What did you think the future was going to look like?

[homebrew2ny]

 

[Miramonti]

Decades ago they kept telling us about robots helping us around the house like the jetsons, and all we got were fvcking roombas.

 

[Markbnj]

When I was in my 20's I thought changes were going to come much faster than they have.

 

[lxskllr]

Decades ago they kept telling us about robots helping us around the house like the jetsons, and all we got were fvcking roombas.

There, of course, from the beginning, the assumption was that robots would be humanoid. And as it turns out, they’re not. We do after all live commensally with robots now, we do, just as they expected. But the robots we live with don’t have hands and feet, they don’t carry trays of drinks, and they don’t push the vacuum cleaner. At the edge condition, they are the vacuum cleaner. But most of the time, we’re their hands and feet. We embody them. We carry them around with us. They see everything we see, they hear everything we hear, they’re constantly aware of our location, position, velocity, and intention. They mediate our searches, that is to say they know our plans, they consider our dreams, they understand our lives, they even take our questions — like “how do I send flowers to my girlfriend” — transmit them to a great big database in california, and return us answers offered by the helpful wizard behind the curtain.

Who of course is keeping track. These are our robots, and we have everything we ever expected to have from them, except the first law of robotics. You remember how that went right? Deep in the design of the positronic intelligence that made the robot were the laws that governed the ethical boundary between what could and could not be done with androids. The first law, the first law, the one that everything else had to be deduced from was that no robot may ever injure a human being. Robots must take orders from their human owners, except where those orders involve harming a human being. That was assumed to be the principal out of which at the root, down by the NAND gates of the artificial neurophysiology of robot brains, down there where the simplest idea is, you remember for Descartes, it was “cogito ergo sum”, for the robot it was “no robot must ever harm a human being”. We are living commensally with robots but we have no first law of robotics in them, they hurt human beings everyday. Everywhere.

Those injuries range from the trivial to the fatal, to the cosmic. Of course, they’re helping people to charge you more. That’s trivial, right? They’re letting other people know when you need everything from a hamburger to a sexual interaction to a house mortgage, and of course the people on the other end are the repeat players whose calculations about just how much you need, whatever it is, and just how much you’ll pay for it, are being built by the data mining of all the data about everybody that everybody is collecting through the robots.

But it isn’t just that you’re paying more. Some people in the world are being arrested, tortured, or killed because they’ve been informed on by their robots. Two days ago the New York Times printed a little story about the idea that we ought to call them trackers that happen to make phone calls rather than phones that happen to track us around. They were kind eough to mention the topic of today’s talk, though they didn’t mention the talk, and this morning the New York Times has an editorial lamenting the death of privacy and suggesting legislation. Here’s the cosmic harm our robots are doing us, they are destroying the human right to be alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY43zF_eHu4

 

[MongGrel]

:biggrin:

 

[SKORPI0]

Isaac Asimov’s 1964 Predictions About 2014 Are Frighteningly Accurate

“One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better.”

“Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare ‘automeals,’ heating water and converting it to coffee.”

“Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing.”

“The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course.”

“Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with ‘Robot-brains.’”

“There will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface.”

“By 2014, only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works and in the 2014 Futurama will show a model of an elaborate Martian colony.”

“For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections.”

“In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000.”

“Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth.”

“Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone.”

“In fact, one popular exhibit at the 2014 World’s Fair will be such a 3-D TV, built life-size, in which ballet performances will be seen.”

“Part of the General Electric exhibit today consists of a school of the future in which such present realities as closed-circuit TV and programmed tapes aid the teaching process.”

“Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.”

“The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders"

“Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom.”

“The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.”

“Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!”

 

[UglyCasanova]

Stuff they showed on Beyond 2000

 

[MongGrel]

Just as an older one, he didn't do too bad.

http://ironbombs.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/the-future-of-today-according-to-robert-heinlein/

 

[Ruptga]

I never gave it much thought in the 90's, except for a little bit near the turn of the millennium. I've thought about it more in the last fifteen years, and so far I'm not real surprised either way.

Here's what's going to happen in the next 15 years:
-self-driving cars for some people, with them being only a little less common than hybrids are now.

-no flying cars, except as concept vehicles or niche products.

-murrica will get involved in at least one other war somewhere, because murricah.
--this might not actually happen, but if not it's probably because we'll get drug deeper into existing conflicts and won't have the will to enter another.

-mobile devices will continue to differentiate and increase in power/functionality, size and weight will remain roughly the same.
-privatization of space travel will really pay off, seeing a resurgence in commercial and scientific exploitation of space.

-we're not getting our asses to Mahs, because we as a nation are not willing to make that big of an investment.
--I wouldn't be super-shocked to be wrong about this if whatever manned mission is nonconventional, such as being a non-government project, a one-way trip, or making use of a nuclear rocket, but the idea of a 70's style Mars-shot seems extremely far-fetched.
--Also, about half of the population won't get that reference.

