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

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

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.

The planet will be you are quite right.  With skeletons of what man had created dotting the surface and slowly rotting away. 

I don't know, I'm suddenly reminded of the original Planet of the Apes......

[Epimetheus]

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

Moving pictures.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I can't be bothered to turn around while using the computer to watch the Colbert Report, so I put my netbook on the desk right next to the monitor, and am watching it there.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

We arent living in the future we are living in the present.

[Stelpa]

We arent living in the future we are living in the present.

I don't think we will be living in the future any time soon, then!

[Epimetheus]

We arent living in the future we are living in the present.

I don't think we will be living in the future any time soon, then!

We're always about to live in the future, but we never get there. (I feel like there was a meme to this effect - "Tomorrow never comes, we're stuck in today" or something? If not, TRADEMARKEDCOPYRITED)

[Jasper]

[Salty]

Relevant:

We saw mrs dalloway and her horrors and we lived through them, carrying them with us for they were human horrors and no matter our desire we were still human. We realized that our civilization would end like others have in a way we can't imagine. We realized that the only thing separating us from the people that lived when jesus died is technological advances. We are not moving forward.

But as far as that technology goes: my phone which allowed me to post this faster and with more ease than my computer.

[the last yatto]

underwater cities.

If your looking for me, best check under the sea...

[Iron Sulfide]

It's funny, but for me it's not anything new that gives me that feeling. As a few have mentioned, the "future" stuff we have now is shiny, and powerful, sure, but it's lacking. It's  Like we interrogated some Time Travelers for technology, and only made what we could understand, and that much not so well to begin with.

What gives me that feeling, oddly, is all the old-timey stuff: a girl reading a bound book in the park; the increasing prevalence of bicyclists; pencils; Psychics... It reminds me just how antiquated so many things I was raised with have become. "That means...wait a second, I'm in the FUTURE!"

We arent living in the future we are living in the present.

I don't think we will be living in the future any time soon, then!

We're always about to live in the future, but we never get there. (I feel like there was a meme to this effect - "Tomorrow never comes, we're stuck in today" or something? If not, TRADEMARKEDCOPYRITED)

at one point, I think I posted this:

"The past is a mystery, the future is history and the present is adrift."


[edit: made a double redundancy]

[Juana]

Things like Skype. That I can talk to my friends in Europe and all over North America without using my landline is awesome.

That I've written about five letters my entire life - four to my grandmother and one to my best friend when she was in basic. That's it. Makes me want to write letters, though, now that I think about it.

Texting

Zotero. Several people so far have mentioned the ability to research, but I've pretty much always had that. Zotero takes all the work out of keeping track of references and citations and quotes and makes my bibliography for me in any style I need.

Touch screen. Anything with touch screen. I love it so much and I remember being fascinated by it and wanting one.

Thinking about my great grandfather and all the changes he saw. 1900 to 1996 saw lots of them and I wonder what he'd think about the ones that have happened since he died.

[Triple Zero]

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.

I'm trying to see how this is relevant in my thread, but all I can come up with is that it is something that really bothers you (me too btw) and you really need to vent about it, no matter how much people try to get the discussion back on track?

I dunno, it started out wrong right away.

Is that it now? Not "this is why we can't have nice things", but the flat out refusal of the fact that there actually might be some nice things?

The subject of this thread was a simple question, a positive one. It wasn't supposed to be about how we do NOT have jet-packs or flying cars and talking toasters. It was supposed to be about hwo the iPad (no matter what I personally think about the thing) how much it is almost nearly exactly like the portable computing info pads they used to be carrying around in Star Trek:TNG. I read that in an article a couple of days ago (probably linked from that Reddit thread), I thought it was really cool, they have the same rounded shape, curves, and lack of buttons but a touch screen.

I mean what is it with that? So we didn't get a lot of stuff, my question was, what DID we get?

And what does it say about you, and your mood perhaps, if your first reaction you have to that is to start arguing about how the things some of us think are really nifty, what things we DID get that were predicted from SciFi (no flying cars and jet-packs booo) and what things surpassed the dreams of most SciFi writers, when the only thing you can think of is to argue how they are in fact worthless and useless in the grand scheme of things we did NOT get?

I mean, even if it's about bad things like the atom bomb or global surveillance / ECHELON (and I got some funnier examples but I'm saving it for my letter to Dok), even if you want to focus on the Horrors that make you feel like living in the future (it doesn't need to be bright, after all), but being all antagonistic like this, exclusively, I'm sorry but it feels to me kind of like you're trashing my thread. And I understand that it bothers you that we didn't just not get jet-packs but we didn't even get a solution to global hunger and preventable disease. That totally sucks. Share your visions of the post-apocalyptic future if you want.
But please don't go arguing that the Internet doesn't count as it only makes a little difference to doing research (especially right after Kai gave a detailed explanation how it makes a HUGE difference and speeds up certain parts of scientific research by several orders of magnitude), just because people are dying, or something.


[oh and btw different subject, out of curiosity, what kind of college degree did you get?]

[Eater of Clowns]

BUMP

Because I was driving home recently from work and was stricken by the fact that no longer do I see unravelled audio and VHS tapes strewn about as litter.

[Cramulus]

tons of stuff. I get that feeling several times a day. Most recently, my girlfriend's band mate was complaining about how expensive music software is. It would take him months to save up for a copy of Logic. I suggested he pirate it. He didn't know how to do that. 1 minute and 45 seconds later, he was downloading a free copy all by himself.

Don't you love that you can just DO that? It almost overwhelms me sometimes, how much potential each of us have. And it just keeps climbing.

[Doktor Howl]

tons of stuff. I get that feeling several times a day. Most recently, my girlfriend's band mate was complaining about how expensive music software is. It would take him months to save up for a copy of Logic. I suggested he pirate it. He didn't know how to do that. 1 minute and 45 seconds later, he was downloading a free copy all by himself.

Don't you love that you can just DO that? It almost overwhelms me sometimes, how much potential each of us have. And it just keeps climbing.

Yep.  I just stunned the fuck out of myself after only a few weeks' work, and now I'm planning to share it with hundreds of holiday shoppers!