My first computer was a 1980 Apple II+ with 48K of RAM, a lot for the time. I am building out a new PC now with 96 Gigs. Actually, that’s probably a lot more than I needed, but it wasn’t that expensive and I wanted to be able to say my new computer has 2 million times the RAM of that first one. To me, it’s mind-boggling that’s happened within my lifetime.
What’s boggling your minds these days? Let’s leave out politics though because, 1. that’s a different forum and 2. it’s too obvious and 3. it’s depressing.
Lots of tech stuff, starting with my phone. I’ve had an iPhone for years now, and I’m still blown away by what it can do. “Sorry, I’m in France right now, but would you like me to open bay 2 of my garage so you can pick up the drill you left last week?” “Let me check the cameras to be sure it closed.”
Electric cars.
Streaming music. Any song at any time (through my phone again). I’m just old enough to remember buying 45s.
And DVRs. (multi-room DVRs to boot). Going from three channels (B&W) to what we have now, and being able to skip commercials!
Today’s video games are immersive movies, and with virtual reality technology you can literally experience being inside the game. I think it’s wild, especially considering the improvements that are sure to come.
ETA: although the things that boggle my mind the most probably remain more natural phenomena, like the size of the cosmos and its enormous potential for other life.
I still find it amazing that the first computer (with a hard drive) that my family had was a 286 or 386 with 80mb of storage, later we added a 200mb drive to it. If we wanted to play certain games, it meant uninstalling others just to make space. Now I have jump drives, the size of a Tylenol with 64+ gigs on them.
My mind boggles that the hellscape promised by social commentators and science fiction writers alike in the 1970s never happened. It’s already three years past the time we were supposed to have crowd control scoopers and crackers made out of people.
Now, that’s confusing me or (heh) boggling my mind. I remember color TV back to my Sesame Street days, but I was still buying 45s when I was in college. We must have grown up in different timelines!
When I was in college in the early 80s I owned roughly 100 albums and stored them in a peach crate. Moving that crate was a pain in the ass – 100 albums is heavy! Now I can easily schlep around twice that many albums on a phone or iPod that fits in my pocket.
How easy it is to buy stuff. Going on Amazon, clicking a button, and having something delivered to your house the next day is magnitudes easier than what we had to do in the days before the Internet.
That we are living in the Glorious Future! When I started college (1980) we had a single IBM 360 for the entire school, and PCs were only as advanced as a Commodore 64. They promised us “in The Future, computers will make (X) possible.” And they did! I have access to so much information at work just on the computer. Digital control system make so many things possible that just couldn’t be done in an analog world. A smart phone is everything we were promised!
And yet, also boggling is something I said in another thread. If you take an an average person from 1966 and drop them into 2024, they’ll think you’re faking. Where are the flying cars? The space stations? The moon bases? Interstellar travel? Intercontinental dirigibles? Monkey robot butlers? We have exactly the same capabilities for space travel now that we had in 1966. We’re still driving nearly the same cars on the exact same roads. The Middle east is still in Crisis.
Where is our Glorious Future we were promised?
(eta: at least we’re not fighting the cockroaches to survive the post-apocalyptic wasteland we were predicted, either. There is still time, brother!)
I know, right? Back in the old days my wife and I would have to set aside a weekend in December to drive the forty-ish miles to a mall in the Kansas City area to get all our Christmas shopping done. We’d spend about fifteen minutes driving around the parking lot looking for an open spot because the place was packed. Sometimes we’d follow someone to their car so we could nab their spot. (And half the time they’d just be putting stuff in their car and then going back in for more shopping.) Now it’s all online with a package or two showing up on the porch every day. We were up near the mall about a week before Christmas running some other errands, and the parking lot was deserted.
Color TV existed when I was younger, but not at our house until later. The last time I bought a 45 was probably around 1972, but I’m sure they were a thing for longer. I switched to LPs.
I went to university from 1991-1995, just as the internet/www was getting up and running. The university library still had card catalogs, though there were computer terminals to search for various things as well. Older periodicals were still on microfiche. I didn’t have an internet connection at home until sometime in 1996. To do research at the library involved actual, real life books, which maybe someone else has checked out. Or we shelled out for a thick pack of photocopied readings at the local Printing House that the professor had arranged. The convenience with which university students (and younger) access information now absolutely slays me.
When I was a child my dad read us from the Oz books. I was enchanted by the idea of Glinda’s book, which told her everything of note that happened in Oz as it happened.
I have a Samsung tablet that basically does that for me now.
Greek mathematician Eratosthenes deduced that not only was the earth was round but he estimated the circumference of the earth in the 2nd century AD within 1% degree of error.
He did this by noting that the sun made objects cast a shadow on the earth at varying angles at the exact same time at totally different places on the earth. A shadow cast in Greece was at a slightly different angle than a shadow cast in Egypt at the exact same time of year. This not only told him the earth was round but he could deduce its total circumference.
Long distance calling is “free”! (Built in, at least) I remember when we got a new area code around here and everyone was freaking out because some calls were now going to have a charge. Calling relatives out of town had to be planned and limited. When I was in high school, every other commercial was for calling cards and those long distance charge prefixes (10-10 right?). If I left the house I had to have a calling card. Then even with cell phones there were LD charges and “roaming.”
Now, area codes are nearly meaningless. I have friends who moved here from all over the country who have “weird” area codes and it’s no big deal. We can all call and text for no extra charge.
