50
technological advances your children will laugh at
By Shane Richmond and Ian Douglas
You may have felt cool with your Sony Walkman as a teenager but
contemporary teens can fit more music onto a device smaller than a box of
matches. And they don’t have to flip the tape over halfway through an album.
There can be little doubt: yesterday’s cutting edge technology looks
silly to today’s children and much of today’s technology will look silly to
tomorrow’s children. Here’s a list of 50 technological advances, past and present,
that will have young people asking: “you used to have to do what?!”
1. TV schedules
That week-long wait for your favourite TV programme was a familiar feature of
many a childhood as little as a decade ago. These days TV schedules are less
meaningful because of 'catch-up' TV channels, numerous repeats, on-demand
internet TV services and, for the less law-abiding, torrent services. In future
the concept of scheduling will further disintegrate as TV transforms into a
primarily demand-driven service.
2. Laptops
One way or another, whether it's through smartphones, tablet computers or
electronic paper, the idea of carrying around a bulky, heavy computer is going
to seem odd in the not-too-distant future. "I used to have to carry a
separate bag for my computer," you'll find yourself explaining to some
youngster as he unfolds his e-paper, touchscreen laptop, connects it to his
cloud storage database and starts watching a film.
3. Cordless phones
The phone used to be attached to the wall by a cable and, for some unknown
reason, it would probably be in the hall, forcing you to sit on the stairs
while you chatted. Then came the cordless phone. Isn't it great to be able to
walk around the house while you're on the phone? But don't try leaving the
house with your phone - it doesn't do that. Already telephone companies are
providing phones that switch from the home network to the mobile network, allowing
you to carry on a conversation while leaving the house. Your kids will wonder
why phones were ever attached to homes, which brings us to...
4. Buildings with
phone numbers
Yes, you really did have to call a building to ask whether the person you
wanted to speak to was there or not. Buildings had phone numbers, not people.
Now, almost everyone has a mobile phone and the concept of trying to guess
where someone might be before you call them is almost entirely redundant. At
some point people will probably be issued with phone numbers at birth.
5. Glasses to
correct vision
Wearing glasses to correct vision problems is still a social norm but with
laser eye surgery and contact lenses, it's not hard to imagine a point in the
near future when they become obsolete. However, the concept of hanging lenses
in front of your face has been around for centuries and is still pretty useful.
Sunglasses will be around for a while and your children may start wearing
glasses to take advantage of augmented reality services, for example for
navigation.
6. Video and audio
tape
Tape is already a thing of the past in most homes. There's no need to remember
to rewind a rental video before you return it and no need to spool back and
forth to hear your favourite song on an album. The language remains, however,
and your children may wonder why you talk about "taping" a TV show
when what you're actually doing is saving it to a hard drive on a 'personal
video recorder' (PVR). Your PVR lists each programme you've saved and even lets
you start watching at a specific point. If you explain to your children that
you used to have to fast-forward through your video cassette to see whether you
taped Only Fools and Horses before or after last week's Question Time, they'll
think you're having them on.
7. Photo processing
The comedian Demetri Martin says that he loves digital cameras because they
allow him "to reminisce instantly". The idea that you'd have to shoot
a whole roll of film holding, if you are lucky, 36 pictures, before you can see
whether any of them were any good sounds odd to the digital camera generation.
Stranger still is the idea of taking your film to the chemist - after snapping
three pointless shots of your cat to finish the film - and then waiting an hour
while they processed them. On top of that, a quarter of your snaps would have
stickers on telling you off for taking blurry pictures.
8. Watches
You spend most of your time sitting in front of a computer that shows the time
in the corner of the screen. When you're at home you can see the time on your
DVD player and your oven. And when you're out and about you're carrying a
mobile phone that displays the time. Admit it, your watch is just a piece of
jewellery now, isn't it?
9. Keyboards
Many touchscreen devices still make a clicking noise when you type on them but
there's no real reason to. Modern keyboards are very quiet - nothing like the
thump of old typewriters or the clacking of keyboards from the 80s. But the
keyboard itself may not last much longer. They take up space, adding to the
bulk of portable devices, and they suffer from being fixed: a British keyboard
cannot transform into a Russian one but a touchscreen can. Though touchscreens
take some getting used to for those who have learned keyboards it's unlikely
that those who grow up with them will have the same problem.
10. CDs, DVDs and
Minidiscs
Physical media are constantly being replaced. The path from records to eight
track cartridges to cassettes to CDs to minidiscs to MP3 players is littered
with defunct stereo equipment. Along the way are cul de sacs such as laser
discs, digital audio tapes and HD-DVDs. They take up space, require specialist
equipment and are ultimately all going to be replaced by wireless downloads to
your watching or listening device. Your CD collection is already as outdated as
your grandfather's library of 78s.
