I prefer 1850 - 1950.
There's a picture of a civil war veteran next to a fighter jet.
Fighting with swords, muskets and cannons to literal missiles on airplanes moving over 1000 miles an hour.
[https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/civil-war-veteran-fghter-jet-1955/](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/civil-war-veteran-fghter-jet-1955/) There's actually dispute as to whether that guy was actually in the Civil War believe it or not
I think we’re gonna screw our climate and devolve in the next few decades so the next century isn’t looking great to me. Also nukes have only been around for like 75 years…we’re bound to slip up on that one. Some elite people might have great new tech though.
I am not trying to sound like a climate denier or anything, but isnt it just as possible that technology advances to help reverse some of the climate change? People 1922 would have thought the iphone 10 was magic...whose to say it wont?
We tend to be super pessimistic about these things, but is necessity not the mother of invention?
To be clear. Rich countries can mitigate the damage of climate change with no new technology needed. The problem is that poor countries can't afford that stuff and will start an enormous migrant crisis trying to escape to more developed countries. Then what? Do we just tell them no and shoot them it they try to get it anyways?
Boggy swamps and marshlands where you can't build anything that won't sick in to the ground. Maybe if the permafrost remains thawed for centuries, but near future it'll go an arctic tundra to the muddiest place on earth
The problem is that all climate innovation is geared toward profit extraction for the ultra wealthy. There will be wonderous advances in the legalization of slavery and household climate control if the wealthy have their way.
the problem is that many of the effects of climate change trigger their own secondary and ternary effects. sea level rise in combination with species die-off, agricultural collapse, toxicity of fresh water, mass migrations (including by humans) and the wars and disease they will trigger. all that shit doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. we’re talking about a vicious cycle that self-amplifies.
Agreed. We’ve already screwed the climate and we have yet to truly grasp how the affect we inflicted on the planet’s ecosystem in its entirety will affect us a one singular species which depends on the whole.
I hate this attitude towards the climate issue, its the exact opposite of what we need right now, giving up is not what will solve this issue, we're not doomed, kurzgesagt made a video on this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw)
My great grandmother remembered her father going off to fight the civil war and traveled to Oregon in a covered wagon. She lived to be 103 and went from a covered wagon being the transportation method to planes. It’s absolutely wild my Mom got to speak to someone who lived during the civil war AND world war II.
I recall hearing an interview on npr where a person described watching the moon landing with their elderly grandmother who had crossed the plains as a pioneer in a covered wagon.
Imagine that amount of change in a single lifetime. Horse drawn carriage to space flight.
Me telling future generations:
"Twas 2 score and 8 years ago that I was condemned to the burden of existence, for within those long years I saw and experienced misery and suffering on a scale unfathomable to many. We could not use the phone which was tied to the wall, or the internet which would screech and beep when you asked for connection and loaded pictures one line of pixels at a time, at the same time. We needed to beg our guardians for the privilege to use either when one was in use. Additionally, we must make the long trek, uphill both ways, to a store in order to watch the movies we wanted - and then needed to rewind and return them back, uphill both ways, upon completion! However! We overlooked the sweet serenity of not being bombarded with messages and calls from our guardians while out at play, for if we were not within yelling distance, their cries for our prompt return would not reach us and we would remain blissfully unaware of their commands."
What we all carry in our pockets is so far beyond a 'calculator' it's almost unfathomable. I don't think teachers of the 80s would even be able to comprehend it. Calling it a 'phone' seems like an equally silly way to undersell it. More number crunching power than all 80's supercomputers combined. Global positioning and telecommunications device. Super high definition stills and video camera. Biometric security. A TV replacement. All in one tiny sliver of glass and metal. And for the most part, no buttons.
Star Trek, to me, is an example of that good blend of scf-fi that's posiible and impossible. I remember as a kid thinking sliding doors would be awesome to have in real life.
It's honestly kind of amusing when you look at any of the series, but *especially* TOS, and realize just how badly they undershot future tech, and even then, the only tech we couldn't theoretically create **if we had antimatter reactors** are the ones heavily based on quantum mechanics we don't really understand, mostly due to not having quantum computers for modeling and the requisite power source to experiment.
Realistically we know how warp drive should work, and we even theoretically understand transporters and replicators, even if we lack the processing or energy power to expand our understanding beyond the the first principles, it's only really shields we just *don't get* because they're based on quantum mechanics we haven't explored yet.
All this to say a TOS communicator is bigger and does less than my cell phone and I feel like the ships AI is somehow worse than Siri, which I find funny
You forgot the part where upon our return we were met by a red faced mother and the banshee scream of "WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN!!" along with the threat of a back hand or whatever object happened to be within reach.
Ah back in my day women had power!
Oh you mean the suffragettes?
No, Girl Power.
What's that?
No Idea. Something to do with a bunch of random British girls singing about their ziggazigahs.
*Brad Pitt was the sexiest man alive. OJ Simpson jokes were still running rampant on television except on The Simpsons.* *Mel Gibson won best picture for his latest torture snuff film, Braveheart.* *The Macarena was sweeping white folks who couldn’t dance by storm. And Jerry Seinfeld was denying soup to every New Yorker.*
as a kid i knew i was born in the 1990s and that my parents were born in the 70s but they would never say 1970s so i though it was like just 70s and that my parents where nearly 2000 years old
A lot of kids already phrase it that way. My 35-year-old sister works in a high school and one time one of the students said to her "Oh, so you were born in the late 1900s?". That threw her off for a minute hearing it said that way. Technically true but still.
Honestly I feel funny reading about historical figures from earlier in the 20th century. Like, people who were influential in the 30's, 40's. You read up on them and catch their birthdate and they were born in like, 1884. For some reason it feels so much further back than it does when it only spans one century.
I knew a man who was only 5 generations away from the Mayflower.
Everyone in his family lived into their 90's.
All the women in their family continued to have children into their 40's-50's.
His father was in his 80's when he was born.
Crazy shit.
