A vision of the future

[SoCalSupper]

trippy- i can see all these things coming to pass-pretty cool

[Celeste]

Very unrealistic, her VW was not on the back of a rollback

[Boludo]

That was pretty cool.  We've seen how much an iPad cost or MacBook Pro, I'd hate to see how much all that would cost.

[Admin]

After a few years with it, do you y'all even like touching the screen? 

[Dwight (DW)]

After a few years with it, do you y'all even like touching the screen?  

Yes. In the future, only computer work requiring precision pointing (like CAD work) will use a mouse. The mouse will be for nerd work only, not mainstream.

Hey, can you make the page numbers bigger. My fingers are fat

[pdxmike]

That video reminds me of the old visions-of-the-future stuff during the 60s, when nuclear power, flying cars and suburban living were going to solve everything.  There'd be no poor people, just as in this video there are no people sneezing into their hands and then smearing germs all over the touch screens that your fingers share with thousands of other fingers, nobody forgetting where the invisible burners are on their stovetops and burning their fingers or setting down their phones on burners that are already hot....

I do think a lot of those things in the video are pretty cool--also imagine that in only a few years some of them will look quaint, just like watching the already outdated technology in old Star Trek reruns. 

[Strand Leper]

Okay... so basically the functionality of an integrated Iphone and Ipad with your home entertainment system and work platform... (... I have that now)...

With urban centers (among the worst governed and managed entities in human history) having sufficient funding for state of the art glass and fiber optic communications integration ... that does not get vandalized on a daily basis... ummm okay.

I like the automatic darkening windows... it would be nice to have the ambience of the outdoors, without the sometimes massive ambient light of the city, moon and stars...

Cool commercial though.

One thing that is kind of funny... the idea that a car nav / commuinication / entertainment system should have its own brains is kind of anachronistic... (this commercial seems to imply that the car depicted is passive rather than active in its intelligence).

Why not just accept the intelligence of smart phones and have passive systems in the vehicles... like the monitor for your CPU essentially... that has really bugged me for the last few years.  I imagine that it is so the car makers can keep getting the "nav - sound system" premium... food for thought.  Any automotive designers on the forum?

SL

[pdxmike]

Obviously, since this is a commercial for glass, they haven't tried to show much that's different with the future other than some new uses for glass.  Everything else remains pretty much unchanged. 

But the thing that's funny about looking at these types of things, especially after the fact, is how people can't break out of current thinking, so the future usually ends up looking like a place that just has cleaner and better versions of what we use today.  Just look at all the things today that make the future thinking of a few years ago look obsolete. 

Even 4-year-olds who learned how to operate technology when they were 2 that their parents couldn't figure out are already coming to the realization that the devices they were mastering at 2 are already outdated technology. 

[PonoBill]

The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed.

I liked the video, but if that's the future it's only in implementation, not in thinking. Electric burners under glass. Woopee. Makes any real cook gag. You might as well be using a campstove (oh, wait, they're actually better. Figure out a way to make that work better than a gas burner and you might have something--but it's not going to happen.

As far as the tech goes, I thought the car was going to drive itself. No? then it's not the future. Google has that mastered.

Touch screens? Where's the fingerprints and smudges? Expect Kinect-style interfaces that use gestures. Google Glass is a lot more likely than big public glass screens, and Layar style tech to turn signs and walls into virtual screens.

In other words, it looked a lot like 2012.

Jerry Pournelle is a tech sci-fi writer. In a Mote in God's eye he describes a handheld device that these future folks with interstellar spaceships use. The gee-whiz description sounds like a low-rent smartphone with too few features for anyone to buy.

[swordfish1227]

Most of the functions they showed have been done. It was just enlarging and streamlining all the displays.


All I want is a GPS speed readout in my sunglasses or helmet visor. Is that too much to ask?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[headmount]

I'd buy sunnies with a GPS speeeed readout.

Was telling PBill today about how my Dad would read the Dick Tracy comic strip and gag at what the future would be like if we had handheld walkie talkies like Dick Tracy had.  It would mean work (the Pentagon) would be able to reach him even during weekends.  There was always some crisis that couldn't wait till monday.  This was 1965 and he died before having this cell phone world cascade on us like an appendage that feels like we're amputated if it breaks.

Dad had this cool calculator of concentric circles that he used to figure out what his miles/gallon were.  It's funny, looking back, because gas was so damn cheap in those days, but he liked to keep track, just like all of us nuts on this forum.

As you see this parade of tech waltz by... after awhile you have a tendency to say so what?

[ADKSUPr]

I'd love to be able to place my Droid on a future Corning desk and have a large image.  This isn't going to happen soon, however.  We just got a memo on cost-cutting measures that prohibited the organization from spending 45 cents on a stamp to send condolence cards to families of employees that die.  Oh, but wait, there was no prohibition on buying 'Smart Boards' ;-).

I'd also like it if my Droid could find the GPS signal so it could get me out of NYC.

[SlatchJim]

If I were a glass manufacturer, I'd probably have the same vision, or at least my marketing department would.  

[Easy Rider]

Glass dashboard on the car might not be so good in a crash.

[pdxmike]

If I were a glass manufacturer, I'd probably have the same vision, or at least my marketing department would.  

No surprise that we could see right through it.