11. TV weather maps
Remember when weather forecasters had to stick little lightning-spurting clouds
to a cardboard map? Do you think today's flash graphics, in which forecasters
swoop across the country like, well, flying weather forecasters, are going to
look any better in 20 years?
12. Paper-based
voting
You get a slip of paper weeks before polling day. You store it somewhere safe
or, if you're me, lose it entirely. Then on polling day you go to a rickety
cabin in the playground of the local school, hand the card to a person with a
long list and then go into a booth and tick a box. That's ripe for
technological improvement, surely? Future generations will, at birth, have a
voting chip implanted into their brains - right before they're given their
lifelong phone numbers. (Probably.)
13. Pagers
Having your name called over the tannoy in a busy hotel or airport is
undoubtedly cool. Being paged says 'I'm important'. Or perhaps 'I have a name
that sounds silly when read out over a tannoy'. Either way, it's cool. But the
pager - which requires someone to call a number so that a message can be sent
to you to ask you to call them back - is a nonsense. Don't even try to explain
it to your children. It makes no sense. Get a mobile phone and use text
messages.
14. The map and
compass
Maps and compasses aren't likely to disappear anytime soon. We all need to find
our way to places. But the time of the paper map and physical compass has
already passed. Having a map in a device, such as a mobile phone, means that it
can be updated when necessary and can be made interactive by removing
unnecessary elements or overlaying directions. Build the compass into the
device too and you're all set.
15. Black & white
film and TV
The world used to be in black and white, at least that's how it appears to
children.
16. Letters
The art of letter writing was covered by Matthew
Moore in his list of things being
killed by the internet. However, it's not just the art but the technology of letters that has
been usurped. The idea of writing something, putting it in the post, waiting
for it to arrive and then waiting even longer for a reply seems bizarre in our
world of always-on communications. Plane tickets, bank statements and bills are
already paperless for most people.
17. Business cards
We still hand each other little pieces of card at meetings so that we can get
in touch afterwards or even just remember who we met. Then we file these pieces
of card or transcribe the information into a contacts book or onto a computer.
Or just lose them. It's a pointless system that, we can only hope, our children
will not have to go through. We can exchange data wirelessly now, you know.
18. Fax machines
Every now and again a piece of paper can't be emailed to someone and, as
discussed above, the post is just too slow. So we have to dust off the fax
machine in the corner. This technology dates back to the 1970s and its slightly
magical properties - "it's the letter I just printed! sent over the phone!
in seconds!" - were never quite trusted. Many people still phone after
sending a fax to check that the magic has worked. The process involved in
sending a fax thus becomes: write letter on computer; print it on headed paper;
fax it; phone to check the fax has been received.
19. Email
As we've seen already, email has replaced letters and offers a pleasant
alternative to the horrors of the fax machine. But don't think being
email-friendly means you can escape the mockery of your juniors. Teenagers
these days eschew email in favour of instant messenger for direct communication
and prefer social networks for longer messages. Even that is likely to be swept
away by collaboration tools such as Google Wave, which combines aspects of
instant messenger, email, filesharing and the web into a real-time tool.
20. Petrol-powered
vehicles
Our children may be slightly perplexed to hear that we used to pump liquid into
our cars to keep them running. They may well be plugging theirs in instead.
They certainly won't miss the fume-filled streets that fossil fuel-powered cars
create.
21. Games consoles
Mobile phones are games consoles these days. A games console has considerably
greater computing power than a phone but it's not hard to imagine a future in
which the computing is done by your television or your PVR and the game is
streamed from the internet, instead of being delivered on a disk. In fact, with
a more powerful phone, the computing could be done in your pocket and the game
streamed to the TV. Oh, and games controllers will be a thing of the past too.
22. Phone boxes
The trouble with attaching phone numbers to buildings (see item 4) is that
there's no way to phone people when you're out. So we left phones lying around
the country, in giant red boxes with unfeasibly heavy doors and used those
instead. Whenever someone wanted to use one of these phones they had to pay,
which meant needing to have change on you. And then you phoned a building a
found that the person you wanted wasn't there, wasting your money and requiring
you to find another phone box later so you could try again.
23. Multiple remote
controls
We used to have to walk across the room to change the channel on the
television. That wasn't a big problem - for ages we had only three channels
anyway. But eventually we got remote controls and then we got more boxes -
videos, satellite tuners and so on - and with those came more remote controls.
Eventually, faced with the prospect of not being able to get into the living
room because of the pile of remotes, the human race developed universal remotes
that, in a rather clunky fashion, emulated multiple remotes. In future, your
mobile phone will probably double as a remote for whatever it is you're trying
to operate. (These mobile phones of the future are doing a lot, aren't they?)
