Recently I've been reading or watching a few different older sci-fi works, and I'm particularly intrigued by how they believed the future would be, and how wrong they frequently were.
Paper
In Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (1968), there are numerous references to carbon papers and onionskins -- in fact I don't think there is any reference to anything resembling a modern computer with an interface. And yet in this same book, which is the inspiration for "Blade Runner," there are androids that are so nearly identical to humans as to require bone marrow samples to determine if they are human or real. He was able to envision a future with complicated thinking robots, but not a future in which something more permanent and flexible than paper existed. (Obviously paper is still used, but could you imagine if the entire record of a criminal only existed on a photocopy somewhere, and not digitally stored?)
Televisions
Watching "Aliens" (1986) and the later, rarely remembered TV series "Earth 2" (1994-95), I am struck by how they both failed to foresee the death of the old cathode-ray monitor. Thin LCD and plasma screens have already well outpaced old-school TVs, and new OLED screens are so thin as to be pliable. It's also interesting to see how whenever "static" or a weak signal is depicted, it is shown through the screen turning fuzzy or lines running across the screen, as one might experience with a weak antenna. Well, as anyone with digital cable or even online video watchers may know, when you get a crappy video, you see pixellation and possibly missed frames.
Gadgetry
Whether it's the phone in "Aliens" (dialing via sticking a plastic card into a slot) or the VR "gear" in "Earth 2" (a bulky headset with awkwardly swinging eyepieces), a lot of sci-fi failed to predict things like Bluetooth (which is little more than an earbud) or even simple speed-dialing. And interestingly, nearly every piece of sci-fi seems to have thought that video-phones would be the way of the future. Well, the technology has been around for quite some time, and it just never took off. Why? Because we multitask, and if we're talking on the phone, there really is no need to also see the person. We might be doing the dishes or driving or doing some other task. We just don't really need or want that most of the time.
So what are we getting wrong now?
There are undoubtedly a number of things that will begin to look foolishly short-sighted in our current predictions of the future. I think of the standard keyboard and wonder if that will die -- will we continue typing this way at all? Will "typing" even exist as communication? I'm willing to bet that we'll soon be seeing more and more examples of mind-controlled interfaces. I'm not talking anything magic here, but just complicated systems of interpreting electrical impulses in the brain. This may not be any time soon, but when you set something far in the future, it's worth considering.
There's also something I've been reading about lately -- devices that are essentially real "transformers" -- objects that can become other objects. Essentially a collection of "nano-machines" that can rebuild themselves based on the user's need. I don't know the limitations of this, but it wouldn't surprise me to start seeing self-reconstructing devices within the next 20 years.
But, hey, in the 1960s they all thought we'd be taking rockets to the moon for vacation by now. And boy were they wrong.
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Saturday, November 15, 2008
So I got an iPhone
I'm not really a gadget-head. As a diehard skeptic of, well, everything, I typically meet any new gadget with the question "why would I need this?" And usually there is no compelling reason.
But after spending months with a phone that repeatedly shut itself off upwards of ten times a day, sometimes mid-phone call, I was ready to switch, and decided to just go ahead and plunk down the dollars for an iPhone. I'm so happy I did.
I knew that it would combine my phone and MP3 player into one device, which I liked. I also knew it'd allow a few more things, namely web browsing. But I didn't realize the extent to which its app store would make the device an all-in-one EVERYTHING. I can play video games, control my desktop from the phone, update my Facebook status, listen to radio stations... it's pretty cool. (I should note, for the record, that lest this read like an Apple ad I am sure that similar smartphones like the G1 and Blackberry Storm are capable of doing many of these things as well.)
But as I was browsing reviews for good apps and downloading them on my laptop, it struck me as odd that I still have to actually attach a wire from the laptop to the iPhone. A minor problem, really, but it got me thinking about the future of computing and the whole concept of syncing. We are moving further and further away from a hard-coded "this machine does this" mindset to a software-driven wireless world where you can do anything from anywhere from any machine. We've already moved past some of the typical physical limitations of the world -- I haven't bought a CD in 2 years for example, yet have bought tons of music. Virtually every piece of software people get these days no longer requires a box with a disc in it, and can be just downloaded online. And as hardware limitations decrease to the point where, in all likelihood, we are just a few years away from pretty much every new computer can do pretty much everything, the actual machines we're on may reach a point of irrelevance as well. Imagine going up to any computer anywhere, logging in with some password, and having all of the same data and programs available to you anywhere. Services like this already exist, but this is by no means universal.
We're going to just all have our own "clouds" at some point soon. An amalgamam of files, programs, software, data, etc. that requires no physical anything except for the data storage facilities of the providers.
Not to get all sci-fi on you, but this basically means there will be two versions of any of us. The physical being, and the data identity. Some people find that scary, I find it fascinating.
And to me the most interesting part of all of this is that it happens so quickly and seamlessly. Just imagine ten years ago, the whole concept of your whole world reachable by one device in your pocket was probably hard to fathom. But it has happened, and is getting more dramatically omnipresent every day.
Which is just. So. Cool.
But after spending months with a phone that repeatedly shut itself off upwards of ten times a day, sometimes mid-phone call, I was ready to switch, and decided to just go ahead and plunk down the dollars for an iPhone. I'm so happy I did.
