| A Look At The Future Causes A Spontaneous Trip Down Memory Lane... |
While browsing through NotCot.org today I found the link for the Microsoft Surface. It is a wicked cool vision of how computers will be stylishly integrated into our lives and our decor. For those who cannot be bothered clicking on the link and watching the video, Surface is basically a table whose surface is a touchscreen computer in which you can view things, draw on, drag pictures around with your finger. The coolest thing is that you will be able to simply place objects like cameras on it and the computer will sync with them, download and upload stuff instantly without the annoyance of a USB cable. Microsoft envisions restaurants where you literally place an order through your table and pay your bill by simply placing your credit card on it. There's a scene with two ladies walking into a cafe and she shows her friends some new pictures from her camera on the cafe table. It looks awesome. Who knows if or when our future environment will be like this?
After all, in the past we have had some fantastic visions of what the future would be like. Check out Paleo-Future for some hilarious clippings of what our past amateur futurologists though the world would be like.... stuff like robots will be kings of France in 2000 and blondes will be extinct within 600 years!
Personally, I am still bitterly disappointed that we do not have flying cars! When I was five, I was absolutely certain that we would have flying cars by now. To my naive and imaginative mind, it was a surefire thing. To be honest, I don't know if I will ever get over this disappointment. Unless of course they do soon invent them. But since we can't even get the majority of cars to run without petrol, this looks like a somewhat unrealistic immediate vision.
The jet pack still hasn't become an everyday mode of travel yet either... That also looked so promising... y'know... when I was five.
Teleportation is still the priceless piece of technology I'm really holding out for. Not just because you can transport people through time and space with the flick of a wrist and a "Beam me up, Scotty!" but also for the culinary benefits. When I was a hungry, gluttonous child I used to think about that machine from Star Trek that beams up food. I was never sure whether the food materialized from some kitchen on-board the Enterprise, or whether it just materialized out of thin air from some scrambled and reassembled particles. I'd prefer the latter. Of course, that would make me fatter. I could be eating absolutely anything my heart desires. Oh yes, and ssssh, so I was a bit of a Trekkie as a kid.... I mostly watched the new version with Patrick Stewart and Data. I liked Data. Mighty handy guy to have around.
While I was looking through Paleo-Future I stumbled upon this crack-up list about the 20th century published in 1901. I can just see the journalist who wrote this sitting in some dark basement office, hacking away at his rusty typewriter seething about his lack of professional prestige, but in his discontent and failing mental stability he gets up intermittently to smoke some opium or scull some absinthe, then type up a bunch of the weirdest questions... One has to wonder, did he keep his job after this article...? Is it serious? And who is this mysterious Mrs. Grundy who the author has so much distaste for!?
Here is a list of my favourite questions from the list:
Will horses be exhibited as curiosities?
Will the Boston woman discover the North Pole? (What Boston women and why is she looking for the North Pole....)
Will airships be provided for messenger boys?
Will the [unreadable] Mrs. Grundy be driven into a convent?
Will there be free lunch stands for women? (Oh dude, are we missing out! Why are we women not being provided for in this way.)
Will squirrels want just a quarter of a second longer to make faces at the hunter?
Will rich nobleman marry poor American girls?
Will hornets and other stinging things arbitrate instead of fight when their nests are pulled? (Cheeky squirrels and gentle bees, what an absurd world!)
Will there be a law compelling [unreadable] to remain silent? (I'm guessing this is about Mrs Grundy...)
Will there be any escape from the [coon?] song save suicide? (haha. The 1901 version of the Macarena...)
Will every busy man wear an illuminated collar button? (A what?)
Will mind reading [unreadable] a key to the inventions of hens as to their duties and villains? (Wuh?)
Will there be a society for the extermination of noisy milkmen which will really [unreadable]? (Woah, hold on there buddy, the genocide of milkmen!?)
Will women be compelled to flatten their pompodours at the theater so that men may see the play? (I hope he didn't reincarnate to the 80's... big hair abound.)
Does anyone remember the days of typewriters? I remember my family had this semi-old one that I used to love playing with. This is the back in the day when computers pretty much ran off DOS. Flash new typewriters were the height of cool though. My friend Alana had one. It even twinked things out with the push of a button. Amazing...
Oh, and does anyone remember the days of the milkman with his melodious horn that rang out its song throughout the neighbourhood, letting you know that the milkman had arrived and you could ran out and collect your fresh supply? I still remember the sound of his horn. It doesn't seem that long ago really.
Is my age showing? Does remembering typewriters and milkmen make me old? Does remembering Georgie Pie make me old? Oh, how I miss Georgie Pie! $1 everything. Someone should erect a gravestone to it. It will be sorely missed. Who owns the rights to Georgie Pie? McDonalds, so I hear. I wonder if you could revive it? All the pie-sick GP fans would flock there!
Oh, all the GP birthday parties of my youth! Running amok in the playground with its bright green astro-turf, its brightly coloured climbing apparatus, the spinning spaceship, the incredible ball-pit that you could sink down in like quicksand and totally get stuck in! I even have a gruesome memory of the time when my friend Melissa ran headfirst into a brick pillar in the Highland Park branch. Even the memory of blood pouring down her face doesn't put me off the place. According to Wikipedia, there was still one operating as a takeaway until 2001. Unfortunately, the supermarkets stopped selling those very similar, almost identical pies in 2004.
Aww and does anyone remember the California Raisins performances... "I heard it through the grapevine..." These are the things my childhood was made of.
Now I will leave you with the link to this fabulous nostalgia-inducing bit of Kiwiana... an 80's ad for Georgie Pie! Click here to enjoy!Labels: cars, childhood, computers, future, Georgie Pie, Paleo-Future, Star Trek, technology |
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| 5 Comments: |
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We used to have a typewriter too, and I also used to love playing on it. I always wanted to make a cool treasure map with it but it never looked as good as it did in my head. Georgie Pie was the bomb. And I remember back in the day getting milk from the milkman - in the glass bottles! And we used to have those coloured tags on the milk tray thing. I can still hear the milk truck horn so clearly in my head. Oh, the childhood memories...
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P.S. I like the new picture in your title - love the colours. Though it makes the text a little hard to read.
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I remember the tags too! Why did they stop the milkman? Population explosion and too many houses?
lol. I wanted something with a bit more colour. I was looking for a nice temple surrounded by trees, but then I found this pretty autumn scene. Unfortunately, it was hard to get any colour of text stand out. Oh well.
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I was also trying to shrink the blog so it would fit more into a standard screen size. I decided I'd be nice and stop my guests without widescreen from scrolling so much. lol.
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Lol. Thanks - appreciate the lessening of the scrolling!
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Lauren
Auckland, New Zealand
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We used to have a typewriter too, and I also used to love playing on it. I always wanted to make a cool treasure map with it but it never looked as good as it did in my head. Georgie Pie was the bomb. And I remember back in the day getting milk from the milkman - in the glass bottles! And we used to have those coloured tags on the milk tray thing. I can still hear the milk truck horn so clearly in my head. Oh, the childhood memories...