What gives you that "Holy shit we're living in the future!" feeling?

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Inducements into the "Holy-shit-we're-living-in-the-future" mood:

• The Large Hadron Collider - Just look at that thing, it's so intricate and monumental. It's an offering to the science gods to divine the fabric of the universe, or something I don't remotely understand. But holy shit, look at that thing.

• Quantum Nonlocality - Irrefutable evidence of it but no palatable explanation. Reading about it at great length makes me shit my pants.

• Internet - I can just fall into a vault of information about anything and snap out of it hours later. Sometimes if you follow the threads of your curiosities long enough...

• Vibrators.

• Artificial Urinary Sphincter - I don't plan on being incontinent, but I have accepted my destiny. Hopefully they will have beta-tested the anus model before I need it too.

[Triple Zero]

We aren't living in the future, Trip.  We're living in the break of time out of joint, where all the cool shit never happened, and all the old horrors just pool up around us.

This pretty much sums it up for me. 


At this point we were supposed to have jetpacks and flying cars and that kind of thing. 

And space colonies.  And deep sea habitats.  And bionics and shit.  And clean air and water, and cheap power, and a stable population, and big fucking robots.  And maglev trains everywhere.  And a self-managing house.

But what I got instead was a fucking Ipod and a laptop.  Granted, the two of them represent more computing power than existed in the world when I was born, but am I supposed to be happy with that?  All the developments that have gone forward have done is increase the workload of some at the expense of others, and kept everyone doped up with benzos and television.

We wimped out after the moon landings.  We got a look at the universe, and ran and hid in our living rooms to watch TV until the scary universe was safely forgotten, or became religious fanatics that deny that universe even exists.

So, yeah, that's the "future".  A world full of cowering primates.  Sort of like the way we started out...We had a brief century or three of real progress, and now we make toys for ourselves and pretend that we're all science-fictiony.

If only there was a way for me to read the rants from certain Mad Doktors halfway across the globe to inform me that today's so-called "future" isn't all it's cracked up to be ... oh wait

Nah, if I'm being completely reasonable, I'd say there's future stuff we do have, and future stuff we didn't get, as well as future stuff we never expected to get.

[Iason Ouabache]

Relevant to this thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

[Reginald Ret]

When i realised these old scifi novels called 1984 and brave new world actually happened.
The only reason they don't read like a contemporary news item: The writers back then were horrified at what might happen, now they don't even realize something is wrong.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

We aren't living in the future, Trip.  We're living in the break of time out of joint, where all the cool shit never happened, and all the old horrors just pool up around us.

This pretty much sums it up for me. 


At this point we were supposed to have jetpacks and flying cars and that kind of thing. 

And space colonies.  And deep sea habitats.  And bionics and shit.  And clean air and water, and cheap power, and a stable population, and big fucking robots.  And maglev trains everywhere.  And a self-managing house.

But what I got instead was a fucking Ipod and a laptop.  Granted, the two of them represent more computing power than existed in the world when I was born, but am I supposed to be happy with that?  All the developments that have gone forward have done is increase the workload of some at the expense of others, and kept everyone doped up with benzos and television.

We wimped out after the moon landings.  We got a look at the universe, and ran and hid in our living rooms to watch TV until the scary universe was safely forgotten, or became religious fanatics that deny that universe even exists.

So, yeah, that's the "future".  A world full of cowering primates.  Sort of like the way we started out...We had a brief century or three of real progress, and now we make toys for ourselves and pretend that we're all science-fictiony.

If only there was a way for me to read the rants from certain Mad Doktors halfway across the globe to inform me that today's so-called "future" isn't all it's cracked up to be ... oh wait

Nah, if I'm being completely reasonable, I'd say there's future stuff we do have, and future stuff we didn't get, as well as future stuff we never expected to get.

Troof. We also have technology a little earlier than expected. Cell phones, iPads and automatic doors? Star Trek type technologies. Though that said, I would like me some Martian bases and underwater cities.

