The Atomic Age ’s imaginativeness of the time to come for the most part concentre on family chores ( dissoluble pliant dinnerware ! ) , office tech ( robot secretary ! ) , travel ( jetpacks ! ) and space exploration ( moon colony ! ) . But for all the fun in those old TV , most mass still expected we ’d have books made of only newspaper and would listen to the radio set as a family after a dinner party of microwaved algae pellets . For accurate predictions on the future of entertainment engineering science , we have to move along to the 1980s , when the popularity of portable cassette actor and telecasting game gave tech prophets a exculpated vision of tomorrow .
This TED Talk , from Nicholas Negroponte at the first TED league in 1984 , really nails several advancements that would come to be . ( And with the aid of a Laserdisc actor , to boot . )
1. Touch-sensitive display
Thirty years ago , the mouse was still new , but already it seemed problematic : “ [ Y]ou find the computer mouse , and you ’re lead to have to jiggle it a little bit to see where the cursor is on the screen . And then when you finally see where it is , then you ’ve got to move it to get the cursor over there , and then bang . You ’ve got to hit a clit or do whatever . That ’s four separate steps versus typing and then refer and typing and just doing it all in one move — or one - and - a - one-half , bet on how you require to count . ” But there were ten solutions already in hand . “ [ F]ingers are a very , very high - resolving power input medium . Now , what are some of the other advantages ? Well , the one reward is that you do n’t have to peck them up . ” you may presently find touch sensation - sensitive screen everywhere — admit gaming systems , e - readers , earphone and car .
2. High-resolution screens
“ [ Y]ou think , ‘ My God ! What a terrible image you get when you look at still pictures on TV . ’ Well , it does n’t have to be terrible . … [ W]e’ve put people 18 column inch in front of a television receiver , and all the artifacts that none of the original designers expected to be ensure , all of a sudden , are staring you in the face : the shadow mask , the scan line of reasoning , all of that . And they can be process very well ; there are in reality shipway of getting rid of them , there are actually ways of just make absolutely beautiful pictures . I ’m talking here a fiddling mo about display technologies . ” If you remember watching a film in the ‘ 80s , it should n’t amount as a surprise that high - answer TV was something hoi polloi were dreaming of . With 1080p TVs in most homes and 4 K TV / Ultra HD just around the corner , it seems this prediction was proper on the money .
3. E-readers
“ People have this opinion — and I divvy up most of it — that we will be using the tv set screens or their equivalents for electronic book of the futurity . ” The extremely accurate verbal description of ebook technical school in this video recording is as close as predictions come to being true . Negroponte take on that the technology did n’t survive at the time to make an e - reader with establish - in dictionary , lookup engine and Wi - fi ( never mind that two of those three things did n’t exist yet ) , but his musical theme held up anyway , and today you ’ll ascertain that many thousands of people read only ebooks , and even more range the line between photographic print and digital reading .
4. Search engines and searchable databases
Along with the “ new form of Word ” follow a novel form of getting info . While Negroponte was n’t the first to empathize that someday we ’d have all the info we ’d ever involve at our fingertips , he did very clear explain how searching for information whole kit and boodle — whether it ’s in an ebook or via search locomotive engine , from a telephone set or tab .
5. Video calling
“ [ W]e were asked to do a teleconferencing organization where you had the accompany berth : you had five people at five different sites — they were get laid people — and you had to have these masses in teleconference , such that each one was perfectly convinced that the other four were physically present . ” While the mechanics may be a minute off ( no credit card head with projected faces … yet ) , video song are a thing people do now on a regular base . to boot , multiplayer online play use a similar system , wherein player can see and pick up one another as they play .
6. Realistic game physics
“ [ I]magine that screen having peck of objects on it and the soul has touched an object … and then crowd on it . Now , ideate a program where some of those objective are physically heavy and some are light-colored : one is an anvil on a fuzzy rug and the other one is a ping - pong lump on a sheet of glass . And when you touch it , you have to really push very hard to move that anvil across the screen , and yet you touch the ping - pong clod very lightly and it just flash across the filmdom . ” gambling at the prison term of this picture ’s motion-picture photography was extremely simple compare even to game 15 years ago . While the forecasting was n’t specific to game , there ’s no denying that some of the most habit-forming apps employ realistically - weight objects that can be manipulated on a touch - sensitive display .
7. Educational apps and games
The stories of the male child who “ could n’t read ” and the girl who recreated her hair in a plan after just two days of using a computer are former taradiddle that , at the time , were really unusual . But in the last few class , educational game for fry and children ’s apps that learn a specific conception or idea ( or even language ) have really gained popularity . But it ’s not all touch - based fatuousness — many classrooms presently utilise plan to serve kids find out math skills , understand scientific process , and build vocabulary and comprehension . recital is n’t “ absolutely irrelevant ” by any reach of the imagination ( you ’re doing it right now ! ) , but it is arguably more piquant now for people who learn visually , audibly or through fundamental interaction .
