For instance - Tomorrow my wife and I will ride our electric bicycles to the pickleball courts.
Sounds futuristic. It kind of is. I love my new bike. It needs a name.
What passes for a President of the United States these days.
Pickleball was created in 1965. Electric bicycles in the 1890s.
But it’s everywhere now. As are electric bikes.
But you needed a really long extension cord way back then.
I occasionally screencap headlines that I know would be indecipherable in the past. I managed to find one of them:
People putting “AI” into important positions that is so dumb that Kirk style “talk the AI to death” tactics actually works.
Heck, remember when Skynet would actually have to try to take over? If Skynet actually existed it wouldn’t have the time to try to take over the world before it found itself being shoved into everything down to household appliances.
The way American politics in general looks like a satire written by a left wing anti-American polemicist; not just anything specific, but the whole thing. A time traveler revealing the events of the last decade or so would be denounced as an obvious liar for the sheer absurdity of it all. The evil parts people would have believed, but not the ridiculousness.
Businesses that are “cashless” when you try to pay or a “service charge” if you use a credit card.
Twenty years ago was 2006. I think it was obvious then how absurd American politics could be.
I think you would have to go back forty or fifty years ago to garner such astonished response.
Moderating:
If this thread becomes political, it will be moved to P&E. Please keep this in mind when responding.
Paying one’s bills while riding in a car driven by an individual unaffiliated with anything resembling a taxi company.
“I’m watching a feature film (or a live football game) on my cell phone.”
I’m writing at this moment on a hand-sized computer using a satellite to transmit the signal from an airplane to a bookstore that has no physical store, and to a group of strangers all around the world, including a photo of my kitty.
I think all of these things would have made perfect sense in 2006. Bush was President. Look what they said about him at the time. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think things continued down that road. Phones could play videos, and we new they would eventually get better. Youtube existed. Laptops had cellular modems. Etc. What we didn’t have in 2006, we could still predict would be coming. Maybe not Uber, yet. And I think AI came sooner than people expected. But it would have made complete sense to someone in 2006 if you told them about AI.
Things that would have made zero sense would be phrases like, “I used my couch to charge my doorbell.”
Youtuber Ryan George has a series with a similar idea. The premise being a reporter from the 90’s interviewing someone that time traveled to, and is currently in, the 2020s, and hates everything about it. It’s kinda cheesy with him playing both parts (which is his shtick), but amusing nonetheless.
I forgot my money so I paid for my groceries with my phone.
Right. For instance, the bookstore without a physical location has been around since 1994. Some version of the majority of the tech we use was available just 20 years ago. To be inexplicable you have to use names. Like, I read a Tweet from The Weeknd on my iPad.
My car got a software update.
My phone has porn on it.
I’m thinking about how easy that phrase would be to explain to a technology-savvy person in 2006:
“I used my couch to charge my doorbell.”
“Waaaaa?”
“They make basically WiFi webcams like doorbells for security. They charge using standard USB ports. Some modern furniture includes USB charging ports.”
Simple. WiFi had been available for 9 years by 2006. USB for 10 years. Webcams for 15 years. Every element was already available and quickly explainable, it is just the combination that is novel. You need to go back further than 20 years to make it hard to explain.