Visionaries who predicted technology

[Rose65]

Reading A Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, I can see Douglas Adams predicted the kindle, along with many other things. What an imagination, he was a regarded a genius . Throughout history there have been such driven persons, where would we be without inventors and designers.

What makes me sad is those, like Adams, who died young and never lived to see these times we live in. Their dreams have not only come true but surpassed all expectations. The inventor of the phone couldn't have imagined all of us carrying mobiles. Of the TV, that we would have enormous screens and masses of channels.

Just in my lifetime extraordinary progress has been made. Yet 100 or even 50 years from now, people will look back on us as extremely old fashioned!

 

[Happyflowerlady]

I remember back in the early 1950’s, reading the Dick Tracy comics in the Sunday newspaper, and he had this wonderful watch phone , which was almost like the Apple Watch that I now wear every day.
Dick Tracy made phone calls , and probably more that I no longer remember (or cared back when I was a little kid); but I loved it when I got my for-real Dick Tracy phone, my Apple Watch.

 

[JBR]

I'm sure we could go back further, but thinking back about 100 years... I think of Boris Rosing, Farrington Daniels, Buckminster Fuller, Arthur M. Young, John Todd (the one from Ontario, there are several others). There are Wikipedia articles on these people.

 

[OlderThanDirt]

Aldous Huxley and just about every science fiction writer. As a Sci Fi fan, though, I'm fascinated by the fact that most SF writers didn't accurately predict the internet. Orson Scott Card did a bit, but seriously no one else until the advent of Cyberpunk genre, and they were just riffing on what already existed. I'm waiting for someone to invent instantaneous teleportation- I want that. I want to have lunch in Paris and dinner in Hawaii...

 

[OlderThanDirt]

I remember back in the early 1950’s, reading the Dick Tracy comics in the Sunday newspaper, and he had this wonderful watch phone , which was almost like the Apple Watch that I now wear every day.
Dick Tracy made phone calls , and probably more that I no longer remember (or cared back when I was a little kid); but I loved it when I got my for-real Dick Tracy phone, my Apple Watch.

I call my husband's Apple Watch his Dick Tracy watch!!

 

[Nathan]

In Arthur c. Clarke's Imperial Earth(published 1975), which was set in the year 2276 the inhabitants of Earth all carried their personal handheld device, with which they could not only use to communicate with every other person on Earth, but could also access all the accumulated written works and knowledge of Mankind. Sound familiar?

 

[JBR]

In Arthur c. Clarke's Imperial Earth(published 1975), which was set in the year 2276 the inhabitants of Earth all carried their personal handheld device, with which they could not only use to communicate with every other person on Earth, but could also access all the accumulated written works and knowledge of Mankind. Sound familiar?

Very interesting, Nathan.

 

[Grampa Don]

Did you know that Mark Twain predicted the internet in 1898?

 

[OneEyedDiva]

Yes, back in the day those "predictions" or innovations were bordering on being considered science fiction. But I've always said science fiction eventually become science fact. It IS too bad Douglas Adams and those innovators/dreamers like him did not live to see that what they dreamed of came to be. And you're right...100 years from now, the technology we have now will probably seem primitive. The only reason I'd want an exceptionally long life would be to see what they come up with 50 years from now. In fact, there's a show (forgot which channel it streams on) that shows what innovations we can expect in 50 years, like a "elevator" into space.

 

[Rich]

I remember back in the early 1950’s, reading the Dick Tracy comics in the Sunday newspaper, and he had this wonderful watch phone , which was almost like the Apple Watch that I now wear every day.
Dick Tracy made phone calls , and probably more that I no longer remember (or cared back when I was a little kid); but I loved it when I got my for-real Dick Tracy phone, my Apple Watch.