New Technologies

[Grok]

There can be quite a contrast between early and late versions of a technology. An early version may arrive in a relatively primitive state, and be used in a niche application. Initial use may be by a large organization, typically military.

The first operational helicopter drone.

More advanced versions of a technology may come into common use. Check out this video at 4:48.

[Grok]

Of course, Information Technology is another example. My first experience with a computer was in early 1974, an old style main frame (which used punch cards!). Antiquated and clunky by todays standards.

Information Technology also illustrates something-really powerful technologies may change the world in ways few if anybody anticipate.

On the other hand, some innovations see use only in a niche application, if they persist at all. Some years ago I got to ride a Segway at the Seattle boat show. That was nice. But after that, I only saw a Segway once-a security guard driving one around inside a food court at a mall. I believe that the last major innovation in transportation was jet airliners during the 1950s.

[kingfish]

1974 is roughly the same time I had my first computer experiences.
Dad worked for Honeywell's information systems division, and to encourage me to learn my addition tables, had written a program to present addition problems for me to do and tell me if I got it right. The reward came in that after that, I got to actually "play" with the computer. I'd get to play games like tic-tac-toe or do the old "adventure" game. (It was a precursor to the classic "Zork" game, sometimes called "The Colossal Cave").

I wonder if Disney has gotten around to updating their "spaceship earth" ride, inside the geodesic globe at the entrance to EPCOT. It runs a history of technology from the stone age all the way to the early (mini & mainframe) computer era. The last exhibit on the ride shows a 70s or 80s vintage computer lab, complete with 9 track tape cabinets and an operator mannequin in a lab coat. And yeah, she looked like she just stepped out of the '70s. The ride then dropped you into their static exhibit talking about the technologies of the future, of which maybe 80% have been realized. . . and not some blasted gift shop!

[crfriend]

1974 is roughly the same time I had my first computer experiences.

I was a bit more lucky, thanks to various family members who encouraged "the little one" when I was still in my single-digits of age, and I recall getting tours of computer rooms in various research institutes and hospitals in the Boston area. By the time I was 11 or so, I'd been in the MIT Computer Lab and had played with a singular prototype DEC PDP-1 which simulated billiards shots, and seen lots of very early PDP-10s and one of the 23 PDP-6 machines ever built driving the MIT "hand" -- a simulacrum of a human hand using bicycle chain and operated by hydraulic rams. It could pick up and manipulate a raw egg and crush steel cans with ease. I still have some pictures from that trip, but sadly none of the -6 survive. Those memories go to the grave with me,

In 1976, I first met a Data General NOVA and was able to actually get into the true guts of it, including assembly programming, and I never looked back.

Hilariously, I now own the NOVA I learned on, having learnt several years afterwards that the town had instructed the head of the department to "make it go away". I helped in that respect, and it "disappeared" into a loving home (and now a nascent museum) instead of a landfill. It can still run.

I wonder if Disney has gotten around to updating their "spaceship earth" ride, inside the geodesic globe at the entrance to EPCOT. It runs a history of technology from the stone age all the way to the early (mini & mainframe) computer era. The last exhibit on the ride shows a 70s or 80s vintage computer lab, complete with 9 track tape cabinets and an operator mannequin in a lab coat. And yeah, she looked like she just stepped out of the '70s. The ride then dropped you into their static exhibit talking about the technologies of the future, of which maybe 80% have been realized. . . and not some blasted gift shop!

I've no idea on that count, but I was there a couple of decades ago and rather enjoyed it. I also know that "Space Mountain" was controlled by DG NOVA 1200s for quite some time after it was first built.

To Grok's remarks about "helicopter drones", virtually all of the early drones were helicopter knock-offs -- usually quad-rotors -- and can do remarkable things. Big ones tend to resemble more conventional fixed-wing aircraft.

[Faldaguy]

Of course, Information Technology is another example. My first experience with a computer was in early 1974, an old style main frame (which used punch cards!). Antiquated and clunky by todays standards.

Information Technology also illustrates something-really powerful technologies may change the world in ways few if anybody anticipate.

Flash backs indeed. '74 seems late for punch cards; I had a part time job at State Farm insurance in Salem, OR a decade before that putting in the three foot high base for cabling in an sealed A/C room to their "computers" as they were upgrading to punch cards! Then in late 1968 NCR offered me a key position to take on their computer maintenance services -- but I was too dull to see the future in computers! By 1982 I was upgrading our office in Hawaii with an 64K Osborne with two 7" floppy drives and a 300 baud modem which the technicians assured me was the fastest it would ever get -- the technical limits for transmission speed had been reached; and with this CPM based bit of magic we attempted to support referencing our candidates (headhunting) from the Mainland! I think our daughter first got her hands on a DEC 10 that was being phased out of HPA at that time, and learned the skills that has allowed her to retire much earlier than I did!