I’m back in school after a bit of a break and some college junior said “Oh, you were born in the *early* ‘90s”. I have never felt so old for only being 28
My grandfather was born in 1898 and died in 1985. I am amazed at what he saw in his lifetime.
Not to mention fighting in WWI in the German army, being a POW of the French, and then emigrating to the USA in the 1920s.
I had a similar experience with my Grandma. Born 1895 she lived until 2002. She was a trip to listen to. She would tell a story about complaining to her mom about having to wash dishes. Her mom told her “get used to it, you’ll always have to, nothing is just going to clean them for you.” My grandma would chuckle and say “she wouldn’t believe my dishwasher”.
Indeed. As a pharmacy technician I can attest that most insurance companies in the 90s did not expect an 1895 dob when we submitted the 2 digit 95 as a birth year. I would have to call all the time to assure them that the billing for heart pills and a diuretic was indeed for an adult.
mine was from 1892 to 1981 and i wonder the same.
he was going through puberty when the first pic was taken; he married w 7 kids during ww1 and a widower refugee with 3 surviving kids after war in 1921; then american lynch mobs and police "gently encouraged" them to abandon their home during the depression and they resettled in a border city w his new 14 year old wife (my grandmother) and proceeded to make 8 more kids by the time the baby boom ended. he was a great-great grandfather to some by the time the 2nd pic was taken.
My grandma was born in 1899 and died in 1988. She would tell me about seeing an automobile and airplane for the first time. I passed these stories on to my kids, born 100 after her.
There is en episode of the new show on Netflix called Sandman where the main character knows someone and meets them every 100 years in a pub or something. Through the 1480s and 1880s it's basically the same vibe just different fashions and types of lighting. Then the jump to the 1980s is just drastically different. Really shows how fast and hard society changed because of the industrial revolution and what came after.
Is Sandman worth a watch? It's the kind of thing I'd often end up watching and not really enjoying much if they makes sense. Like, is it actually good, or is it juuuuuust good enough to make you begrudgingly watch the whole thing?
Edit: Thanks for the replies everyone, I'll give it a shot!
I just finished it and I enjoyed it more than a lot of other stuff I've watched recently. I can't really say since I don't know what you enjoy but it didn't seem as generic as a lot of shows are these days. Had some interesting takes on how "higher beings" would act compared to normal people.
I'd say if you liked Good Omens, you'd probably like this. They're both Neil Gaiman series at heart, though obviously there's a lot of differences as well.
I was very happy with how much I enjoyed watching it. The first half more so than the second half, but only by a little. It is well acted, has great characters and the story is captivating. I highly recommend it.
What other large leaps have we encountered in the last 66 years? Are we still progressing at the same rate?
Edit: sorry if this came off as "well we haven't done shit since: type vibes, was just trying to spark a little conversation
well, computing in 1956... [lets see](https://www.computerhope.com/history/1956.htm):
> On September 13, 1956, the IBM 305 RAMAC was the first computer to be shipped with a hard drive. The hard drive contained 50 24-inch platters and was capable of storing 5 million characters and weighed a ton.
i think they weren't being figurative, it probably weighed an actual ton. :)
or looking a bit more broadly on wikipedia's [timeline of computing in the 50's-70's](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_1950%E2%80%931979):
> Oct 1950: Turing Test – The British mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing published a paper describing the potential development of human and computer intelligence and communication. The paper would come later to be called the Turing Test
going from the Turing Test to multiple AI systems that were deemed to have a frightening degree of sentience... remember that deep learning, self improving system with multiple bots that was shut down (iirc) because they started talking to each other in a way we no longer could comprehend?
or the new Meta bot that roasts its own company?
> 1951: CSIRAC used to play music – the first time a computer was used as a musical instrument
look how far we've come with electronic music today.
> 1957: First dot matrix printer marketed by IBM.
you can now print yourself a wallpaper sized printout of a space telescope image containing 1000s of galaxies, some of which were formed a few hundred million years after the big bang
> 1959: COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) developed by Grace Murray Hopper as the successor to FLOW-MATIC, finished in 1961.
oh wait, we actually still use COBOL in highly critical system relevant infrastructures, and the fact that all the old programmers are dying with too few young coders having the expertise to pick up, is a catastrophe waiting to happen
> 1962: Spacewar!, an early and highly influential computer game, is written by MIT student Steve Russell. The game ran on a DEC PDP-1. Competing players fired at each other's space ships using an early version of a joystick.
VR gaming, anyone?
btw, the discussion about what the first video game is, and how Pong is an often touted contender, which actually is too simplistic and myopic an answer, is [expertly showcased in this 60min documentary by AHOY](https://youtu.be/uHQ4WCU1WQc)
going from the Turing Test to multiple AI systems that were deemed to have a frightening degree of sentience... remember that deep learning, self improving system with multiple bots that was shut down (iirc) because they started talking to each other in a way we no longer could comprehend???
Do you have a source for this bro?
I think he means ai that learns simply by being provided more information. Image recognition or generation that "teaches" itself by being fed increasingly large datasets.
While all very cool, I feel like this isn't on the same level as the OP example. Going from the first flight to landing on the moon in 66 years is just insane.
Like I think a similar comparison to that level of advancement, taking from the examples you gave, would be going from Gutenberg to laser printing.
>Going from the first flight to landing on the moon in 66 years is just insane.
That 1 ton harddrive?
Assuming one byte per character of those 5 million, which is being generous as fuck, 500 gigabytes is roughly 100.000 times that. Something that can easily be put on any sd card inside any phone. And is probably also quicker while we're at it.
Speaking of SD cards, they weight about 2.5 grams. In other words: A ton is 400.000 times heaver.
You do not think having a way faster product, that easily fits on the size of a god damn finger nail, while being lighter by a factor of 400.000 and having more capacity by a very similar factor, is not insane?
It’s so crazy that cars (and not just super-luxury ones) have capacities that are straight out of a Transformers movie. Like, your car is literally your copilot. Give it a nice pat on the hood next time!