I knew that it would combine my phone and MP3 player into one device, which I liked. I also knew it'd allow a few more things, namely web browsing. But I didn't realize the extent to which its app store would make the device an all-in-one EVERYTHING. I can play video games, control my desktop from the phone, update my Facebook status, listen to radio stations... it's pretty cool. (I should note, for the record, that lest this read like an Apple ad I am sure that similar smartphones like the G1 and Blackberry Storm are capable of doing many of these things as well.)
But as I was browsing reviews for good apps and downloading them on my laptop, it struck me as odd that I still have to actually attach a wire from the laptop to the iPhone. A minor problem, really, but it got me thinking about the future of computing and the whole concept of syncing. We are moving further and further away from a hard-coded "this machine does this" mindset to a software-driven wireless world where you can do anything from anywhere from any machine. We've already moved past some of the typical physical limitations of the world -- I haven't bought a CD in 2 years for example, yet have bought tons of music. Virtually every piece of software people get these days no longer requires a box with a disc in it, and can be just downloaded online. And as hardware limitations decrease to the point where, in all likelihood, we are just a few years away from pretty much every new computer can do pretty much everything, the actual machines we're on may reach a point of irrelevance as well. Imagine going up to any computer anywhere, logging in with some password, and having all of the same data and programs available to you anywhere. Services like this already exist, but this is by no means universal.
We're going to just all have our own "clouds" at some point soon. An amalgamam of files, programs, software, data, etc. that requires no physical anything except for the data storage facilities of the providers.
Not to get all sci-fi on you, but this basically means there will be two versions of any of us. The physical being, and the data identity. Some people find that scary, I find it fascinating.
And to me the most interesting part of all of this is that it happens so quickly and seamlessly. Just imagine ten years ago, the whole concept of your whole world reachable by one device in your pocket was probably hard to fathom. But it has happened, and is getting more dramatically omnipresent every day.
Which is just. So. Cool.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Our widescreen future (and present)
You'd think we'd have this figured out by now, but the ever-changing nature of the internet, computers, monitors, and design has made "How big of a screen should we design for?" a question at the start of every web design project.
The super quick answer to that has changed over the years, from 640x480 WAY back in the mid-90s to 800x600 to the current "safe" standard of 1024x768. Basically, subtract about 25 or so pixels from the width to cover the size of the scrollbar and you should be safe.
But, if you look at trends in monitor sizes -- and many clients do -- you'll notice that the widescreen monitor is becoming more and more prevalent. The screen I'm looking at right now is 1680x1050, and there are plenty of monitors out there with even wider resolution. W3Schools lists the % of people using screen resolutions of "higher" than 1024x768 at 38% as of January 2008 -- which is an increase from 26% the year before. A similar jump would put fully half of monitors at higher than 1024x768 by January 2009 (I think it's time for them to start breaking out that "or higher" group).
For the most part, however, virtually all sites have stopped themselves from designing for anything wider than 1024, even though statistics would suggest that you are serving up unused real estate to about half your visitors. Why not design for larger?
Well, there's a good reason -- as screen resolutions get larger, people are less inclined to maximize their browsers to full screen. But that starts to be a sort of chicken and the egg question -- are users not maximizing their browsers because of the "wasted" space, or is the way we use our computers shifting such that we prefer seeing multiple windows at once?
It would be interesting to see a site take full advantage of wider browser windows -- it is sometimes being done (look at Clear Left or this Particletree example and change the size of the browser window, and you'll see the content adapt), but I think a lot of heavily-trafficked commercial sites are missing out on an opportunity here. There may be a fundamental shift in the thinking behind site design in the not-too-distant future as our viewing area gets increasingly wider and (thus relatively) shorter.
Some additional interesthing thoughts on the subject are at 456 Berea Street.
The super quick answer to that has changed over the years, from 640x480 WAY back in the mid-90s to 800x600 to the current "safe" standard of 1024x768. Basically, subtract about 25 or so pixels from the width to cover the size of the scrollbar and you should be safe.
But, if you look at trends in monitor sizes -- and many clients do -- you'll notice that the widescreen monitor is becoming more and more prevalent. The screen I'm looking at right now is 1680x1050, and there are plenty of monitors out there with even wider resolution. W3Schools lists the % of people using screen resolutions of "higher" than 1024x768 at 38% as of January 2008 -- which is an increase from 26% the year before. A similar jump would put fully half of monitors at higher than 1024x768 by January 2009 (I think it's time for them to start breaking out that "or higher" group).
For the most part, however, virtually all sites have stopped themselves from designing for anything wider than 1024, even though statistics would suggest that you are serving up unused real estate to about half your visitors. Why not design for larger?
Well, there's a good reason -- as screen resolutions get larger, people are less inclined to maximize their browsers to full screen. But that starts to be a sort of chicken and the egg question -- are users not maximizing their browsers because of the "wasted" space, or is the way we use our computers shifting such that we prefer seeing multiple windows at once?
It would be interesting to see a site take full advantage of wider browser windows -- it is sometimes being done (look at Clear Left or this Particletree example and change the size of the browser window, and you'll see the content adapt), but I think a lot of heavily-trafficked commercial sites are missing out on an opportunity here. There may be a fundamental shift in the thinking behind site design in the not-too-distant future as our viewing area gets increasingly wider and (thus relatively) shorter.
Some additional interesthing thoughts on the subject are at 456 Berea Street.
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