# The Future is now, revisited
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [December 17, 2009, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630 "2009-12-17T12:46:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2009, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630/21 "2009-12-19T16:36:37Z")
> [@Unintentionally\_Blank](#):
>
> (for the purposes of this thread, grousing about your flying car is verboten.)
Thank God, because this is one of the stupidest straw men ever. Flying cars are technologically feasible. It’s not our inability to make them that has held them back.
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### Author:  [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2009, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630/22 "2009-12-19T17:04:27Z")
> [@Mindfield](#):
>
> Hey, another Atari ST user. That was my second platform.
>
> You know, I never thought about it like that, but that means my current storage setup in my main computer (2.5tb) would make a stack of almost 12KM! That’s up near the stratosphere from my location. Moreover, if I consider that in terms of the 128k 5.25" floppies my first computer used (about a third of the width of a 5.25" floppy if flattened as much as it can be) that’d be about 20KM.
It was a steak kinfe to the heart when I was at the local museum and I saw, in the 1970’s vignette, a TI-99 4/a and Chariots of Fire. I have both in my basement and can immediately put my hand on them…
Course, I don’t think I have a TV that’ll accept the TI’s inputs.
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### Author:  [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2009, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630/23 "2009-12-21T16:01:19Z")
Oh! oh! My wife just picked up an\*\* aerosol can of _icing_. \*\*
The future is now, folks.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2009, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630/24 "2009-12-21T16:30:51Z")
Glow-in-the-dark [aquarium fish](http://www.glofish.com/).
[Augmented reality](http://www.wikitude.org/) for my Nokia phone.
That and I’m creating a tentacle monster in my garage right now using microcomputers that are probably more powerful than the ones that put men on the Moon.
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### Author:  [@Telcontar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telcontar)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2009, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630/25 "2009-12-21T16:41:40Z")
> [@Nancarrow](#):
>
> My first computer was an Atari ST back in the late 80s (which I realise makes me a damn yoof of today to some of you), so whenever a new data storage medium comes out, I like to think of how high the equivalent stack of 3.5" 720Kb floppy disks would have to be.
>
> My first “serious” computer: home-built generic PC clone, 1998. HD: 6.3Gb = 9200 floppies, 30m high.
>
> MP3 player from 2003: 30Gb = 44000 floppies, 140m high
>
> Mum’s current laptop (2009) HD: 320Gb = 470000 floppies, 1.5km high!
>
> First USB thumbdrive, 2001: 8Mb, £45, = 11 floppies, 3.8cm high.
>
> Current USB [del]thumb[/del]flashdrive, 2008: 4Gb, £10, = 5800 floppies, 19m high
I was recently looking around online and I realized that a torrent containing pretty much every popular computer game from the 80-pre cd 90s was smaller than my thumbdrive. My OLD thumbdrive.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630/26 "2009-12-21T16:55:15Z")
I got to use the Picturephone at the Bell System exhibit during the 1964 Worlds Fair. Last year we did video calls to our daughter in Germany for free, or free after we bought cheap webcams.
Arthur C. Clarke predicted, in Voices from the Sky in about 1960, that some day distance wouldn’t matter in telephony. The concept of a “long distance” call is about dead in the US, and my daughter’s Russian friend was able to buy a $5 / month unlimited international calling plan so he could talk to his mother in Moscow from Palo Alto whenever he wanted.
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### Author:  [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2009, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630/27 "2009-12-21T17:11:58Z")
> [@Unintentionally\_Blank](#):
>
> It was a steak kinfe to the heart when I was at the local museum and I saw, in the 1970’s vignette, a TI-99 4/a and Chariots of Fire. I have both in my basement and can immediately put my hand on them…
And I remember both when they were new. Funny, that kind of brings to mind something you _can’t_ do now that you could do then: Fix the damn things. It used to be that if a piece of electronics was starting to go wonky, I could take a soldering iron, some desoldering braid or a solder sucker, and reflow cracked solder joints, replace chips or resistors or whathaveyou, and fix them. Try that on your modern surface-mount, micronized hardware! You’d have to be a Keebler elf to get at the components.
> [@Unintentionally\_Blank](#):
>
> Course, I don’t think I have a TV that’ll accept the TI’s inputs.
You can get adapters that convert the RCA jack that plugged into the RF switchbox into a standard cable coax jack. I used to collect vintage consoles and computers a few years back and had a dozen of the things; bought 'em for a couple bucks apiece. Worked great.
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### Author:  [@Illuminatiprimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Illuminatiprimus)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2009, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630/28 "2009-12-21T18:30:52Z")
Whenever I use the Dyson airblade handryer at work. Seriously, looks like it should be in a sci-fi film.
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### Author:  [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2009, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630/29 "2009-12-21T18:53:59Z")
Wait, isn’t your shoe/telephone the [past](https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/spy-fi-archives/item15.html)?
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### Author:  [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2009, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future-is-now-revisited/521630/30 "2009-12-21T21:14:23Z")
> [@Unintentionally\_Blank](#):
>
> Oh! oh! My wife just picked up an\*\* aerosol can of _icing_. \*\*
>
> The future is now, folks.
Hell, even better than that, they sell pancake batter in an aerosol can! My wife’s cousin bought some. I almost sprayed pancake batter all over my ice cream sundae.
Oddly, I saw a guy at Costco returning 3 cans of it. Said he didn’t like it. But my kids seem to love it.
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