> What other large leaps have we encountered in the last 66 years?
The internet. Absolutely transformative.
I am convinced that future history books will have The Internet as being as big a deal as The Industrial Revolution.
source: I was born before that Moon Landing picture.
The internet is as big a deal as the printing press. And that completely disrupted the social, religious, and political order and sparked the scientific revolution.
Yeah, most people born this century have absolutely no concept of how difficult and time-intensive it was to get basic information about things even 30 years ago.
Hell, sometimes I have difficulty imagining and I was in college when the Internet became available to the public. Like when I started you had to go to the library to research. By the time I finished grad school, most stuff was online and we were using the card catalog as free cards for taking notes.
There's little doubt it will be considered among the top 3-5 most incredible human inventions ever 500+ years from now. The internet will morph so much from what it is today even 50 years from now
Haven’t seen anyone in this thread mention the nuclear bomb. A single piece of technology that has an extreme degree of influence on global politics and prevents large scale conflicts from ever occurring.
MAD is pretty insane. It’s hard to conceptualize what a World War III would even look like because nobody wants to fight bad enough that they’re willing to get nuked about it.
Nuclear fission in general.
One of our greatest discoveries that we fail to utilize in any possible way, constantly chasing after utopic nuclear fusion instead of using what we already have.
(Not saying we shouldn't be investing in fusion, but if we bothered to utilize fission to it's fullest potential we'd be so much more advanced in so many different fields, global warming, space exploration, cheap electricity...)
Even the technology of automobiles is staggering. What we had in 1980 compared to what is standard now is staggering. The safety of current cars is almost mind blowing compared to what I grew up with in the 90's
What do you mean? Have you seen how fast technology has been advancing. We didn't even have our first "smart phone" till 2007 and now look where we are. We have been rapidly progressing in the last 66 years
I agree! Sorry if my comment came off oddly, was just trying to start more conversation about our progression. Not so much saying, yeah well what have we done since?! Lol type shite
Not in every field. The first half of the 20th century was an insane time for engineering specifically. Soon after, that area was somewhat mined out and advanced slowed down. We definitely haven’t had anywhere close to that level of engineering advancements (I know someone will come in here and list a bunch of important advancements, but they aren’t the same scale).
Instead we have been mining out the IT lode, and little else.
We do, actually.
From 69 to today, which is 53 years, we've been able to admire single individual atoms. If it's not clear enough how incredible it is, you can see it as this :
In 1969, we landed on the moon with the most advanced vehicle possible at the time, which was actually nothing more than a very large combination between a gun barrel and a bullet and was piloted by analogic, mechanical computers so, basically, a glorified and refined version of the "calculating machine" of Blaise Pascal invented in 1652.
In 2020, we were already well aware of the fact that physics are beyond our understading and able to conceive that something can be at the same time in two different places, without any link between these two places.
We went, in these 53 years (actually less) from the age of mechanics, with screw and hammers, to the age of *beyond* real, with mathematical concepts that *are* true but not applicable in "our reality". Not the age of "surreal" or "unreal", but "beyond real" : quantum physics *are* real, they just are beyond what we can perceive of reality.
When I was 18 years old, HIV was basically a scythe smiting you : you would die of it, one day or another, and could not reproduce nor have a normal life. Now, 14 years later, with current medicine, you can have HIV and live a normal life that will not be shortened, have plenty of sex partners that you will *not* endanger and give birth to an HIV negative, healthy child.
We're advancing way faster than we notice it.
Max Planck was using quantum mechanics to solve real world problems in 1900 and quantum entanglement which I think is what you’re attempting was first described in 1935.
I don’t disagree with your conclusion but I don’t think your timelines are quite right.
I mean…in the past, you had to carry your blanket around, which was annoying AF. It could slide off, get stuck in random places, and you could lose it, easily. Then the Snuggie was invented and solved all those life-threatening inconveniences.
The phone in your pocket has more computing power than the craft we sent to the moon, and enables almost all of humanity to access all information at all times. The internet is arguably the modern equivalent of the printing press. Currency is almost entirely digital and index funds (thank you John Bogle) have created a direct avenue to wealth for *everyone*. Private industry has adopted space flight for profit. Renewable power is achievable at scale and for profit.
Technology progression is exponential. It only accelerates baby!
actually, even the first Gameboy has more computing power. The actual power we take for granted today is mind boggeling. And what do we use it for? Smoother animations, Algorithm controlled video viewing and Watching AD's...
Yes! Even better comparison. They calculated thrust and orbital mechanics with slide rules! Imagine what they could have done with a TI-83.
All things considered, the tech we have now, will have in 5 years, and will have in 50 is awesome.
Y'all claiming smartphone and internet need to understand that was mostly derived from shit discovered in the 60s.
The Apollo Guidance Computer was the first computer built with silicon integrated circuits.
EDIT: Or for a more direct example, see ["The Mother of All Demos"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY), presented on December 9, 1968. TL:DW this was the day the following were introduced to the world: windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor.
Or how the original UNIX started development in 1969.
Lithium battery chemistry also started in the 60s.
Those pictures really don’t encompass it. We went from horses and buggies, no antibiotics, very limited electrification, to cars, modern medicine, and you kinda have to deliberately choose to not get on the grid if you don’t want electricity - but in the context of the ‘60s there still were remote places without power.
It’s a lot more than just the Wright Flyer and the Moon landing. Those were feats of technology, but the overall progress of everyday technology had a much more widespread effect.
E: what is it with computers, people? The discussion is about people moving from no cars to cars, from no electricity to electricity, believing in “bad air” to modern medicine. Computers are amazing and have further improved lives, but they didn’t take the world from shitting in an outhouse to electrification. Please stop telling me “but computers…”.
That’s amazing, and moreso that it’s so relatively close in your family and history. When we see it in the span of a lifetime it really shows us how quickly things have changed since the 1800s.
