The majority of people today are extremely
sceptical about visions of the future and predictions of new technologies. The
reason for this is because over the years there have been a number of people
who have made claims about technologies and their claims still haven’t come
true. So when some new visionary of technology comes along people are quick to
dismiss them. But the fact is most visions that have come true came from an
idea that someone had that at the time other people chose to ignore saying the
vision was impossible.
Although some things haven’t come true such as hover cars and robots with the same capabilities as humans, some visions in technology have come true. Here are some of those technological visions that made it and became true.
Although some things haven’t come true such as hover cars and robots with the same capabilities as humans, some visions in technology have come true. Here are some of those technological visions that made it and became true.
GPS Built Into Mobile Phones
Nowadays all smartphones come with GPS built into them. However having a GPS system on a smartphone was just a vision a couple of decades ago. In 1993 the American telecommunications company AT&T hired actor and film producer Tom Selleck to provide the voice over for their commercials, which were titled “You will”. The idea behind these commercials was speculating what people would be able to do on their mobile phones in the future. One of his predictions was a GPS system allowing you to view maps wherever you were in the world. However at this point the GPS network wasn’t even operational. It only became fully operational in 1994 and it wasn’t until many years later that it was built into mobile phones. Now having a GPS system on a mobile phone is just expected.
Cloud Computing
Over recent years cloud computing has been becoming bigger and bigger. But if you had suggested it a few years ago people would have thought you had a screw loose. Computers filled up multiple rooms and hard drives were enormous. Nowadays everything seems to be on the cloud from emails, software to movies and music. Back in 1997 Steve Jobs, who some have claimed to be one of the ultimate technology visionaries, gave a speechon cloud computing when it was a relatively new concept. It feels strange looking back on it when it was really in its infancy. Apple aren’t the only ones in on the cloud either there is Dropbox, Google Drive and smaller companies like Profit Bricks cloud hosting.
Computers In Glasses
Computers started off as enormous bulky objects but now year on year they are becoming smaller and smaller. Computers in peoples glasses are something that you usually see in the movies where information is fed to a special agent via their glasses. Not many people would have thought it would become a reality, but it has. Google launched Project Glass, which are a pair of glasses with a computer built into them they were voted by TIME to be one of the best inventions this year. Here is a cool video about them.
Electronic Books
Physical books have been around for ages but now it is becoming increasingly popular to purchase books electronically instead. Thomas Edison wrote an article in 1911 about a device that could hold thousands of pages and in Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel he wrote about a touch screen device that was used to read books from. Now there are thousands of electronic e-readers to choose from although Amazon seem to be dominating this market.
Author Bio:
Lilly
Sheperd, an occasional guest-blogger, geek girl. When not blogging or rushing
with the Zerg on Battlenet, she likes to travel and read a lot, especially
about tech and science.