[AFK]

I dunno.  We're still hopelessly addicted to fossil fuels.  Modern medicine is making people live longer, and so more people are getting cancer.  Cell phones, smart phones, iPads, etc., and I think people are losing connections because there is less face-to-face.  Push button/remote warfare, wipe out a village without breaking a sweat. 

So maybe the future is here, but I'm not convinced that it doesn't suck. 

[Kai]

The fact that I (can) know within minutes of a major event occurring anywhere on the planet. Or that I can educate myself in a matter of one hour about the back-story behind every political movement in any corner of the globe, or any religion. I have nearly immediate access to almost any piece of relevant information, practically for free. 150 years ago, people were still living, communicating, and organizing in more or less the same ways they had been for 500 years before that. Today, the way people communicated five years ago seems old-fashioned.

Agreed. This is the biggest thing for me. The availability of information, and communication routes. The Internet, and cellular phones, has changed the way we think, the way I think.

Seriously, this massive computer network is an extension of my neural network, my extended mind.

[Elder Iptuous]

the haze and uncertainty of our modern life makes me realize it...
the wealth of information and dearth of understanding.
the hesitation of putting too much stock in anything, because tomorrow it's wrong.
the fact that i don't really know anything.  in the past i might have actually known stuff, but not in this future, by guess and by god!

the teetering tower of unstable efficiency.  the view is pretty incredible, but the feeling that we could fall back into the stone age at any moment always gnaws in the back of my head.
like, maybe we aren't just living in the future, but in the future.  like this is as far as we get  before the drop and we find ourselves on the next up-leg of a sawtooth pattern that we've been through before, and will do again...  maybe slightly different, but pretty much the same each time, because we never quite achieve the alpha centauri victory...

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

Seriously, at this point there were so many "promises" about what would be. 

We shouldn't be using fossil fuels, alternate fuel was supposed to be a priority back in the 60's. 

Yay, we have computers and the internet.  We can talk to thousands of people about useless things in the blink of an eye. 

Where are the super farms that can feed thousands from an acre? 

Where is the water system that ensured the whole world population has clean drinking water?

Where is the end to absolute poverty?

Why are people still starving?

Why are people still dying from diseases that have fucking cures?  Why is there still disease at all?

All the excitement of yay woohoo we have internets.  Really?  In perspective of reality?  I mean I won't lie and say I don't appreciate it, but can I live without it?  Yeah.

[Doktor Howl]

Where are the super farms that can feed thousands from an acre? 

On Facebook.

[Kai]

Seriously, at this point there were so many "promises" about what would be. 

We shouldn't be using fossil fuels, alternate fuel was supposed to be a priority back in the 60's. 

Yay, we have computers and the internet.  We can talk to thousands of people about useless things in the blink of an eye. 

Where are the super farms that can feed thousands from an acre? 

Where is the water system that ensured the whole world population has clean drinking water?

Where is the end to absolute poverty?

Why are people still starving?

Why are people still dying from diseases that have fucking cures?  Why is there still disease at all?

All the excitement of yay woohoo we have internets.  Really?  In perspective of reality?  I mean I won't lie and say I don't appreciate it, but can I live without it?  Yeah.

You can live without utilities too, without electricity, with out gasoline, etc. Would you?

I learned to not get excited about predictions about "the future" when I was younger. Strongly believing that shit just leads to disappointment.

If the future contains these predictions,
   I desire to believe the future contains these predictions.
If the future does not contain these predictions,
   I desire to believe the future does not contain these predictions.

Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.



And yeah, the internet isn't exciting if I were to think of it as just an extended television/stereo, rather than an information network stretched across the surface of the planet and available in seconds.

Does anyone here remember what it was like to research before the days of the internet?

First, you have an idea, want to find out something so and so, etc. So you go to the library, the physical library, and go to the card catalog, and find a little piece of paper with a title, author and call number that might be what you're looking for.

