Imagine it's 1995:

[stevedeshazer]

Almost no one but Gordon Gekko and Zack Morris have cellphones, pagers are the norm; dial-up modems screech and scream to connect you an internet without Google, Facebook, or YouTube; Dolly has not yet been cloned; the first Playstation is the cutting edge in gaming technology; the Human Genome Project is creeping along; Mir is still in space; MTV still plays music; Forrest Gump wins an academy award and Pixar releases their first feature film, Toy Story. Now take that mindset and pretend you’re reading the first page of a new sci-fi novel:

The year is 2010. America has been at war for the first decade of the 21st century and is recovering from the largest recession since the Great Depression. Air travel security uses full-body X-rays to detect weapons and bombs. The president, who is African-American, uses a wireless phone, which he keeps in his pocket, to communicate with his aides and cabinet members from anywhere in the world. This smart phone, called a “Blackberry,” allows him to access the world wide web at high speed, take pictures, and send emails.

It’s just after Christmas. The average family’s wish-list includes smart phones like the president’s “Blackberry” as well as other items like touch-screen tablet computers, robotic vacuums, and 3-D televisions. Video games can be controlled with nothing but gestures, voice commands and body movement. In the news, a rogue Australian cyberterrorist is wanted by world’s largest governments and corporations for leaking secret information over the world wide web; spaceflight has been privatized by two major companies, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX; and Time Magazine’s person of the year (and subject of an Oscar-worthy feature film) created a network, “Facebook,” which allows everyone (500 million people) to share their lives online.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2010/12/31/the-first-decade-of-the-future-is-behind-us/

----

Who woulda believed that?

I'd have included in that last part that Facebook sells personal information for profit, but hey.

And that bottled water thing.

[Duer 157099]

1. Anyone who reads Philip K. Dick has already experienced that

He's one of my favorites, but certainly not the only one who was able to accurately see ahead.

And he had issues with mental health. But he wasn't wrong about what he saw.

[bluestateguy]

2. And the Red Sox finally won the World Series too

who'd of thunk that?

[Urban Prairie]

5. Maybe the Chicago White Sox fans?

Since their MLB franchise also won a WS in '05, which ironically and immediately followed the Red Sox WS win in '04, the White Sox won a WS for the first time since...1917...heh!!

Speaking of cities with loooong professional sports championship droughts, Hiya Cleveland!!

And an HM shout-out goes of course, to my own hometown NFL franchise Detroit Lions, who lost every game in '08, becoming the proud owners of a historically infamous 0-16 season record.

Who'd of thunk that?!?

Everyone but William Clay Ford, Matt Millen, and Rod Marinelli, apparently.

[Odin2005]

3. Technology is advancing at an exponential rate.

In 20 years AI will be as intelligent as humans, they will function in all the ways necessary to qualify as persons.

In 20 years we will be able to manufacture things by nano-manufacturing. Put in some scrap metal and plastic in and a new car comes out on the other end.

In 20 years we will be able to access the internet with our own thoughts, the web-page displayed on our visual cortex.

The term for this is the Technological Singularity.

[Capitalocracy]

6. But where are the flying cars?

I feel gipped.

[Hippo_Tron]

4. None of the technology you speak of was unbelievable in 1995

It was inevitable that the internet would eventually be available on a portable device and Nokia had already released a PDA phone in 1996. Motion sensor video games have been around forever, it just wasn't popular until Nintendo thought of the Wii. 3D movies were popular in the 80's and for some reason we decided to bring them back in 2009 and 2010.

[stevedeshazer]

8. Perhaps, but the politics are unbelievable.

That part was the emphasis for me. But your point is well taken.

[Gregorian]

7. I expected almost all of it except the massive electronic improvement.

My first email was in 1989. I was streaming off of the web in 1996.

I didn't think the internet was going to be so diverse. And that electronics could improve so quickly. I had just retired from an electronics company that sold current sensing switches. It was a relatively new concept. Only several years later it would be found in so many applications it was mind boggling. And electronics just took off at an alarming pace from that.


What surprises me the most of anything is how resistant we've been to moving away from non-renewable energy generation. Even now we're talking about electric cars, yet we have no way of charging them other than fossil fuels. That's changing. And it'll probably be one of those amazing things again. Battery technology has been shockingly slow, but will take a quantum leap soon.