I hope we’ve outpaced the imagination of somebody from 50 freaking years ago. Imagine how the 1970s would look to somebody from the 1920s.

We got most of the tech from the jetsons ppl could envision in the early 1960s (video calls, smartphones, smart watches, smart homes), but still don’t have flying cars, cloud cities, robot maids, and moving sidewalks going everywhere.

“Cordless” isn’t much of a word anymore because everything runs on batteries. Battery tech itself has come a long way.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin… And I still marvel everyday about where we are today, compared to last year 😁 And I’m here since the internet began, and I had to drive to neighbor-city, be interviewed, fill out forms, join a nonprofit, just to have access to it.

I’m in awe every time I look at my e.g. phone. A thing that is a factor of like a hundred thousand or more in terms of speed, resolution, storage, in comparison to my first computer. And I carry it around. And it can connect to the net at unbelievable speeds. Without a cable.

…yet websites often load slower than back then, thanks to lazy devs, the use of 5838229 frameworks or scripts noone needs and also tracking and the likes.

Any smartphone is the obvious one.

But, the first black hole was confirmed in 1971. The fact that we’ve taken a picture of one would be incredible, not to mention directly imaging planets in other solar systems.

The Patch was hypothesized in 1988 and first documented in 1997, by a passing yacht racer. Research on the patch began in earnest in 2009.

Estimates on the size are still nebulous, as it continues to expand and shift. But I doubt anyone in the 1970s was predicting a patch of trash twice the size of Texas would appear in the Pacific Ocean over the next 50 years.

I’d have to imagine, if they were also into art, that they’d absolutely flip put over the tools for digital art, 3D modeling, and 3D printing. I mean, you can make a miniature 3D model for a project, make some textures to slap on it so you can get an idea of how you want it to look, print it, and then paint it to look like your textured model. All from your house, no less.

Though, for animation nerds, definitely the jump in animation quality. I wasn’t alive back then, but when I look back at cartoons from then, I notice a few of cheap things occasionally used like solid colour backgrounds, stiff character movement, and repeated animations in certain areas to save on budget. Plus, the stories being told are a lot better, IMO, in general… despite some of the crud we get alongside the cream of the crop.

I think a 1970s American would get a kick out these:

• Global warming is real and worse than you think and no it’s not going to be addressed.
• Those gas prices are going no where but up.
• Anyway we decided that all cars will be F350s.
• I hope you like pocket electronics because those are literally the only things that will seem truly futuristic to you. Everything else? Pretty much the same. Yep. We don’t even live longer.

Not related to technology. Walking into an airport to greet or to say Bon Voyage to people at the gate!!! Now, the fucking things are like prisons!

LLMs - you can just talk to your computer. I used computers since the 90s and that has always been the ultimate scifi dream and it’s here.

That we live inside a dystopia that is a pretty even mix of Brave Nee World and 1984.

CT and MRI

I got to thinking about like, Amazon. To an American in 1970, the equivalent would have been Sears, the retailer that sells literally everything though an enormous catalog. They had department stores you could visit in person and they’d publish a phone book thick catalog for mail order. And there was a time that Sears could have bought Amazon outright for chump change. I remember a Tim Allen stand-up routine where he talks about mail ordering a tool from Sears, and it arrives 6 to 8 weeks later. Shipping is now usually a matter of 1-4 days.

But no, the real answer is probably wireless headphones. Like if you were showing around a tech enthusiast from 1975 around my house, the thing that would probably break his brain the most is a pair of wireless earbuds.

The Nazis are back.

All video graphics after Pong’s.