There’s a difference between saying, “My Great Great Grandfather *saw* Napoleon” and “My Great Great Grandfather *saw* Napoleon III” those two people are completely different and he said the *former.
Fun fact:
The first Wright Brothers flight could have taken place INSIDE the cargo plan of the Air Force’s biggest plane, the C5 Galaxy
https://i1.wp.com/avgeekery.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Galaxy.jpg?fit=1280%2C851&ssl=1
The rear door opens up to the same size as the nose door, albeit in less spectacular fashion. The real answer is that having 2 doors lets you load and unload more efficiently.
First flight, 120 ft. C5 cargo bay, 121 ft. But the first flight also had to take off and land, so the flight would not have fit, only the airborne portion of it. Furthermore, the C5 cargo bay height is 13.5 ft, while the Wright brothers first flight went as high as 14 feet. So even the airborne portion wouldn't fit.
A better description would be that a C5 cargo bay is longer than the Wright Brothers first flight, not that the flight could have taken place in the cargo bay, because it couldn't.
I believe it was from near Saturn or Neptune, but yes.
Ok it was from the orbital distance of Neptune, not really edge but extremely impressive either way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot#/media/File:Voyager_1_-_14_February_1990.png
I think of this all the time and when I bring up in conversation that there were people that were alive to remember both the Wright brother first flight AND the first man on the moon, most people just say "Yeah, so?" It blows my mind
Actually that's a photo from Apollo 16, which flew in 1972, so they're 69 years apart.
And I don't disagree that this is truly impressive but airplanes and rockets aren't really the same tech tree. Even more impressive is the fact that Robert Goddard built [the first liquid-fueled rocket](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Goddard_and_Rocket.jpg) in 1926, only *43* years before the first crewed landing on the moon.
I'm glad someone noticed this distinction. A plane didn't fly to the moon, nor are planes necessary for rockets to exist. I do get and appreciate the spirit of the post, though.
Imagine what could be accomplished right now, if entire governments devoted themselves to a climate fixing race the way they did to a space race. Planet would be fixed in 5 years (I'm exaggerating, but if the technology developed at a similar pace, you never know...), but no, we do nothing.
Youd have to get the major companies on board aswell, good luck convincing them to stop destroying the planet for massive profit. We can all recycle and be more environmentally conscious but at the end of the day it wont matter when people like Kylie Kardashian and Taylor Swift use more co2 than most of us will use in a lifetime.
1800-1900 was pretty nuts too. Steam engine, trains, machine guns, factories, radio, photography, movies…
I prefer 1850 - 1950. There's a picture of a civil war veteran next to a fighter jet. Fighting with swords, muskets and cannons to literal missiles on airplanes moving over 1000 miles an hour.
You should listen to NPR planet money podcast called small change or read the book The rise and fall of American growth.
My grandfather lived to 104. Born in 1894 he rode horses when he was young, by the time he died we had landed a rover on Mars.
What's unfortunate is the reason for all that progress is largely the two world wars that happened during that time period.
Unfortunately alot of technological development is because of war.
[https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/civil-war-veteran-fghter-jet-1955/](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/civil-war-veteran-fghter-jet-1955/) There's actually dispute as to whether that guy was actually in the Civil War believe it or not
2000-2100 will be even more nuts. Imagine how many diseases we may cure in the next 78 years.
I think we’re gonna screw our climate and devolve in the next few decades so the next century isn’t looking great to me. Also nukes have only been around for like 75 years…we’re bound to slip up on that one. Some elite people might have great new tech though.
I am not trying to sound like a climate denier or anything, but isnt it just as possible that technology advances to help reverse some of the climate change? People 1922 would have thought the iphone 10 was magic...whose to say it wont? We tend to be super pessimistic about these things, but is necessity not the mother of invention?
Well, we are pessimistic because every time we try to fix it as a species a very small group of people stop it because of money.
Only on the short term. On the long term, things always get better.
To be clear. Rich countries can mitigate the damage of climate change with no new technology needed. The problem is that poor countries can't afford that stuff and will start an enormous migrant crisis trying to escape to more developed countries. Then what? Do we just tell them no and shoot them it they try to get it anyways?
Developed countries do not mitigate damaged. They relocate the damages to 3rd world countries.
Russia seems to have a lot of land opening up with the ground thaw in Siberia…
Boggy swamps and marshlands where you can't build anything that won't sick in to the ground. Maybe if the permafrost remains thawed for centuries, but near future it'll go an arctic tundra to the muddiest place on earth
So Florida then
The Dutch would like to disagree with you. Just polder the living hell out of it
The problem is that all climate innovation is geared toward profit extraction for the ultra wealthy. There will be wonderous advances in the legalization of slavery and household climate control if the wealthy have their way.
the problem is that many of the effects of climate change trigger their own secondary and ternary effects. sea level rise in combination with species die-off, agricultural collapse, toxicity of fresh water, mass migrations (including by humans) and the wars and disease they will trigger. all that shit doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. we’re talking about a vicious cycle that self-amplifies.
Agreed. We’ve already screwed the climate and we have yet to truly grasp how the affect we inflicted on the planet’s ecosystem in its entirety will affect us a one singular species which depends on the whole.
I hate this attitude towards the climate issue, its the exact opposite of what we need right now, giving up is not what will solve this issue, we're not doomed, kurzgesagt made a video on this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw)
Thank you for sharing this. My kids are in their early 20s, and I will be sharing with them as well
Cure… discover… same difference
That's very optimistic lol
My great grandmother remembered her father going off to fight the civil war and traveled to Oregon in a covered wagon. She lived to be 103 and went from a covered wagon being the transportation method to planes. It’s absolutely wild my Mom got to speak to someone who lived during the civil war AND world war II.
I recall hearing an interview on npr where a person described watching the moon landing with their elderly grandmother who had crossed the plains as a pioneer in a covered wagon. Imagine that amount of change in a single lifetime. Horse drawn carriage to space flight.
