryptocurrency is glorified gambling for people with too much money - and I had a friend in the early 2000s that was trying to make a Bitcoin exchange.
Im still not convinced that crypto is worth it. It seems like just about everyone either loses money in crypto or makes very little, chasing a dream laid out to them by some youtuber who is part of the very small group to make any nice amount from it. Just seems too volatile and sketchy
OK, this one kind of hurt a bit. I can't be the only one with a functioning VCR in the room with them right now...
Most of the kids I know who have this attitude would also call IT if they accidentally opened the Command Prompt or BIOS.
i remember standing in line for dvds. we were hacking regionlocked discs before nft was just a scammer's wet dream. we were moulded by early modern technology.
But crypto is borderline useless that consumes more electricity than the entire AI industry while enabling alot of illegal activities and money laundering. I was quite susprised when my drug money found their way into normal people's lives.
This post makes my knees hurt
People Twitter
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
- Mark NSFW content.
- No doxxing people.
- Must be a pic of the tweet or similar. No direct links to the tweet.
- No bullying or international politcs
- Be excellent to each other.
- Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major figure or a politician.