Are you disappointed 21st century tech is not as advanced and/or as sophisticated as you expected?

Virtual reality and augmented reality technology are now available to consumers.

For example, Microsoft has released the Hololens, a pair of AR glasses.


There have been popular VR games, like Beat Saber


And smartphones can run apps with AR capabilities, like Pokemon GO.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/live-lessons/10-ways-science-fiction-predicted-future/z6dynrd

Personally I think EM Forster's The Machine Stopped, is a far more impressive foretelling of the internet than William Gibson's Neuromancer, but it's an interesting article all the same.

What about Logan's Run?

I never saw the film or read the book.

According to Wikipedia, the film was produced to ride on the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes.

It is safe to say that the Space Age, specifically the moon landing, helped popularize the sci-fi genre in the 60s and 70s. It also helped kill the popular Western film genre in the 60s and 70s, though it would still survive.

You know who Max Headroom is/was right?

He is/was a psuedo digital avatar who was portrayed by a live actor, Matt Frewer, and was created in the '80s.

We have digital avatars now in cyberspace.

You don't have anything you want to share about teleporters?

I know scientists have been experimenting with teleportation but only on a molecular scale. I know there has been speculation over the possibility that if one were to use a teleporter that something could go horribly wrong.

Could something still go wrong if you used a device to teleport with, like a wristwatch, as opposed to using some kind of transporter to teleport with (like the teleporters in Star Trek or the teleporter tubes in the classic Duck Dodgers cartoon)?

I have said when I was out in public a few times that I wish I had a wristwatch or some other portable device to teleport with, or some kind of portal I could access, or a warp pipe I could use like in Super Mario Bros.

I am aware who is Max Headroom is. I have seen clips of him on YouTube and on VH1's I Love The 80s series. The character was also in the Ready Player One novel (not in the film adaptation, though).

It seems we are still years away from a working safe teleporter. I believe it won't happen in my lifetime. At the moment, it is an impossibility.

There was also a Max Headroom TV series in the late '80s. Max also appeared in the Pixels movie.

I am aware of both the TV series (the clips I have seen online were from the show) and the cameo in Pixels.

I never saw either one.

The Max Headroom pilot was a brilliant piece of SF set in a dystopian future UK.

The series itself was OK, but after the pilot quite a disappointment.

Headroom appeared in a handful of TV ads. Did you see any of those on YouTube?

No. I wasn't that interested in Max Headroom.

The pilot is available on youtube. It's still very good.

I am generally disappointed at the level of adaptation to the sustainability paradigm for technological/economic progress.

The old futuristic visions were based on the premise of unlimited atomic energy, where things like widespread flying cars and hover-vehicles and jetpacks weren't dismissed based on how much energy they would require per capita.

Because of industrial-consumerism, the fantasy of selling more energy to power more appliances/machines has led to denial of the broader consequences of waste heat, resource waste, and other waste.

So with rising awareness of environmental/climate problems and the goal of sustainability, there should be much stronger embrace of technologies that lower energy-consumption per-capita, but I think there is a fear of economic decline and/or greenwashed unsustainable growth that problematizes such technological progress.

Okay. He appeared in a bunch of Coke ads in the '80s.

There is ONE recent invention I have learned about which I consider to be a 21st century tech innovation and/or breakthrough.

They are making cars with what they call "smart park". Self-parking cars.

I saw and read about an ad for such cars which aired during the 2020 Super Bowl. 2020 Hyundai Sonata cars come equipped with a smart park system.

Automatic Parking has been publicly available since the early 2000s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_parking

Some cars also come with rearview cameras so that people have a clear view when going in reverse. Newer cars don't even use traditional keys, relying on key fobs and sensors to open doors and start the car.

Hi Rebel and okay, but is and was it all computerized or digitalized? I assume the smart park system which was shown off in the 2020 Super Bowl ad was computerized or digitalized.

Or were and are there still manual controls involved.

I don't know too much about current 21st century automotive tech. I know current 21st century vehicles come equipped with GPS systems and surround sound. These are frills and you CAN opt to not have these things installed. They contribute to the cost of the vehicles.

I have never been a big car person and I never kept up with any of this stuff.

According to the Wikipedia link I posted, the automated parking is computerized.

Some add-ons for vehicles are now part of the default model instead of being an optional addition. My relatively new used car has rear cameras, USB connectivity, Bluetooth, and a digital gauge to show exactly how much gasoline I have left. No tape cassette player though.

My car does not have smart park, but the rear cameras do help me park the car.