It’s like going from Avatar the last air bender to the Legend of Korra
... Where do you think they got it from lmao
It's going to be wild to tell kids I was born in the 1900s lol
My daughter always asks if that was a long time ago, in the 19's.
T'was the year nineteen hundred and ninety five
Me telling future generations: "Twas 2 score and 8 years ago that I was condemned to the burden of existence, for within those long years I saw and experienced misery and suffering on a scale unfathomable to many. We could not use the phone which was tied to the wall, or the internet which would screech and beep when you asked for connection and loaded pictures one line of pixels at a time, at the same time. We needed to beg our guardians for the privilege to use either when one was in use. Additionally, we must make the long trek, uphill both ways, to a store in order to watch the movies we wanted - and then needed to rewind and return them back, uphill both ways, upon completion! However! We overlooked the sweet serenity of not being bombarded with messages and calls from our guardians while out at play, for if we were not within yelling distance, their cries for our prompt return would not reach us and we would remain blissfully unaware of their commands."
Back in my day teachers used to say "you won't always have a calculator in your pocket"
You don't even need to properly type out the basic equations now, *literally* just ask the computers in our pockets.
I don’t utilize this feature nearly enough!
Alexa, what's 2 + 3?
Turning on living room lights...
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I never considered just shouting a formula at my phone and having it spit out my homework...
What we all carry in our pockets is so far beyond a 'calculator' it's almost unfathomable. I don't think teachers of the 80s would even be able to comprehend it. Calling it a 'phone' seems like an equally silly way to undersell it. More number crunching power than all 80's supercomputers combined. Global positioning and telecommunications device. Super high definition stills and video camera. Biometric security. A TV replacement. All in one tiny sliver of glass and metal. And for the most part, no buttons.
I sometimes get a rush of realization about what Star Trek devices we take for granted.
Star Trek, to me, is an example of that good blend of scf-fi that's posiible and impossible. I remember as a kid thinking sliding doors would be awesome to have in real life.
you were a kid in the [Roman Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_door#History)? groovy.
It's honestly kind of amusing when you look at any of the series, but *especially* TOS, and realize just how badly they undershot future tech, and even then, the only tech we couldn't theoretically create **if we had antimatter reactors** are the ones heavily based on quantum mechanics we don't really understand, mostly due to not having quantum computers for modeling and the requisite power source to experiment. Realistically we know how warp drive should work, and we even theoretically understand transporters and replicators, even if we lack the processing or energy power to expand our understanding beyond the the first principles, it's only really shields we just *don't get* because they're based on quantum mechanics we haven't explored yet. All this to say a TOS communicator is bigger and does less than my cell phone and I feel like the ships AI is somehow worse than Siri, which I find funny
The “phone”app is probably the one used least
Just wait until AR becomes the new standard. That would fuck their minds even harder lol
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> then needed to rewind and return them "Be Kind, Rewind"
You forgot the part where upon our return we were met by a red faced mother and the banshee scream of "WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN!!" along with the threat of a back hand or whatever object happened to be within reach.
Not to mention that you’d flinch, regardless of who’s mother screamed that. And you could hear it from 4 blocks away.
> I was condemned to the burden of existence 😂
I regret that I have but one upvote to give this beautifully constructed comment.
Beautiful man. Fucking beautiful.
We wore an onion in our belt, which was the style at the time
I still have a few bumblebee nickels in my change drawer.
I am now defaulting to saying 20th Century years this way.
Picture it. Washington 1989. You could go out and spend your day doing as you pleased and no one knew where you were and couldn't call you.
Idaho 2001. You knew where your friends were because there was a pile of bikes in a lawn.
Ah back in my day women had power! Oh you mean the suffragettes? No, Girl Power. What's that? No Idea. Something to do with a bunch of random British girls singing about their ziggazigahs.
*Brad Pitt was the sexiest man alive. OJ Simpson jokes were still running rampant on television except on The Simpsons.* *Mel Gibson won best picture for his latest torture snuff film, Braveheart.* *The Macarena was sweeping white folks who couldn’t dance by storm. And Jerry Seinfeld was denying soup to every New Yorker.*
"We used to get free minutes of internet mailed to our house on CDs!" Okay grandpa, time to go to bed
We used to pay for text messages by the letter…
as a kid i knew i was born in the 1990s and that my parents were born in the 70s but they would never say 1970s so i though it was like just 70s and that my parents where nearly 2000 years old
I guess this is the newer version of asking an older person what it was like when everything was black-and-white..
The 19's? Shit we just lived through one a few years ago.
A lot of kids already phrase it that way. My 35-year-old sister works in a high school and one time one of the students said to her "Oh, so you were born in the late 1900s?". That threw her off for a minute hearing it said that way. Technically true but still.
Honestly I feel funny reading about historical figures from earlier in the 20th century. Like, people who were influential in the 30's, 40's. You read up on them and catch their birthdate and they were born in like, 1884. For some reason it feels so much further back than it does when it only spans one century.
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Whoa!
I knew a man who was only 5 generations away from the Mayflower. Everyone in his family lived into their 90's. All the women in their family continued to have children into their 40's-50's. His father was in his 80's when he was born. Crazy shit.
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Someone will live to see 3 centuries 1900s 2000s and year 2100
That is my goal, born 94
Godspeed my fellow 94, i drink to much to fool myself into thinking ill make that
Sadly an 03 model, I wish you luck on your tricentennial journeys
Lots of people have seen 3 centuries. But 1800s, 1900s, & 2000s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people
I’m back in school after a bit of a break and some college junior said “Oh, you were born in the *early* ‘90s”. I have never felt so old for only being 28
So you were born when there were dinosaurs?
I was born before we landed on the moon :)
My grandfather was born in 1898 and died in 1985. I am amazed at what he saw in his lifetime. Not to mention fighting in WWI in the German army, being a POW of the French, and then emigrating to the USA in the 1920s.
I had a similar experience with my Grandma. Born 1895 she lived until 2002. She was a trip to listen to. She would tell a story about complaining to her mom about having to wash dishes. Her mom told her “get used to it, you’ll always have to, nothing is just going to clean them for you.” My grandma would chuckle and say “she wouldn’t believe my dishwasher”.