24. Postcodes on
street signs
The quaint habit of printing postcodes on street signs in Britain's major
cities is surely unnecessary once we all have maps and compasses on the mobile
devices that we carry around with us? (See item 14.)
25. Floppy discs
Storage media come and go (see item 10) but floppy disks were commonplace
between 1969, when they first appeared in their eight-inch format, and the
mid-1990s, by which time they had shrunk to three-and-a-half inches and were in
a plastic, decidedly un-floppy case. Your children are bound to see them in
films and will be amazed to learn that at their best, they held up to 240MB.
That's roughly equivalent to an eighth of the capacity of the latest iPod
Shuffle.
26. Telephone
directories
Back to phones again. Having stuck one in most buildings (see item 4) and left
a few in the street (see item 22) we then had the problem of how anyone would
find the number they needed. So we printed every phone number we thought would
be relevant into a huge book which we delivered to every household in the
country. Seriously. Then people started asking to be left out of the directory,
rendering them largely useless.
27. Dial-up internet
access
It will seem odd to future generations that we used to turn our internet access
on for short periods of the day. It's rather like turning the water on at the
mains every time you want to run a bath. Part of the reason for these short
bursts of web activity - during which you couldn't use your phone - was that
you were charged by the minute for access. And the minutes soon added up at
dial-up speeds, as anyone who has ever watched a picture appear on their screen
one line at a time will confirm.
28. Wiring-up a
wireless network
Remember when you wired up your house to the national grid? No? How about when
you fitted a water pipe and hooked yourself up to the sewer system? No? Well
you've almost certainly connected yourself to the internet by now and you've
probably had a go at creating a wireless network. Just how many wires does a
'wireless' network need, anyway? In future, when the wireless cloud surrounds
us, our children will marvel at our stories of routers and switches and RJ45
cables.
29. Computers in
boxes
The big beige box on your desk received its death sentence with the launch of
the iMac in 1998. Now, only the budget end of the desktop market and very
high-powered machines need their own tower away from the monitor. As components
get smaller still and more computing power is transferred to the cloud, cutting
the need for local resources, the need for a box will be eliminated altogether.
30. Visiting the
supermarket
Unless you really like wandering aisles filled with washing powder or shower
gel be thankful for supermarket home delivery. By the time your children are
grown up, all of those boring products will be ordered online and delivered to
save you the trouble of going to the shop and getting them. Your supermarket
will instead be a giant farmers' market filled with fresh fruit and veg, exotic
meats, cakes and the kind of products you would like to spend some time
browsing. Either that or it will be turned into a big Poundstretcher. Sorry.
31. Local data
storage
That 512Mb of hard disk plugged into your WiFi router might look like a pretty
slick piece of engineering right now but your kids, with access to unlimited
amounts of super-cheap online backup for a few pennies, will wonder what all
the fuss was about.
32. ‘Owning’ music,
books and film
The idea of 'collections' of media has been central for as long as there have
been books, films and music. But once data can be stored in the cloud and
accessed by your device whenever you need it, the idea of 'owning' something
starts to seem strange. If you buy more than one album per month, you might be
better off putting that money into a subscription service and listening to the
album you would have bought and any other album that takes your fancy.
Availability and portability issues are holding these services back at the
moment, along with the nagging fear that the service could just disappear,
taking your 'collection' with it. It's changing fast though: your children
won't collect albums, they'll have every album at their fingertips all the
time.
33. Cords and cables
That spaghetti-like jumble of plastic clogging up the space behind your desk
has to go. Wires are messy, difficult to plug in, always too short and prone to
loose connections. Wireless data transfer, battery-powered devices and cordless
charging mats will make the knot of dusty copper in every office look as dated
as the Sweeney's Ford Granada.
34. 35mm cameras
Digital cameras take away the rigmarole of getting photos developed (see item
7) and they also don't require you to carry rolls of film with you and then
fiddle around in the back of the camera every time you want to change a film.
35. TVs and radios
that need tuning
People on television and radio still occasionally say "stay tuned"
when they are really asking you not to switch off or change the channel. The
phrase lost its original meaning and your children will never guess that you
used to turn a tiny dial like a safe cracker in an effort to get your TV tuned
to the correct channel. Not content with the fiddliness of this process, some
television manufacturers supplied their sets with a tiny plastic stick that had
to be inserted into the tuner so you could find your channel. If you lost your
tiny stick, the entire set was rendered useless.
