In this world of the Internet, Ipods, computerized cell phones, and all, it still isn't the future and I don't think people from 50 years ago would be that amazed at our technology.  Sure it's all convenient, but it's technological, not futuristic.

Jetpacks are futuristic! 

When do you think things will start feeling like the 21st century we were promised?  I'd guess maybe 2030 or so.

As soon as I get this baby up to 88 miles per hour...

In this world of the Internet, Ipods, computerized cell phones, and all, it still isn't the future and I don't think people from 50 years ago would be that amazed at our technology.  Sure it's all convenient, but it's technological, not futuristic.

Jetpacks are futuristic! 

When do you think things will start feeling like the 21st century we were promised?  I'd guess maybe 2030 or so.


My guess is never for the reason that the future will never feel like the future to the people living it.  And plus many of the things people look at as futuristic are unrealistic.  Like your Jetpacks for example.  Jetpacks will never happen for one reason and one reason only.  They would be way to dangerous.  You lose one of your engines on those things and your a goner and there is no real logical way to fix that problem.

Not soon enough....  ::)

In the very next second.

Technological developments are shifting from the useful to the self-indulgent.

the future will never start

After all, tomorrow is another day

After all, tomorrow is another day


"I hear them saying
Tomorrow's just another day
I hear them saying
And it gets better every day"

As soon as I get this baby up to 88 miles per hour...


"Doc, this is heavy!" ;)

Well, I would say around the 2020's is when things will start looking noticeably different from the way they do now (i.e. the 80's and 90's will likely begin being considered as "old"), but I don't think it'll be futuristic in that regard at all.

The future never changes as radically as we always envision. I have a book all about the year 2000 and articles of how people thought it would turn out. In the 50's and 60's, they thought we'd have colonized the moon by now and we'd all be wearing spacesuits, have flying cars and machines that performed simple household functions. ;D

But if you discount fashion and music and stuff, things haven't changed much at all. The main changes have been in the way we think, racial equality, women's rights, gay rights, etc. The only difference in day to day life has been technological - cellphones, the Internet, VCR's/DVD players, etc.

I think it's just that so much -- I mean SO MUCH -- changed from roughly 1895 to 1915. Things we'd barely heard of at all were commonplace in the world in only 20 years time. People's imaginations ran wild as to what would come next. Then of course, people are inevitably disappointed when the given time rolls around and it ain't like that, LOL.

I hate to sound unoptemistic 'cause I'd love to experience some of it, but that "futuristic" sci-fi future will never fully happen IMO. At least not in any of our lifetimes.

If we tried to write up an article on what, say 2040 or 2050 would be like, I'm sure we'd all be laughably off too. Sure it'll be noticeably different from today, but just as it has been up till now, the differences will be "logical" changes we could never have known. I'm sure we'll still have cars and regular houses and electronics, etc. Just with a gajillion more conveinences. :)

P.S. I sometimes really do wonder if we will (or have already) hit a brick wall in terms of what more can we invent or come out with. We've been going at a breakneck pace since the late 19th century. We've gotta take some decaf and slow down sometime.

"Doc, this is heavy!" ;)

Well, I would say around the 2020's is when things will start looking noticeably different from the way they do now (i.e. the 80's and 90's will likely begin being considered as "old"), but I don't think it'll be futuristic in that regard at all.

The future never changes as radically as we always envision. I have a book all about the year 2000 and articles of how people thought it would turn out. In the 50's and 60's, they thought we'd have colonized the moon by now and we'd all be wearing spacesuits, have flying cars and machines that performed simple household functions. ;D

But if you discount fashion and music and stuff, things haven't changed much at all. The main changes have been in the way we think, racial equality, women's rights, gay rights, etc. The only difference in day to day life has been technological - cellphones, the Internet, VCR's/DVD players, etc.

I think it's just that so much -- I mean SO MUCH -- changed from roughly 1895 to 1915. Things we'd barely heard of at all were commonplace in the world in only 20 years time. People's imaginations ran wild as to what would come next. Then of course, people are inevitably disappointed when the given time rolls around and it ain't like that, LOL.

I hate to sound unoptemistic 'cause I'd love to experience some of it, but that "futuristic" sci-fi future will never fully happen IMO. At least not in any of our lifetimes.

