"We haven't made any science-y progress since the Apollo moon missions," Neil deGrasse Tyson instantly communicated to millions of pocket computers around the globe.By 2015, Apollo 11 will be as long ago as 1923 was to the Moon landing itself. And I don’t know what we have to show for it.— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) January 1, 2015
As I was idly perusing the entertainment choices in the seatback touchscreen entertainment center on an eastbound 737-800 (I ended up watching the documentary Fastball), I couldn't help but remember this commercial. Now all this stuff is in your phone.
In retrospect, most of the hand-held computing technology in most science fiction from the last fifty years is laughably primitive. Hell, most of the computing technology, period. 2001: A Space Odyssey predicted a lot of things with Kubrickian attention to detail (flat screen color monitors did not exist when the movie was made, so all those video displays are rear-projected on frosted glass) but its computer predictions, at least regarding size and form factor, were knocked into a cocked hat by Moore's Law.
We still haven't caught up to Kubrick's vision in the field of murderous AIs, but I'm sure we're getting close.
Future is now.
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