Do you remember how in the movie ‘Back to the future’, they had hover skate boards? Everyone does, and yet they are not widely available.
DISSAPOINTED!!!
However we cannot complain too loudly. Most clever people have simply been busy with other things.
In 1919, the World’s first pop up toaster appeared to delight our more curious dogs and scare the living crap out of anyone with a nervy disposition and a hangover.
What an amazing achievement that must have seemed. Toast that cooked (almost, let’s be real) evenly on both sides and didn’t need to be handled until it emerged ready to remove the top layers of your fingertips, or to be dropped on the floor.
THAT was living, back in the day.
We’ve come a long way….baby.
Spiral notebooks, the notebooks with spirals on the spine, didn’t even appear until 1924!! Until then, all books were sewn or glued into place. Can you imagine never having the option of hearing the satisfying zrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiip of tearing out a bit of paper from a spiral notebook? How ever did we live?
Microwave ovens, famously accidently invented when a man named Percy Spencer discovered that a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted when he was walking past an experimental radar machine, came into commercial use in 1946. They were once called ‘Radarage’…. (Hang on; I’ve just got to put this in The Radarage. Nope, doesn’t work) and the first one for sale weighed 750 pounds and was nearly 6 feet tall. NOT a practical option for the kitchen of the future, but still, a World changing bit of technology.
In 1971, home entertainment was forever altered by the invention and sale of the VCR. It gave us options. Now, instead of sitting and waiting for the one and only time we could watch our favourite TV show, we could record it, and watch it again and again. And again. It also gave us something new to complain about “OH MY GOD!! The machine just ate the tape!!” and a whole new way to exercise. Jane Fonda, I had no idea you were an actress, but I LOVED your leg warmers.
So here is a bit of a quiz for you. Take a guess at when the computer protocol’s www and http: came into the public domain. And do not cheat, do not look it up. Just guess. Yes, a form of the web was being used by the military and boffins for decades before it became our lover and best friend, but when was the first time MOST of us saw the code ‘www’ and learned the new language of the so called ‘information super-highway’? 1990. Yup. Really. The World Wide Web and Internet protocol (HTTP) and WWW language (HTML), which was created by Tim Berners-Lee, did not appear to most of us until that time.
From the pop up toasters that blew our minds, to an online service most of us believe we could not live without, the total of years spent was 71 years.
We have not ‘developed and grown’ in terms of technological breakthrough. We have SLAMMED into discovery at the rate of light speed. That’s why, when people say ‘I wonder what it will be like 100 years from now?’, I just shake my head and let the question fall from my brain. I have no idea. I lose all of my contacts when I change phones. I just want to be around long enough so I can ride that damned hover skateboard down the street, own a car with a flux capacitor and fill my tank with banana skins. THAT would be living.
