Never force a Phoot! 
It ain’t over…it’s just on extended hiatus, like “Fawlty Towers”.
Seriously, I remember in the early 'Eighties, post-“Evil Empire” speech, when people were seriously frightened that there would be a cataclysmic nuclear exchange between the USSR and the USA, probably over some Latin American nation or Middle East oil, and were fearfully (and unskeptically) manufacturing and accepting end-of-world prophices like nuclear winter and orbiting weapon platforms. There seemed no end in sight, particularly with a massive US military buildup, increasingly advanced SLBM “retalitatory strike” capability on both sides, and everybody engaging in the kind of serreptiousThird World brushfire conflicts and international arms trade that made John Le Carre novels so popular, and then the whole house cards collapsed 'cause Gorbechev instituted the Sinatra Doctrine (which was really more an acknowledgement of the futility of trying to keep the Warsaw Pact together than a deliberate policy decision, but nonetheless quite different from what his predecessors would have done).
I’m not sure I’d classify it as “science-ficitony”–most science fiction assumed either a continued East-West conflict or a nuclear exchange between the parties–but it was definitely an unanticipated resolution to the Cold War, particularly the speed at which it all came apart. There’s a great movie (with a slightly science ficiton bent–well, it features East Germany’s lone cosmonaut as a character and plenty of Kubrick homage) about the fall of East Germany and the personal ramifications therefrom called Goodbye Lenin!.
Stranger
Your post reminded me: Weaponry. Laser-guided bombs, TV cameras in nose cones, and cruise missles sounds like something right out of Buck Rogers.
Now if we could just get something that emitted some sort of beam that causes death . . .
I vote for medical imaging scanners, such as CT scanners, MRI scanners and especially PET scanners, which depend on the creation and use of anti-matter. How much more science-fictiony can you get?
Bah! I heard they had those back in the 1920’s.
Some good stuff here.
Speaking of Steve Austin, how about knee replacement surgery?
I can’t speak of the vast advances in medicine and aerospace, mainly because I’m not that familiar with either, but as far as “mundane” everyday technology, I’m mpressed as all hell with my Bluetooth earpiece and cell phone/camera/mp3 player! I love that I can say, out loud, “call home” and talk to my kid while I’m at the grocery store, never once touching my actual phone in the process.
Plus it makes me look like a small, cute Borg. What’s not to love?
Wait, what? Really? Cool, is this true? I never knew that or heard that before.
Jim
Positron emission tomography generates positrons (anti-electrons) via positive beta decay of unstable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and fluorine. The process doesn’t so much make them as read their traces as they fly by, although the isotopes themselves are produced in a cyclotron shortly before use, due to their short half-lives. Making anti-protons is much harder, requiring a very energetic particle accelerator and a massy target.
Middle finger up to Mrs. Barclay in 6th Grade, who mocked me in front of the class for suggesting that antimatter was real. Science teachers who don’t know anything about science should be PET scanned until their bones fluoresce.
Stranger
I think that people from ONE year ago much less 50 years ago would have been flabbergasted that one single SDMB thread would run the very real risk of some giddy fool chiming in with not just one, but two of the most oft-repeated SDMB in-jokes in one post. The scary thing is, both mentions would be perfectly in context.
It’s a two-fer… It’s all set-up for you… Who’ll grab the gusto?
I remember in the 80s thinking how cool, the actual device of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy would be. But I just viewed it as impossible.
Along comes the internet, on cellphones no less, and it makes the concept as imagined by Douglas Adams look puny and narrow in scope in comparison.
Most people don’t get to see it even if they are in the plane, but most modern jet airliners can land themselves and stop on the appropriate runway centerline. For that matter, they can take off by themselves and land themselves at another airport as long as the autopilot is set up the right way. A first hand demonstration would be very impressive to someone back then (Actually, I would like to see it from the cockpit as well).
Like others have said, you can do some crazy things with GPS if you want. It isn’t that big a deal to install a GPS unit with a transmitter, attach it to a car, and view it via web browser. Trucking companies are starting to use that technology.
Voice chat with video. Or video conferencing for that matter. When I was a kid, I thought it was so cool on Star Trek when they could see each other on a screen and just talk “face to face”. I can do that on-line and talk to people on the other side of the world in real time, on my little computer screen.
**Dewey Finn ** & Stranger, thank you so much. I just learned something very cool today from you two. Geez, I worked at a hospital, read SciAm and still never knew this wonderful piece of information.
Mrs. Barclay sounds like a real prize, I had a fifth grade teacher mark me wrong for answering a math question with a negative number. I was correct, but she had not yet taught us negatives so therefore I was not suppose to answer it was her reasoning. I think these two must have been friends. 
Jim
I was a young, impressionable kid 50 years ago, so I can speak from first-hand gee-wizedness here.
Heart and lung transplants. 50 years ago the only successful one had been performed by Dr. Frankenstein.
Flat panel TVs.
The International Space Station.
Microwave ovens. (Honestly, you young whippersnappers have no idea how cool it was to cook a potato in 5 minutes!)
Cell phones.
I realize some of these are pretty mundane technological advances, but a 50s person would tend to grasp the signifcance of a tiny little phone you can use anywhere better than the Internet.
Except for the part about being able to get porn 24/7.
In Robert Heinlein’s 1980 novel “The Number of the Beast”, the characters travel to the land of Oz. Where Glinda the Good informs them of the genders of the babies they are gestating. Magic was the only way this could be done, and it was presented as a very cool thing, to know the baby’s gender before it was born.
Nowadays only a few Luddites don’t know their baby’s gender before it is born.
There’s this thing called a Roomba…
Military - Compared to the Korean War era tanks, jets and infantrymen with their bolt action rifles and steel helmets, today’s Kevlar armored soldiers, tanks and aircraft looks like something out of what they will later call Star Wars.
3D Computer Graphics - The idea that you can create virtual photorealistic worlds…and then kill everything living in them…is awesome!
iPods - I’m still trying to get over the fact I can pretty much load every song I’ve listened to since third grade onto something the size of a deck of cards.
Yahoo maps / Google Earth - interactive satellite maps? That’s crazy!
Cellphones/Blackberries
Transporters
(oh - you probably just wanted the ones that the government allows everyone to know about, right?)
Well it depends on the person really.
War machines have definetly advanced to spectacular levels.
Architecture? Sure the Emprie State Building was up in 50 years ago but look at the Sears Tower or Petronas or some of those mind blowing bridges?
That train in (Hong Kong or Singapore?) that goes to the airport at 350 mph.
Over night package delivery to just about anywhere in the world.
Just plunk a Nintendo DS or a PSP in their hands and watch them faint. Or let them watch I Love Lucy on a video iPod.
Cosmetic sugery!
Compare and contrast the treatment of mental illness of today to 1957.
Heck, todays supermakets would blow the mind of anyone from 1957.
DNA evidence in courts.
Of course the idea that you can own a computer and then go to that computer and go to a message board and ask any question and you will get an answer is the best thing ever so the SDMB should be top of the list.