-physicists will have some idea of what to do with the Higgs boson, but practical applications will still be years off. Expect lots of interesting articles, theories, and speculation.

-a significant fraction of the US population will still think that Jesus made the dinosaurs, and a slightly less significant fraction will still think he did it within the last ten thousand years.

-race will still be an issue.

-gender will still be an issue.

-bears will still shit in woods.

 

[mizzou]

Blade Runner

 

[RelaxTheMind]

i thought as technology advanced the general populous would get smarter. i was wrong.

access to know about or how to do just about anything in the palm of your hand. wasted on useless social networking apps.

 

[SlickSnake]

i thought as technology advanced the general populous would get smarter. i was wrong.

access to know about or how to do just about anything in the palm of your hand. wasted on useless social networking apps.

Yep, the average population just gets lazier and stupider as time goes by. When you have to pass laws and tell people not to do obviously stupid, dangerous shit like texting while driving and otherwise inappropriately misusing your cell phone like in school zones, then obviously advancing technology is failing to overcome the average, stupid consumer.

Which is why the government is panicking over Google Glass and already passing local laws against using it while driving, and it hasn't even been officially released yet. And all because of incredibly stupid people who shouldn't even be driving cars in the first place.

 

[IronWing]

Blade Runner

Blade Runner with a dollop of Brazil is where we seem to be.

 

[John Connor]

Back in 1993 I envisioned a cell phone with a QWERTY keyboard. I know about Moore's law so no surpise in how techbology is where it's at. Holographic projection is next and if you think people aimlessly walking into light poles with their head in their smartphone is bad wait till you see people interacting with holographic projections.

 

[John Connor]

Reason why we just have roombas.

<------ LMAO!

 

[who?]

Yep, the average population just gets lazier and stupider as time goes by. When you have to pass laws and tell people not to do obviously stupid, dangerous shit like texting while driving and otherwise inappropriately misusing your cell phone like in school zones, then obviously advancing technology is failing to overcome the average, stupid consumer.

Which is why the government is panicking over Google Glass and already passing local laws against using it while driving, and it hasn't even been officially released yet. And all because of incredibly stupid people who shouldn't even be driving cars in the first place.

We're all optimistic about how I'M special and I can get away unharmed from doing stupid things but there has to be a law to prevent all those other morons from doing the same. We're hypocrites.

 

[disappoint]

-physicists will have some idea of what to do with the Higgs boson, but practical applications will still be years off. Expect lots of interesting articles, theories, and speculation.

-a significant fraction of the US population will still think that Jesus made the dinosaurs, and a slightly less significant fraction will still think he did it within the last ten thousand years.

What makes you think there is anything "to do" with the Higgs Boson? The Higgs Boson is a mediator particle like the gluon. We've known about the gluon for quite some time but haven't done anything with it other than use it to describe how things work.

LOL at the crack at religionuts. That's the cross they have to bear for living in sin. It's a sin to live your life anti-education/knowledge/critical thinking in my religion and mine isn't predicated on bullshit. Gimmie tax breaks and take those tax breaks away from the bullshit peddlers! Who's with me? Let's make THAT a reality for the future. Oh right, this isn't a country for the people by the people anymore, it's for the people with deep pockets by the people with deep pockets for example The Vatican. Nice. Way to sell out U.S. govt.

 

[OverVolt]

The potholes... I did not see the potholes coming. I can't believe the roads got so bad.

Cars kind of delivered on being futuristic. CVT's and GPS.

Computers are kind of a disappointment. They became mainstream and everyone embraced geek culture... making it uncool. In the 90's only like 1/3 households has the internet and it was a more selective place. The masses kind of ruined it and everything is much more commercialized.

 

[John Connor]

"We give evil it's greatest power through our belief in it."

 

[disappoint]

"We give evil it's greatest power through our belief in it."

Quote from Fantasy Island. I don't know who wrote that episode so I couldn't attribute it to an author. The line was spoken by Ricardo Montalban. If I remember correctly the episode is about a woman who believes she is cursed, and ends up causing more stress upon herself because of it.

There is also great Star Trek TNG episode that showcases the dangers of belief, called Devil's Due. You should check it out if you haven't already.

As for real life, I regard evil as a lack of knowledge, for if people knew what they were doing I think they would be much less likely to kill, torture or otherwise disrupt other people's lives as much. Religion has a long history of being anti-knowledge, what with the whole burning books and don't eat from the tree of knowledge directive from the imagined deity in one famous religious story.

 

[John Connor]

Well, to be fair the Eve and apple story in the bible was about not eating from the tree of knowledge. And now that she has we are destined to destroy ourselves. With man kind inventing weapons of war, etc. Technology will kill us.

 

[OverVolt]

..

 

[Grooveriding]

 

[dabuddha]

I'm not doing your homework for you!

 

[rh71]

The problem with flying cars... we already have terrible drivers but if they get into an accident on our roads, they typically bump a few things and just skid to a stop. Flying cars hitting things and falling out of the sky... instant death and destruction.