The phone doesn't do that stuff, it just communicates with a larger infrastructure that can do those things. Agreed that machine translation, telecommunications, and wikipedia are great inventions though.

Yes, smartphones are dope. But, what then? What's the next groundbreaking evolution?

> What's the next groundbreaking evolution?

Maybe it isn't technological, but psychological. Our minds haven't evolved all that much. We need to be kinder, gentler, more respectful of other people and other species, and learn to live in harmony with the environment, rather than always being at war with nature.

And maybe an ability to regulate technological changes and the effects those changes have on us.

For example introducing more rigorous testing to medical devices, or learning to use addictive media in a reasonable way. Or maybe learning to live with less, rather than demand for more.

This is the most unrealistic advancement in Star Trek.

That wasn't really Star Trek though. That was Picard's personal viewpoint. Many Star Trek captains felt, and acted, differently. Though it does reflect a part of Roddenbery's vision as well.

I can get a drone for five hundred bucks that fits in the palm of my hand, flies for a half hour, and shoots 4k video.

I think that's pretty neat.

My watch is pretty neat. Self-driving cars, when perfected, will prevent incredible amounts of death and suffering. Electric bikes and the plummeting costs of solar tech and batteries will save the planet. And it's unbelievable how fast these covid vaccines were developed, tested, manufacturered at gigascale, and (soon) distributed to every corner of the planet.

Is this an intentional reference?

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Yea, yea... but besides the Internet, smartphones, smart watches, self-driving cars, electric bikes, solar tech, advanced batteries, and amazing mRNA vaccines, where is my promised future??

Yeah we're missing 2001's lunar hotel and human spaceflight to Jupiter, but killer AI seems on point.

Quadcopter/drone tech seems like it's bringing us closer to Blade Runner's flying cars of 2019, although noise and safety are major issues.

and jetpacks! Aside from internet, smartphones, smart watches, self-driving cars, electric bikes, solar tech, advanced batteries, amazing mRNA vaccines, what has technology ever done for us? Nothing!

r/unexpectedmontypython

I was a "NASA" kid, was 5 when man landed on the moon, blew off a uni exam to watch the first shuttle landing, still amazed when a Falcon 9 lands on a ship, can hear "1201 alarm, kicking up some dust" and see the grey video and the shadow of the LEM...

But Chuck Yeager making that first "boom" is still the boundary between yesterday and today.

I would say that Gagarin's flight was more a boundary beween before and after than was the flight of the X-1.

yeah, butt it's medicine just a radio

While I posit that the Internet is humanity's greatest invention, it still has yet to be utilized in a net positive way.

...that are tuned to exfiltrate as much data as humanly possible, through which fundamental human rights are regularly abused/facilitated; that are spreadmainly to facilitate greater access to potential opportunities for financial transactions.

Their operating system is designed specifically to resist general utilization, and intended primarily as a vehicle for conspicuous consumption.

To be frank; short of a revolution in human ethics/morality/spirituality, the wonder that is the modern smartphone will not become half of what it could be.

And goddamn. Rest in peace, Chuck. They won't even hear ya comin'.

If you think computers are used for bad things, just wait til you hear what people do with airplanes and rockets.