If we tried to write up an article on what, say 2040 or 2050 would be like, I'm sure we'd all be laughably off too. Sure it'll be noticeably different from today, but just as it has been up till now, the differences will be "logical" changes we could never have known. I'm sure we'll still have cars and regular houses and electronics, etc. Just with a gajillion more conveinences. :)

P.S. I sometimes really do wonder if we will (or have already) hit a brick wall in terms of what more can we invent or come out with. We've been going at a breakneck pace since the late 19th century. We've gotta take some decaf and slow down sometime.



Well said. 

I think 1800s vs. 1900s vs. 2000s is like a macrocosm of 1980s vs. 1990s. vs. 2000s:  sure the 21st has terrorism, the Internet, cell phones, etc. that distinguish it even from the 1990s, but the 20th Century will probably end up being much more like the 21st than it is like the 19th. Just the way that the 1990s are a hell of a lot closer in mindset (although not really in technology) to the 2000s than they are to the 1980s. However with the centuries you can expand it back many centuries whearas decades having their own identity is a quite recent thing that I think will be totally gone by the 2020s or 2030s when the names of the 21st decades start to conflict with 20th decades, because to me "70s", "80s", "90s", or whatever are 20th century decades and nothing else.

Both are the opposite of what a numerologist type would think; but I think Y2K actually made mindsets change less rather than more because the fact that the 1900s, 1990s, and 1999 had ended were mere afterthoughts.  In other words, they never bashed the 90s because they were too busy bashing the years 1000-1999!

When you think about it a new millenium isn't really that interesting anyway.  I mean if you're born in a random time there's like a 7% chance you'll live one and the year 900 isn't much different from 1100 is it?

Back to the point though, I think it's just as likely that the 21st will bring us back to the "old days" of dawn-to-dusk agriculture and bowing to a king a hundred miles away as it is that they'll bring us to the Moon and the stars.  And to me that idea is just as interesting, if not as cool.  But yeah, I think the tech changes in the late 1800s and early 1900s DWARF that of the current era (80s, 90s, and today).  I mean in some ways, like space travel, the 60s and 70s were ahead of us!

I definitely think pop culture can't (or won't) advance, and that the late 1990s people sort of gave up on trying to "define their times".  I think this because the stuff I did in the early-to-mid nineties seemed special at the time whereas in the late nineties I sorta felt the world was always going to be kinda like this, at least for a long long time.  The late nineties and today are just too normal; I know I'm biased for being amidst them but during the eighties people knew their time was wacky if you watch the movies from the era.  Remember that Goonies line "I'll hit you so hard your clothes will be out of style?"  You'd never hear a line like that today because it will probably take many years for 2000s clothes to date themselves.

Tech on the other hand I think can advance, most people just want the wrong sort of advancement.  Harpo got it perfectly; except for the Net and cell phones it's all about indulgence and convienience.  What ever happened to exploration, fixing the planet's problems, and creating beauty?  I could care less about the latest big-screen TV or how small the new Ipod is.  But a Mars mission would be awesome!  Will tech advance? Probably, but I deem it will be in the hands of the few, not the masses.

"Doc, this is heavy!" ;)

Well, I would say around the 2020's is when things will start looking noticeably different from the way they do now (i.e. the 80's and 90's will likely begin being considered as "old"), but I don't think it'll be futuristic in that regard at all.

The future never changes as radically as we always envision. I have a book all about the year 2000 and articles of how people thought it would turn out. In the 50's and 60's, they thought we'd have colonized the moon by now and we'd all be wearing spacesuits, have flying cars and machines that performed simple household functions. ;D

But if you discount fashion and music and stuff, things haven't changed much at all. The main changes have been in the way we think, racial equality, women's rights, gay rights, etc. The only difference in day to day life has been technological - cellphones, the Internet, VCR's/DVD players, etc.

I think it's just that so much -- I mean SO MUCH -- changed from roughly 1895 to 1915. Things we'd barely heard of at all were commonplace in the world in only 20 years time. People's imaginations ran wild as to what would come next. Then of course, people are inevitably disappointed when the given time rolls around and it ain't like that, LOL.

I hate to sound unoptemistic 'cause I'd love to experience some of it, but that "futuristic" sci-fi future will never fully happen IMO. At least not in any of our lifetimes.