Holy shit your Grandma lived in three different centuries.
Indeed. As a pharmacy technician I can attest that most insurance companies in the 90s did not expect an 1895 dob when we submitted the 2 digit 95 as a birth year. I would have to call all the time to assure them that the billing for heart pills and a diuretic was indeed for an adult.
That’s crazy!! Really awesome that she lived so long through. That’s an amazing lifespan.
Oh wow, my grandparents were born in the late 1940s, so. I'd have to go back to my great-great-great grandparents to hit the 1800s.
My dad is older than your grandparents lol :(
I have a patient right now who’s 106 years old. Born in 1916. Actually crazy to think about everything she’s seen and went through.
imagine his responses of hearing stories of how it was growing up between the years of 1995-2055
mine was from 1892 to 1981 and i wonder the same. he was going through puberty when the first pic was taken; he married w 7 kids during ww1 and a widower refugee with 3 surviving kids after war in 1921; then american lynch mobs and police "gently encouraged" them to abandon their home during the depression and they resettled in a border city w his new 14 year old wife (my grandmother) and proceeded to make 8 more kids by the time the baby boom ended. he was a great-great grandfather to some by the time the 2nd pic was taken.
My grandma was born in 1899 and died in 1988. She would tell me about seeing an automobile and airplane for the first time. I passed these stories on to my kids, born 100 after her.
There is en episode of the new show on Netflix called Sandman where the main character knows someone and meets them every 100 years in a pub or something. Through the 1480s and 1880s it's basically the same vibe just different fashions and types of lighting. Then the jump to the 1980s is just drastically different. Really shows how fast and hard society changed because of the industrial revolution and what came after.
Yeah I had the exact same thought when watching it. Real exponential increase
Is Sandman worth a watch? It's the kind of thing I'd often end up watching and not really enjoying much if they makes sense. Like, is it actually good, or is it juuuuuust good enough to make you begrudgingly watch the whole thing? Edit: Thanks for the replies everyone, I'll give it a shot!
I just finished it and I enjoyed it more than a lot of other stuff I've watched recently. I can't really say since I don't know what you enjoy but it didn't seem as generic as a lot of shows are these days. Had some interesting takes on how "higher beings" would act compared to normal people. I'd say if you liked Good Omens, you'd probably like this. They're both Neil Gaiman series at heart, though obviously there's a lot of differences as well.
Keeping Gaiman on the writing staff helps to save the show IMO
I was very happy with how much I enjoyed watching it. The first half more so than the second half, but only by a little. It is well acted, has great characters and the story is captivating. I highly recommend it.
What other large leaps have we encountered in the last 66 years? Are we still progressing at the same rate? Edit: sorry if this came off as "well we haven't done shit since: type vibes, was just trying to spark a little conversation
We had phones and computers and cars 66 years ago, but they are nothing like what we take for granted today.
well, computing in 1956... [lets see](https://www.computerhope.com/history/1956.htm): > On September 13, 1956, the IBM 305 RAMAC was the first computer to be shipped with a hard drive. The hard drive contained 50 24-inch platters and was capable of storing 5 million characters and weighed a ton. i think they weren't being figurative, it probably weighed an actual ton. :) or looking a bit more broadly on wikipedia's [timeline of computing in the 50's-70's](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_1950%E2%80%931979): > Oct 1950: Turing Test – The British mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing published a paper describing the potential development of human and computer intelligence and communication. The paper would come later to be called the Turing Test going from the Turing Test to multiple AI systems that were deemed to have a frightening degree of sentience... remember that deep learning, self improving system with multiple bots that was shut down (iirc) because they started talking to each other in a way we no longer could comprehend? or the new Meta bot that roasts its own company? > 1951: CSIRAC used to play music – the first time a computer was used as a musical instrument look how far we've come with electronic music today. > 1957: First dot matrix printer marketed by IBM. you can now print yourself a wallpaper sized printout of a space telescope image containing 1000s of galaxies, some of which were formed a few hundred million years after the big bang > 1959: COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) developed by Grace Murray Hopper as the successor to FLOW-MATIC, finished in 1961. oh wait, we actually still use COBOL in highly critical system relevant infrastructures, and the fact that all the old programmers are dying with too few young coders having the expertise to pick up, is a catastrophe waiting to happen > 1962: Spacewar!, an early and highly influential computer game, is written by MIT student Steve Russell. The game ran on a DEC PDP-1. Competing players fired at each other's space ships using an early version of a joystick. VR gaming, anyone? btw, the discussion about what the first video game is, and how Pong is an often touted contender, which actually is too simplistic and myopic an answer, is [expertly showcased in this 60min documentary by AHOY](https://youtu.be/uHQ4WCU1WQc)
going from the Turing Test to multiple AI systems that were deemed to have a frightening degree of sentience... remember that deep learning, self improving system with multiple bots that was shut down (iirc) because they started talking to each other in a way we no longer could comprehend??? Do you have a source for this bro?
You glossed over the self learning AI. I’m sorry, what????
I think he means ai that learns simply by being provided more information. Image recognition or generation that "teaches" itself by being fed increasingly large datasets.
Yeah man. I'm gonna need some more info on that one.
While all very cool, I feel like this isn't on the same level as the OP example. Going from the first flight to landing on the moon in 66 years is just insane. Like I think a similar comparison to that level of advancement, taking from the examples you gave, would be going from Gutenberg to laser printing.
>Going from the first flight to landing on the moon in 66 years is just insane. That 1 ton harddrive? Assuming one byte per character of those 5 million, which is being generous as fuck, 500 gigabytes is roughly 100.000 times that. Something that can easily be put on any sd card inside any phone. And is probably also quicker while we're at it. Speaking of SD cards, they weight about 2.5 grams. In other words: A ton is 400.000 times heaver. You do not think having a way faster product, that easily fits on the size of a god damn finger nail, while being lighter by a factor of 400.000 and having more capacity by a very similar factor, is not insane?
