Tweet
I was watching back to the Future again the other day. One scene got me thinking - the scene where Marty is trying to prove to the Doc that he is from the future. When he tells doc brown that Ronald Reagan is president, the Doc finds it utterly incredulous.
Thinking back to the 70's, 80's or 90's, if you had thought back then about what might happen or be invented in the future, what would you never have predicted happening in your wildest imagination ?
If you were to travel back in time and tell your younger self all about the inventions and events you have seen, what is the one thing that your younger self would find truly impossible to believe ?
For example, two things that stand out for me are :
1. The smartphone. Star trek had foreseen the mobile phone, which was not beyond imagination. But in the days of the sinclair spectrum, i would never have imagined a computer with a touch screen that serves as hundreds of daily tools, can navigate the way for you, has immediate access to info from around the whole world, and doubles up as a stills and video camera. And it makes phone calls, too. Even into the mid-nineties, there was no sign of that one on the horizon. And in the early nineties, if someone had told me that Apple, that almost-defunct 'alternative' computer firm, would be one of the biggest sellers, I would have laughed my head off.
If you look at old sci-fi movies, the one futuristic gadget they never seem to have is a smartphone, because no-one saw it coming.
2. On a very different note, 9/11 - The Russians were going to drop the bomb. Or if not, at least our enemies wore uniforms and painted their weaponry a different colour to us, so we knew roughly who and where they were. And surely no-one, apart from aliens in movies, were ever going to attack and destroy something like that on American soil ? I think for many of us, 9/11 was surely the pivotal moment of our generation, when the world seemed a very different place before and after. The new millenium held promise of a civilised and peaceful new future. Then horror beyond imagination happened right afterwards.
Thinking back to the 70's, 80's or 90's, if you had thought back then about what might happen or be invented in the future, what would you never have predicted happening in your wildest imagination ?
If you were to travel back in time and tell your younger self all about the inventions and events you have seen, what is the one thing that your younger self would find truly impossible to believe ?
For example, two things that stand out for me are :
1. The smartphone. Star trek had foreseen the mobile phone, which was not beyond imagination. But in the days of the sinclair spectrum, i would never have imagined a computer with a touch screen that serves as hundreds of daily tools, can navigate the way for you, has immediate access to info from around the whole world, and doubles up as a stills and video camera. And it makes phone calls, too. Even into the mid-nineties, there was no sign of that one on the horizon. And in the early nineties, if someone had told me that Apple, that almost-defunct 'alternative' computer firm, would be one of the biggest sellers, I would have laughed my head off.
If you look at old sci-fi movies, the one futuristic gadget they never seem to have is a smartphone, because no-one saw it coming.
2. On a very different note, 9/11 - The Russians were going to drop the bomb. Or if not, at least our enemies wore uniforms and painted their weaponry a different colour to us, so we knew roughly who and where they were. And surely no-one, apart from aliens in movies, were ever going to attack and destroy something like that on American soil ? I think for many of us, 9/11 was surely the pivotal moment of our generation, when the world seemed a very different place before and after. The new millenium held promise of a civilised and peaceful new future. Then horror beyond imagination happened right afterwards.
Comment