The greatest technological leap you’d have to explain to someone from the 1950s

[tobiasbischoff]

What would the greatest technological leap you’d have to explain to someone who time traveled from the 1950’s?

I possess a device in my pocket that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get in arguments with strangers.

via http://bit.ly/VCSgjM

[js2]

I possess a device in my pocket that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man.

This is probably pedantic, but: I've been doing ancestry research lately and while it's extraordinary how much has been digitized and transcribed, there still clearly a lot of information known to man that remains outside the digital sphere, and sadly is often never written down in the first place.

[meej]

I don't think it's pedantic. Libraries are full of things that have yet to be digitized, and much of the digitized content they do provide access to requires a subscription and may not be indexed by search engines. I don't think most people realize how much information out there is not accessible online, so it's worthwhile to point out.

[sethist]

I like how this is filtered through a variety of different sites. Why link to the original Reddit comment when you can link to a Tumblr post of a tweet of a Twitpic of a Alien Blue screenshot of the original Reddit comment?

[jonathanjaeger]

Not sure if this thread was thought up after seeing the Quora email digest, but..

http://www.quora.com/Prisons/What-is-it-like-to-be-exposed-t...

[tobiasbischoff]

amazing.

[Zenst]

1950's SC-FI would give an insight into the technology mindset of the time and what they expected in the future then. Or could ask any number of the 62 year olds today online. But if you suddenly transported a person from the 1950's into today then technology would be the least of the area's of todays society for them to get there heads around. Object size and small computers would be one and one which would they would appreciete would be the size of radio's and general media quality as back then there was still in the valve days with a populas at not aware of any changes on that front. This along with general building of anything and the big is best mentality being the fashion of the day.

I also think that it is supprising what technology they would expect and what we actualy have today at consumer level. They would be expecting robot servants and a automated house.

Youtube has a 1957 house of the future video that is worth a watch if you want a better answear of the times http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VowfYuhx1-o

a google picture or article search on "1950s home of the future" brings up much more of the period articles of the time.

I think the first thing somebody in the situation of comming from 1950 into today suddenly would ask is "so are the cars not flying", why do the houses look smaller and not much different and in many area's will be asking is that it, oh.

So sadly as a whole the vision from the 1950's is still in many area's the vision today.

Probaly the only area which has lived upto expectations would be car production assembly lines with robots, they did love there robots of the future in those days and we still do aspire and love them today.

[r00fus]

I'm pretty sure a good number would be underwhelmed - after all, most sci-fi in that era had us colonizing the moon and Mars by now.

The lack of the proverbial "year 2000 flying car" aside, most would probably be amazed by the interconnectedness of everything - ability to google common questions and get directions to almost anywhere on the planet would be quite amazing.

[kevin_morrill]

I actually liked one of the other ideas in the Reddit comment thread more. Photo realistic CG effects in movies might be more surprising and mind boggling to see all of a sudden.

I think people would be impressed, but not necessarily surprised that a future society had invented smartphones.

[dalke]

Smartphones? That's like a cross between a Dick Tracy wrist radio (1946) and Vannevar Bush's Memex (1945), right? ;)

Some years back I went to a 2001 retrospective. The filming, which took place in 1966, attempted to predict what life would be in 2001: space craft, moon colony, orbital hotel, a computer that was unremarkable when it beat an average human at chess, real AI, computers which could recognize emotions and read lips, flat screen video, suspended animation, and so on.

Most of those we still don't have.

The presenter also commented about some of the things they missed. The only one I recall now is that in the film it was one screen, one (simple) display. There were no information dense displays, with overlays or multiple virtual windows on the same screen.