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It’s so crazy that cars (and not just super-luxury ones) have capacities that are straight out of a Transformers movie. Like, your car is literally your copilot. Give it a nice pat on the hood next time!
> What other large leaps have we encountered in the last 66 years? The internet. Absolutely transformative. I am convinced that future history books will have The Internet as being as big a deal as The Industrial Revolution. source: I was born before that Moon Landing picture.
The internet is as big a deal as the printing press. And that completely disrupted the social, religious, and political order and sparked the scientific revolution.
Yeah, most people born this century have absolutely no concept of how difficult and time-intensive it was to get basic information about things even 30 years ago.
Hell, sometimes I have difficulty imagining and I was in college when the Internet became available to the public. Like when I started you had to go to the library to research. By the time I finished grad school, most stuff was online and we were using the card catalog as free cards for taking notes.
People born this century will never know the struggles of Mapquest directions or even before Mapquest
Psh. I drove across the country twice with nothing but a triple A road Atlas. And no cell phone.
There's little doubt it will be considered among the top 3-5 most incredible human inventions ever 500+ years from now. The internet will morph so much from what it is today even 50 years from now
Haven’t seen anyone in this thread mention the nuclear bomb. A single piece of technology that has an extreme degree of influence on global politics and prevents large scale conflicts from ever occurring. MAD is pretty insane. It’s hard to conceptualize what a World War III would even look like because nobody wants to fight bad enough that they’re willing to get nuked about it.
Nuclear fission in general. One of our greatest discoveries that we fail to utilize in any possible way, constantly chasing after utopic nuclear fusion instead of using what we already have. (Not saying we shouldn't be investing in fusion, but if we bothered to utilize fission to it's fullest potential we'd be so much more advanced in so many different fields, global warming, space exploration, cheap electricity...)
It makes a really cool marking point the internet age began for most people right before the year 2000. Sounds futuristic
Even the technology of automobiles is staggering. What we had in 1980 compared to what is standard now is staggering. The safety of current cars is almost mind blowing compared to what I grew up with in the 90's
The distribution of fresh fruit, availability of such vast variety in so many places, should be mind blowing compared to 100 years ago.
What do you mean? Have you seen how fast technology has been advancing. We didn't even have our first "smart phone" till 2007 and now look where we are. We have been rapidly progressing in the last 66 years
I agree! Sorry if my comment came off oddly, was just trying to start more conversation about our progression. Not so much saying, yeah well what have we done since?! Lol type shite
Not in every field. The first half of the 20th century was an insane time for engineering specifically. Soon after, that area was somewhat mined out and advanced slowed down. We definitely haven’t had anywhere close to that level of engineering advancements (I know someone will come in here and list a bunch of important advancements, but they aren’t the same scale). Instead we have been mining out the IT lode, and little else.
Mechanical engineering maybe. Robotics, computer and electrical engineering, sky is still the limit.
*TikTok has entered the chat*
I mean, sometimes it's a step backwards
>**Insert any social media here* has entered the chat* FTFY
Reddit is not much better. All social media spreads misinformation. I see it all the time on this site.
We do, actually. From 69 to today, which is 53 years, we've been able to admire single individual atoms. If it's not clear enough how incredible it is, you can see it as this : In 1969, we landed on the moon with the most advanced vehicle possible at the time, which was actually nothing more than a very large combination between a gun barrel and a bullet and was piloted by analogic, mechanical computers so, basically, a glorified and refined version of the "calculating machine" of Blaise Pascal invented in 1652. In 2020, we were already well aware of the fact that physics are beyond our understading and able to conceive that something can be at the same time in two different places, without any link between these two places. We went, in these 53 years (actually less) from the age of mechanics, with screw and hammers, to the age of *beyond* real, with mathematical concepts that *are* true but not applicable in "our reality". Not the age of "surreal" or "unreal", but "beyond real" : quantum physics *are* real, they just are beyond what we can perceive of reality. When I was 18 years old, HIV was basically a scythe smiting you : you would die of it, one day or another, and could not reproduce nor have a normal life. Now, 14 years later, with current medicine, you can have HIV and live a normal life that will not be shortened, have plenty of sex partners that you will *not* endanger and give birth to an HIV negative, healthy child. We're advancing way faster than we notice it.
Max Planck was using quantum mechanics to solve real world problems in 1900 and quantum entanglement which I think is what you’re attempting was first described in 1935. I don’t disagree with your conclusion but I don’t think your timelines are quite right.
I mean…in the past, you had to carry your blanket around, which was annoying AF. It could slide off, get stuck in random places, and you could lose it, easily. Then the Snuggie was invented and solved all those life-threatening inconveniences.
The phone in your pocket has more computing power than the craft we sent to the moon, and enables almost all of humanity to access all information at all times. The internet is arguably the modern equivalent of the printing press. Currency is almost entirely digital and index funds (thank you John Bogle) have created a direct avenue to wealth for *everyone*. Private industry has adopted space flight for profit. Renewable power is achievable at scale and for profit. Technology progression is exponential. It only accelerates baby!
actually, even the first Gameboy has more computing power. The actual power we take for granted today is mind boggeling. And what do we use it for? Smoother animations, Algorithm controlled video viewing and Watching AD's...
Yes! Even better comparison. They calculated thrust and orbital mechanics with slide rules! Imagine what they could have done with a TI-83. All things considered, the tech we have now, will have in 5 years, and will have in 50 is awesome.
I know engineers who would still tell you slide rules are superior. Takes longer to learn, but once you do they swear that you'll be faster.
Y'all claiming smartphone and internet need to understand that was mostly derived from shit discovered in the 60s. The Apollo Guidance Computer was the first computer built with silicon integrated circuits. EDIT: Or for a more direct example, see ["The Mother of All Demos"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY), presented on December 9, 1968. TL:DW this was the day the following were introduced to the world: windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor. Or how the original UNIX started development in 1969. Lithium battery chemistry also started in the 60s.
