DeadVim

Nice!

isgraham

I still play elite occasionally on my MacBook. That's how truly sad I am.

Cheetah7

I remember my Dad designing a video game of very basic ball games - like tennis or something (cant describe it well) but I know it involved batting a ball from one person to the other, kept us entertained for hours it did.

Branching out from technology, medical science is pretty awesome as well when I think of what drugs are available to people now and chances of surviving certain cancers are now greatly improved. I remember when our local hospital got a body scanner - it was in the news and everything.

Makes me wonder what will be around in 10 years time, mobile phones and computers change so much each year - what will the next 10 years bring? Mr PP said he would quite like a car that drives itself.

scottishcelts

it's Christmas time, what the hell

knockoff nige

They exist, not sure I'm ready to use one though. I remember Top Gear had one and they programmed it to get around the track as quick as was possible for that car, I believe it was a BMW. Jeremy Clarkson was in the driving seat and was saying he desperately wanted to brake all the time. But the car had no issue with getting around a track. Its the fact that technology fails too often to be trusting a car to drive itself. Satnav is a good example of how technology can fail you, especially with that story of Apple Maps getting some Australians very lost.

Medical science is really fascinating though, especially bio-technolody such as artificial limbs. When I first saw an artificial leg on tv, it just seemed to be like having a log attached to your torso. These days, they are becoming more natural in movement.

I draw the line on human (or any) cloning, that freaks me out no end.

GarryP

Electronics can react and decide far faster than a human. It also doesn't get bored or tired. As such I can see quite a bit of use for anti-collision innovations in future. If its doing that, then lane following and distance keeping makes sense (since the electronics would have to maintain situational awareness).

It's then a short step to proving that the electronics is more reliable than the driver.

In addition there are some very interesting 'road-train' things that can be achieved for long distance motorway driving - 30% reduction in fuel usage easily.

I'd not be surprised to see the 'fast' lane given over to road-train equipped cars by 2025.

Cloning of limbs for replacement surgery?

Cloning of humans worries me much less than allowing patenting of genomes. THAT should be recognised as illegal.

knockoff nige

Electronics are designed by humans. They are limited by our own vision. Nuclear plants not being able to withstand a tsunami is one that sticks in my mind about humans limited foresight. Sure, they can work, they can also break or not suit future conditions or worse, get in the hands of the wrong people.

I don't agree with cloning humans or animals. I will accept cloning of limbs. In fact, I'm very in favour of growing human eyes for the blind. Not sure how far we are with that. < - notice I said we, as if I have something to do with it

knockoff nige

I've had another think about this. Regarding car safety, Formula 1 cars have a core that is designed to withstand a ridiculous mount of force, I remember an ITV commentator saying they simply won't come apart. This is obviously very important as there would be deaths most weeks if they weren't as strong as they are. But, that doesnt stop them from flipping up in the air or catching fire. Robert Kubica's crash could easily have been fatal. This is a sport which has some incredibly intelligent designers. The cars themselves often breakdown. But the problem with crashing is that the drivers aren't the geniuses who design them. They are just the adrenaline junkies who crave a win. In a very competitive world (especially in technology), there are massive risks. Look at the recent fatalities from the taser guns used by police.

GarryP

Not sure that makes a lot of sense.

F1 cars are designed to be on the ragged edge of lasting long enough/the rules so as to get the extra 1/100th of a second on lap times. Your average commutermobile isn't.

Look at it like this, nobody would seriously be saying that a car airbag should be controlled by the driver - you are happy that its automatic in the event of a crash (even though it means the driver no longer has control). You've no problem with anti-lock brakes. Similarly we are getting systems that automatically brake if they detect you are headed at an object so fast you'll hit it.

It's a small step to automatically monitoring the surroundings and controlling the steering AND braking in the event you get yourself into an accident situation, steering and controlling the vehicle such that its kept under control and doesn't hit other vehicles. Pretty easy to show it can act and react better than a driver in those circumstances.

Once you have this, the step to controlling the vehicle in all situations is a small one, since these situations are inherently less demanding than the situation of an accident (particularly if you factor in V2V).

Stepping back, there are two driving forces - a stepwise progression up the hierarchy of driver planning activities; and the reality that this runs on computer development generational timelines, rather than automotive generational timelines. The driver gets pushed up the hierarchy toward strategic decision making (where he meets Sat Nav traffic planning coming down) and each generation leap frogs the capacity of the last to work 2-3 times better every year.

Lastly, as fuel costs continue to rise, one of the ways of cutting the consumption is to take away the accelerator from Mr Heavy Right Foot. Step one is only allowing the fast lane to be used by road train compatible vehicles, then the entire motorway, then major roads, commuter routes, etc.- before long the stats will show that accident rates have fallen and the push will be to get rid of the steering wheel entirely. Once you do that all the speeding enforcement, signage, etc. can go as well.

2025 is my guess.

quoll

My first experience with a computer was the PDP8 which took up a whole room and for which we had to learn Fortran. I think my Palm Tungsten T could well outperform the PDP8 even back when I still used Palms (and I was in the vanguard of Palms I think). We were early adopters of mobile phones, PCs and the Internet (thank goodness my kids were growing up at that time and could teach me!!!)

My only concern about all this technology is that it is all so power related and, heaven forbid, that power becomes erratic or too expensive to use then we would see a "Dark Ages" similar to that following the decline of the Roman Empire (do the chronological walk through the London museum to see the stark reality of that) and I guess I am a little concerned that our dependence on technology comes at the cost of the loss of other basic survival skills. But meanwhile, I'm a technophile and proud!

Cheetah7

Good point there Quoll. When I was a veterinary nurse, I would have used both paper record keeping and computerized systems but the places that have only ever been computerized would struggle if their systems went down.

BadgeIsBack

I tried to get on 'Janet' at Uni and failed...

I did 'dial in' and make library reservations without even getting out of my room my last year.

I work in IT (needs must) but there is definitely a limit to my interest. I actually find too many gadgets and talk of it a bit vulgar especially when there are blokes at work for whose life it clearly is.

What gets me is that I don't really get gadgets in the way others do. Once I've got them, I can be expert - and I am very technical otherwise when I get paid for it.

Yet friends and family see me as the man to ask. I tell them to go elsewhere.

GarryP

I wish I still had an acoustic coupler...

To me they are a tool. Still the fastest moving, most dynamic toolset, but not as basic as some. I think it was bought home to me when I was chatting with a younger woman and she said her friendships were all mediated by online contact. Real world, physical, was only an adjunct. Its a generational change that I'm on the other side of. We have a bunch of people for whom geographic location is secondary and interaction is not predominately face-to-face. That is going to make a hellishly big difference within a decade.

Cheetah7

Talking of gadgets, my iPhone 5 arrived today so got to set that up - I have never transferred my numbers before as with my first iPhone the shop did it for me - is it difficult to sync everything?

BadgeIsBack

Scares the shit out of me. I think we are losing that old-school ability - where people learnt to forge relationships. I really worry a bit about social media - they are hot on it at school - us parents we all get warned about it.

That said, the internet has directed the right people to the right place for their slant, interest. There is no excuse for someone to be lonely perhaps. For me the biggest aspect is the ease with which you can read around a subject...in school I remember knowing a few things out of the course text - but never really seeing how it all fitted together - the web allows you to put it in context.