[Jim]

I had an after-school computer class in high school, '69-'70. We used BASIC to communicate with a remote mainframe over a teletype machine using a telephone modem.

[familyman34]

1974 is roughly the same time I had my first computer experiences.

I was a bit more lucky, thanks to various family members who encouraged "the little one" when I was still in my single-digits of age, and I recall getting tours of computer rooms in various research institutes and hospitals in the Boston area. By the time I was 11 or so, I'd been in the MIT Computer Lab and had played with a singular prototype DEC PDP-1 which simulated billiards shots, and seen lots of very early PDP-10s and one of the 23 PDP-6 machines ever built driving the MIT "hand" -- a simulacrum of a human hand using bicycle chain and operated by hydraulic rams. It could pick up and manipulate a raw egg and crush steel cans with ease. I still have some pictures from that trip, but sadly none of the -6 survive. Those memories go to the grave with me,

In 1972 I had a brief time on Titan at Cambridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(1963_computer) - brief in that the first of my three sessions was taken up with coding Fortran onto cards, and the second, probably a week later, was completing the coding, loading the cards into the reader, and trying to run the program. It was REALLY easy to make errors; I never managed to catch and correct them all and get the program to run, but at least I didn't drop my pack of cards on the floor as one of my colleagues did!
I don't think I stayed beyond the third session.

[Uncle Al]

It's happened

Fiction in 1953 is fact in 2025

Uncle Al

[crfriend]

It's happened

Fiction in 1953 is fact in 2025

But, has it made us better or has it dumbed us down. I don't think anybody in 1953 could conceive of a young couple supposedly on a date noodling at each other over their cell' 'phones instead of actually engaging in conversation.

[kingfish]

Fiction in 1953 is fact in 2025

More like 1945. In Robert Heinlein's book "Space Cadet", the main protagonist talks to his father on a phone that was in his pouch.

I wonder if the timing of that book might actually hit the mark. It's set 50 years from now, and considering the progress Musk is making on the infrastructure, there's at least a chance.

[Grok]

First read about virtual reality in a magazine article, back in 1990. Still waiting for it to dramatically change the world.

[crfriend]

It's funny how pundits sometimes get it so wrong. Hilariously, I recall sitting in a lobby waiting for a job interview in the very late 1980s reading an article which was positively gushing about "asynchronous computers". I read this for a little bit then started laughing when I realised I'd worked on those in the early '80s that were built in the early '60s. Don't these "prognosticators" pay attention to history? Obviously not.

Another comical one was listening to a keynote speaker at a USENIX conference in the 2000s gushing about Intel's latest innovation that will save the world -- PAE (or "Physical Address extension"). Big fat hairy deal, I thought -- been there and done that in the 1960s. Hell, BBN had an operational pager that worked with a PDP-1 in 1963. Using pagers to expand memory IS NOT NEW! Study history. I thanked her at the end of her speech for "closing a loop" when it comes to memory addressing. She had no clue what I was speaking of.

Sometimes all one can do is laugh.

[Grok]

As virtual reality is about simulation, it occurred to me that the term might be used for something else. Say, a combination of laser/plasma displays and animatronics. That would have but a slight impact on society, but at least one could claim that virtual reality is a thing.

Another thing I have been waiting for is augmented reality. And cryptocurrencies taking off in a big way.

One shouldn't assume that something experimental will soon change the world.

[crfriend]

As virtual reality is about simulation, it occurred to me that the term might be used for something else. Say, a combination of laser/plasma displays and animatronics. That would have but a slight impact on society, but at least one could claim that virtual reality is a thing.

ABBA's recent show, Voyage comes to mind.

Another thing I have been waiting for is augmented reality. And cryptocurrencies taking off in a big way.

Cryptocurrencies will go precisely nowhere without the backing of various national entities with decent credibility. Full stop. Else it's just another scam to separate the sucker from his money.

One shouldn't assume that something experimental will soon change the world.

What's "experimental" and what's "history" -- most folks nowadays don't know. And, recall the Sci-Fi dictum of, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

[6ft3Aussie]

It's happened

Fiction in 1953 is fact in 2025

Yep. Sure has. My grandfather who worked as a telephone technician from the late 1920s in the then New Zealand post office and retired from there in the early 1970s was known to have said that one day we'll all be driving around with telephones in our cars.

I still have one of the radios that he built on the kitchen table around 1940, restored and working very well.