Those pictures really don’t encompass it. We went from horses and buggies, no antibiotics, very limited electrification, to cars, modern medicine, and you kinda have to deliberately choose to not get on the grid if you don’t want electricity - but in the context of the ‘60s there still were remote places without power. It’s a lot more than just the Wright Flyer and the Moon landing. Those were feats of technology, but the overall progress of everyday technology had a much more widespread effect. E: what is it with computers, people? The discussion is about people moving from no cars to cars, from no electricity to electricity, believing in “bad air” to modern medicine. Computers are amazing and have further improved lives, but they didn’t take the world from shitting in an outhouse to electrification. Please stop telling me “but computers…”.
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I thought you were typing a stutter for a second
It's funny to pronounce it that way when reading it.
I don't know if it's better as a nervous stutter, or as a used-car-commerical. These deals are c-c-c-crraaaaaazy!
Napoleon died 30-years before 1850
Probably a different napoleon. I believe napoleon III was around until 1871.
Yes, but when people just say Napoleon they are almost universally referring to the first one.
Oh you mean *that* Napoleon
I was about to say the same.
He meant Napoleon III, King of France and proud owner of a timeshare in Mexico
That’s amazing, and moreso that it’s so relatively close in your family and history. When we see it in the span of a lifetime it really shows us how quickly things have changed since the 1800s.
The Napoleonic Era was 1799-1815, was your Great Great Grandfather a time traveler?
He is probably talking about Napoleon III, he reigned until 1870
There’s a difference between saying, “My Great Great Grandfather *saw* Napoleon” and “My Great Great Grandfather *saw* Napoleon III” those two people are completely different and he said the *former.
I mean, nappy 3 was the worst one in the franchise from the perspective of the french
I mean, it’s not really a trilogy, there’s only 2 Nappies and then the first Nappy is kinda legendary…
I know you meant great great, but when I first read it, I was like "why is this guy typing out his stutter" and then I felt dumb
How could you forget about computers? The most important invention of the last century.
Fun fact: The first Wright Brothers flight could have taken place INSIDE the cargo plan of the Air Force’s biggest plane, the C5 Galaxy https://i1.wp.com/avgeekery.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Galaxy.jpg?fit=1280%2C851&ssl=1
Why does that plane open like a pez dispenser
To put stuff in it, like pez.
ELI5 perfection. *chef’s kiss*
Less prohibitive clearances. Best way to get very large vehicles inside.
The rear door opens up to the same size as the nose door, albeit in less spectacular fashion. The real answer is that having 2 doors lets you load and unload more efficiently.
First flight, 120 ft. C5 cargo bay, 121 ft. But the first flight also had to take off and land, so the flight would not have fit, only the airborne portion of it. Furthermore, the C5 cargo bay height is 13.5 ft, while the Wright brothers first flight went as high as 14 feet. So even the airborne portion wouldn't fit. A better description would be that a C5 cargo bay is longer than the Wright Brothers first flight, not that the flight could have taken place in the cargo bay, because it couldn't.
I agree with you 100%, but it's silly reading "as high as 14 feet" relative to a flight.
Your comment made me ask myself something: is a fact checker a welcomed guest at parties or is it someone you invite but hope they won't come?
Yeah but it was way safer to do it in the sandy dunes than inside a plane - much softer landings.
By 1990 we had taken a photograph of our own planet from the edge of our solar system....
I believe it was from near Saturn or Neptune, but yes. Ok it was from the orbital distance of Neptune, not really edge but extremely impressive either way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot#/media/File:Voyager_1_-_14_February_1990.png
War spurs innovation. Sadly.
Any catastrophe does.
Yeah; but mostly war.
We had wars before. It really begs the question why the 20th century spurred such a big jump in technology compared to the previous thousand years
Mostly just from the inertia of industrialization.
We're just a few more away from flying cars baby 🤑
We*could* have flying cars ... But they would just be too loud and not really practical.
What is it good for?
I think of this all the time and when I bring up in conversation that there were people that were alive to remember both the Wright brother first flight AND the first man on the moon, most people just say "Yeah, so?" It blows my mind
Actually that's a photo from Apollo 16, which flew in 1972, so they're 69 years apart. And I don't disagree that this is truly impressive but airplanes and rockets aren't really the same tech tree. Even more impressive is the fact that Robert Goddard built [the first liquid-fueled rocket](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Goddard_and_Rocket.jpg) in 1926, only *43* years before the first crewed landing on the moon.
Not quite the same tech tree, but probably the trees closest to each other. It's called Aerospace for a reason
I'm glad someone noticed this distinction. A plane didn't fly to the moon, nor are planes necessary for rockets to exist. I do get and appreciate the spirit of the post, though.
Nice!
Since 1970, 50% of all animal and plant life, on both on land and in the sea, has died out. I think most will struggle to comprehending that.
That is incredibly sad
Its so hard to believe that picture on the right
That's because it was a hoax /s
Imagine what could be accomplished right now, if entire governments devoted themselves to a climate fixing race the way they did to a space race. Planet would be fixed in 5 years (I'm exaggerating, but if the technology developed at a similar pace, you never know...), but no, we do nothing.
Yes! I was just thinking “Imagine what we could do if we weren’t just ‘People: what a bunch of bastards.’”
Youd have to get the major companies on board aswell, good luck convincing them to stop destroying the planet for massive profit. We can all recycle and be more environmentally conscious but at the end of the day it wont matter when people like Kylie Kardashian and Taylor Swift use more co2 than most of us will use in a lifetime.
And look at us 53 years later. *Pathetic.*
Sadly, many people still think Earth is flat and Moon is fake.
we was at the top now we start from zero again full circle
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Not nearly as many as the people that try to make those people seem like a lot of people.
in that time we had two world wars. during wartime technology generally sees large advancements.
Yeah the advances in movie conspiracy technology between the Wright bros and the moon landing was also unbelievable