So you go to that section. And when you're in that section, you notice a bunch of other books on the topic, so you take those down and read through them. Turns out they all cite, in their bibliographies, this older source. But the library doesn't have it. So you go down to the front desk, request a loan form, and fill that out. That form either gets sent physically or phoned over to other libraries, to ask if they have a particular book, for which they have to go to their card catalog and find the piece of paper that would indicate they have it. And then if they do, that library has to fill out all kinds of paperwork so they can send over the book for your perusal. This is assuming your library can even do this. If not, you're already out of luck.

After a matter of a few months (depending on the distance), then you have the book. But the book you got isn't just any book, its a literature catalog. It's filled and filled with citations ordered by author and date, and so you go pouring through it page by page, trying to find a title with a reference to the thing you're interested in. And then, after some hours, you've found a reference, to a journal article in an obscure journal published in 1917. You check the card catalog again, to see if they have that journal in their bound periodicals. Unfortunately for you, they don't, it's too obscure or too specialist for your library.

So, you go back to the front desk and they give you another loan form, which they send out or phone over and find out if any libraries have a copy.

And again after several months you have it. You have the bound periodical which includes the journal article of your interest. Now, if you are lucky enough to live in an era with copy machines, you can just run it through and get a physical copy. If not, you either have to copy it by hand onto another sheet, or take the long and arduous trek to purchase a copy of that journal issue from old book sellers.

Months have gone by, hours and hours of work.


Meanwhile, in the future, I went to google with my idea, found references to books about the idea for sale (for low price and sent directly to my home), wiki articles on the basics with links to more references, scholarly article citations and links to pdfs of those articles, searchable literature databases, photos, links to local libraries with holdings, forums where people are discussing the idea and more. Depending on the breadth of interest and whether I need to send away for hard copies, I can find all I need between 10 minutes and a week. Written in a foreign language? No problem! Who needs to spend years learning scientific german when you can copypaste the text into google and have a rough translation in seconds. And it's all so simple that a ten year old could do it, without leaving home.


Researchers realize just how powerful the Internet is. Research, any sort of research, has been changed forever, not just by the availability of journal articles, but how fast scientists can communicate. If anyone needs to call to question the fabulousness of the Internet, just remember the days when all there was, was snail mail, rotary phones, and card catalogs, and how long it took to do something we find simple today.

[AFK]

I do have to agree with that.  My job would definitely be a lot more tedious and cumbersome if it were, say, 20 years ago.  The only real block I have now for getting research is waiting for the hospital to pay for the journal articles and e-mail them to me.  Though I can frequently find free papers with Google Scholar. 

The flip-side, for my particular line of work, is that the kids also have easy access to research and information.  Which they don't always understand, nor, is it always very legit. 

But Kai makes a very good point about how the internet has made research much more efficient. 

[Elder Iptuous]

All the excitement of yay woohoo we have internets.  Really?  In perspective of reality?  I mean I won't lie and say I don't appreciate it, but can I live without it?  Yeah.

I think you might be wrong about that.  we're dependent upon it.  we're full steam ahead with tight tolerance from higher efficiency requirements.  if we lose our internets the JIT distribution systems will fail,  your grocery store will be bare in two days, and people will start eating each other.  (make sure you panic before the others do, otherwise you won't get your Fair Share of the long pig)
It's like an world class runner losing a big toe during the middle of a sprint.  sure, it's just a toe.  she can live without it.  but she's sure depending on it being there at the moment, and she'd take a pretty nasty fall if it disappeared all of a sudden...

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

And so we see the future ITT!

Yes research is easier.  And yes, I remember the old way, believe it or not, I actually managed to get a college degree without the internet GASP OMG!

Can I liive without utilities?  I did until I was 7.  Could I do it again?  Yes.  I don't want to but I can. 

I just feel that we took a wrong turn somewhere in deciding what was really important and what goals should have held priority.  It's 2010 and what do we have to boast about?  The internet.

People are still dying of curable diseases.

People are still starving.

We are still destroying the earth every second of every day.


But things are easier......

[Doktor Howl]

We are still destroying the earth every second of every day.

No we aren't.  The Earth will be here long after we're gone.