If we tried to write up an article on what, say 2040 or 2050 would be like, I'm sure we'd all be laughably off too. Sure it'll be noticeably different from today, but just as it has been up till now, the differences will be "logical" changes we could never have known. I'm sure we'll still have cars and regular houses and electronics, etc. Just with a gajillion more conveinences. :)

P.S. I sometimes really do wonder if we will (or have already) hit a brick wall in terms of what more can we invent or come out with. We've been going at a breakneck pace since the late 19th century. We've gotta take some decaf and slow down sometime.


I don't know, for some reason I also feel as if though the future will not be as bright as we all might hope. Sure we might come up with new inventions but will there be worse diseases by then or will the population increase catch up to us in terms of resources?  This problem has always bugged me.

When the present ends....

The Future can't be good.  Look what it did to Neil Diamond's career  ;D

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002674.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

yeah were not gonna have really futuristic stuff untill about 3,000. soo just hang in there for another 1,000 years....
or you could always follow in the great footsteps of Phillip J. Fry and freeze yourself, (accidentaly, or intentionaly!!).

The future starts NOW!

http://www.furious-d.com/jetpack.jpg

When the present ends.  :D

When the present ends....
Dang... someone said it before me!  :D

The future begins right after the present ends. But when does the present end? The present seems to go on! I keep waiting for it to end. But it continues to unroll: Is this the future ... now! ... or just more of the present? If this is indeed the present we are in right now, then maybe the present is the car and the future is the road: We're in the car all the time, but we're going somewhere. Eventually we would park and get out. But if the present is a car, its doors must be locked. We cannot get out.

I've always loved reading sci-fi and most of those stories takes place ...Well... now, and although the authors missed the cellphone they did promise us a lot that we simply don't have, it's the 21st century and where are the Luna base, the colony on Mars, the domestic robots and the flying cars, I feel like I should sue the authors for lying to me the last two decades.

Sure our technology have evolved, I mean when WWII broke out in '39 few tanks or aircraft had radios, today we have cellphones the size of a tape-box, and smaller, but on other fronts we haven't evolved a bit, they talk about spaceage technology but the truth is that we still use the same technology to go into space, as we did when the space race began over four decades ago, nothing have changed.

The technology exists today that would allow me to get on a plane in Scandinavia and land in New York two hours later, we've seen the use of sun-sails in sci-fi movies and the technology exists, in sci-fi cars are usually have quiet, non-polluting engines and again the technology exists, the list goes on but the short version is that we actually have the means to create the world of the Jettson's, but I'm guessing that someone are making a bundle of money by keeping us where we are, and no; I'm not a conspiracy nut.

The future started just then!

Next week...  ;D

Next week...  ;D
...but what time next week?

The future is now, as corny as that sounds there's a lot of truth to it.  Many key and major discoveries from the past were probably not very well known at the time, so it actually takes time to realize how important a discovery or inovation is.  Things are changing all the time. So much technology and innovation has taken place, the last one hundred years has probably seen more technological advances than any other period in time, and we're continuing to change as we head into the 21st century.  It's amazing just look at how much computers have changed the world in only the last ten years. Ten years ago nobody had DVD's, home theater systems, high speed Internet, flat screens, wireless networks, cell phones...well cell phones that could fit in your pocket, digital cameras, I-pods, scanners...ect, the world has changed that much.  In only ten years computers have revolutionized our lives, just imagine what else they could do. The 21st century has barely begun, it's crazy to think what lays ahead, and as long as our country grows and people receive good educations, innovation will increase. I think the next one hundred years it will be safe to say we will put men on Mars, 3D copy machines will exist in which you will be able to copy 3-D objects, Holographic TV images, AIDs will be cured, maybe even the common cold will finally have a cure, robots, cloning, replacing organs with cloning. The possibilities are endless.  It's hard to say when the common culture of the 21st century will start.  I mean if you look at the 20th century it probably started about the time of the 1920s, but it's hard to say.  The first half of the 20th century was very different from the second half, so it's impossible to know for sure what to expect until we get there.  What I think is funny is in a sense this technology we have today has got us looking at the past instead.  It's funny how so far in the 2000s it seems we've been mixing fads from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s into one decade.  This is because of DVDs, i-pods, Internet, all this techonolgy has actually restored and brought back better qualities of older movies, songs ect, so in a sense we're rediscoverying the past so it seems.

...but what time next week?


Monday..... 12:15!  ;D