36. Low-res digital
pics and video
Concepts like 'low bandwidth', 'limited storage space' and 'two megapixel
sensor' will soon be as laughable as the 16K Ram-pack attached to the back of a
ZX81. High definition cameras will be fitted as standard to mobile phones and
computer screens (and spectacles, headlights and foreheads, for all we know)
and YouTube's successors will deliver crystal-clear pictures with hifi-quality
sound, driving the video piracy watchdogs of the future round the bend.
37. The mouse
Since 1968 our hands and fingers have been reduced to crude pointing devices,
capable only of pointing to one set of co-ordinates on a screen and then
stabbing at it. Multi-touch interfaces mean we can use all of our ten fingers
to move, zoom, select, dismiss, manipulate and edit. Touchpads will unite the
mouse and keyboard, removing one more device from our desktops.
38. Phones with
aerials
There were few better ways to make yourself look important in the late 80s and
early 90s than by taking a phone the size of a minibus out of your briefcase,
extending an aerial six feet long and having a shouty conversation about share
prices. Stockbrokers of the future will have to have shouty conversations into
invisible, tiny earpieces, which at least has the virtue of making them look
sillier.
39. Desktop software
Most software has now moved from disks to downloads and the next step is to
remove the software from your desktop entirely. There are already online office
packages that offer a full feature set without needing to be installed on your
hard drive. Expect software of the future to be run entirely in the cloud -
another blow to the notion of media 'ownership'.
40. ADSL
Your ADSL broadband connection might feel fast now but try downloading
HD-quality video while someone else plays an online video game and a third
person streams internet radio. The connection speeds of the future are already
available in many parts of the world. Assuming the Government and ISPs get
their act together, your kids won't be stuck with 8MB speeds in 20 years time.
41. Single-use
batteries
You probably don't have very much that's battery-powered these days. Mobile
phones, laptops and MP3 players mostly use rechargeable batteries. The idea
that you used to have to throw batteries away and then go and buy some new ones
already seems quite strange.
42. Wifi hotspots
'Gather round, children, and I'll tell you a story of mysterious areas of the
country where no wireless transfer of data was possible, and only workarounds
involving mobile phones and something called '"tethering" would let
you check your email or look things up online. Ah, can you imagine the gnashing
of teeth and rending of garments that would result, or the long, dreary
trudging of the streets when we had to find an invisible place where someone
would charge us many pounds for a few minutes of connectivity?'
43. Fillings in
teeth
It's good to know that in the near future all that business with injections,
numb mouths and metal amalgams will be over and old, damaged teeth will be
removed and replaced with shiny news ones, grown from stem cells to order. The
last generation to know the special fear that comes with the rising whine of
the drill is already brushing its own teeth.
44. Passports
You rarely have to rush back home from the airport in a taxi having forgotten
to bring your retinas or thumbprints, but still we persist in carrying around
little faux-leather bound pages of documents as though we're bearers of Her
Majesty's seal.
45. Cheques
You probably laugh at these already, and your children will be laughing right
along with you. Imagine: a booklet of pre-printed IOUs that you use instead of
money. You have to write 'only' at the end of the amount for some reason, and
you hand out details that would allow the recipient to set up direct debits on
your account with every payment. They are secured only by your signature, which
the person processing the cheque has as much chance of recognising as they have
passing on the payment in less than three working (that's what they used to
call monday to friday, kids) days.
46. Road signs
Universal sat-nav will mean that the local council can save money by tearing
down those hulking sheets of metal at the side of the road and insisting that
your car informs you that it's five miles to the town centre or that road works
will be disrupting traffic until July 2035. Those same devices will also keep
an eye on your speed and report your movements to the traffic police, so there
will be no need for fleets of Gatso cameras either.
47. Teletext and
Minitel
The funny colours, the tiny amount of text on the screen, the need to remember
numerous page numbers - Teletext was a rubbish internet really, wasn't it? It's
taken a while for the internet to make it to the television but your children
can now watch minute-by-minute commentary of the football instead of watching a
loop of latest scores on teletext.
48. Paper timetables
The trouble with transport timetables is that they tell you only what is
supposed to happen. The reality is often different. These days, GPS and the
internet mean that you can find out exactly where your train is right now and
what time it's going to arrive at your station.
49. Recipe books
In the house of the future, intelligent appliances will mean no more head
scratching over what to cook for dinner. Instead, your fridge will know exactly
what food items it contains, and what meals you can make with those
ingredients, while video panels embedded within the work surfaces will guide
you through every stage of the cooking process.
50. Walkie talkies
Children always used to want walkie talkies. They would allow you to hear
unintelligible messages from your friends, just so long as you didn't go more
than a garden's-length away from each other. Nowadays children would rather
have a mobile phone so that they can call any of their friends without having
to give them a walkie talkie first.
