I'm not gonna comment on the fashion, as I'm sure that can't be accurately predicted (hell, I'm not outruling that this prediction might prove accurate in three years..)
But have you noticed that all sci-fi movies have fucking terrible UIs and means of interacting with computers?
Take for example Minority Report: Holographic screens are cool I guess. But then they stand there and flail their arms around to move objects and entities back and forth. Now, imagine controlling a computer for an entire work day like that; You'd be fucking exhausted and crying from the muscle strain.
Keyboard and mouse have been standard for half a century now, and for a good reason. Something else will probably replace it at some point, but YMCA-dancing the instructions will not be it.
Take for example Minority Report: Holographic screens are cool I guess. But then they stand there and flail their arms around to move objects and entities back and forth. Now, imagine controlling a computer for an entire work day like that; You'd be fucking exhausted.
I like to think he's just fucking extra. If you rewatch the scene, another dude is working on a pretty normal computer setup, sitting at a desk, not flailing around wildly, normal sized monitor (except the monitor is transparent), etc. He seems to have the option to do gesture interaction too as he selects and moves some images with his pinky pointed at the screen, but seems like there is still a keyboard-like or touchpad interface on the desk. Then they transfer data over with a weird physical drive to Tom Cruise's giant curved monitor and gesture controlled setup using the gloves. He's just an early adopter into more experimental tech formats, like the rich kids who had the power glove for the Nintendo, or someone who has a 8k 60inch curved monitor. I bet even the amount of movements he is putting into the gestures is entirely unnecessary and over the top. He just thinks it's cool.
This is something i love about The Expanse, the technology actually makes sense.
Most people just have a disposable phone/tablet consisting of plexiglass (just so you have something transparent to actually hold) and a little square in a corner (which is all the actual hardware and projects a holographic interface ontop of the plexiglass), which acts much like an oldschool terminal for a central mainframe system, and you just use it like normal except it can also detect gestures around it.
Next most normal is larger versions of this mounted on the walls, which you can just swipe stuff onto from other devices and interact with more like a TV except your hand is the remote.
And that's like 90% of what people actually use, fancy 3d holographic stuff is only used when the 3d aspect is actually helpful, like visualizing the solar system or if you wanna play a board game or something like that.
And actually i almost feel this moreso for Subnautica 2, the tech in that game actually feels really sensibly futuristic to me. I struggle to put into words what exactly makes it feel so natural but i think generally, it's the same thing as how we have super advanced technology IRL yet most of the stuff we actually use day-to-day are just better versions of what was used in the past.
Candles were replaced with gas lamps, then incandescent flashlights, and now you just use the LED on your phone. Subnautica 2 does that with most of the technology and it's so fucking satisfying.
Yes. 20 to 30 years ago I had long black hair and looked like the average black metal enthusiast. However, when people weren't looking I wore a white jumpsuit with capton belt, and a green-tinted fraggle-hair wig.
Kids, gather round. Grampa Simpson needs to tell you something about the times as they was.
Computer concepts that structure our everyday lives were not just unknown to everybody you knew, for most of them they simply made no sense.
Desktop, mouse, file folder (or if 1337, ‘directory’), pixel, distributed, packets - hell the concept of ‘online’ (or “cyberspace” to my peeps. Sup y’all) was more than they cared to grasp and they would just tune out and immediately forget anything you’d said about it.
When this picture was conceived, the amount of people who used computers to talk to other people on a daily basis would have fit in a sportsball stadium. The rest of us lucky enough to have some beige box to kick around were only dreaming. AOL was still half a decade away.
Everyone else in the world - and definitely all of your teachers, parents, extended family, any grown up not already a maths graduate - had NO idea, didn’t want to know, and thought you were weird for caring.
I grew up in the sprawling suburbs where every other kid had a moped and a swimming pool, but next to nobody had a computer.
My giant middle school, with thousands of kids had a computer club. And there was a grand total of 8 of us computer-owning nerds. Not to mention my Apple ][e cost something $4000 (USD) in todays money.
"You are sad," the Knight said in an anxious tone: "let me sing you a song to comfort you."
"Is it very long?" Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
"It's long," said the Knight, "but very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it—either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else—"
"Or else what?" said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
"Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'."
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested.
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed.
"That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged Aged Man'."
"Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself.
"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is called 'Ways And Means': but that's only what it's called, you know!"
"Well, what is the song, then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting On A Gate': and the tune's my own invention."
Well, Bluetooth has been around for over a quarter century and it's still the same old unreliable, roll a six to start standard it ever was. The sooner we switch to rainbow lasers the better
is this one of those things people just complain about because it's cool to complain about it? I've never had much issue with bluetooth and what little i had was solved by realizing my computer is years old by now and i should probably get a modern bluetooth adapter..
As much as I want them to, I don’t think they will. Incredibly expensive to retool manufacturing to produce the tubes again. Who knows though maybe a rich retro gamer would invest.
I can answer the question of, "what is she holding?"
It's wireless communicators.
At that time, people really, really wanted wireless communicators like Star Trek and Dick Tracey's watch. It was the generic representation of, "the future" for all things pop art.
Why was she holding them like that? To represent the concept of these three machines communicating with each other via her wireless control/communicators.
"Prismatic" transfers of energy/information was actually a common trope in sci fi and computer book art all the way into the 1990s. Watch some old black and white sci-fi TV shows and you'll see beams like that everywhere.
How much budget do you think they had to do this? Someone had the wig from a costume already, they borrowed the jumpsuit from a friend, scrounged up what they could in the office, printed off a """'calendar""""", and had an intern add the rays once the photo was developed.
Even if they had the imagination, they simply didn't have the time and resources to do anything.
sometimes you gotta give your smartphone a bit of screen time. Its good for it.
I'm not gonna comment on the fashion, as I'm sure that can't be accurately predicted (hell, I'm not outruling that this prediction might prove accurate in three years..)
But have you noticed that all sci-fi movies have fucking terrible UIs and means of interacting with computers?
Take for example Minority Report: Holographic screens are cool I guess. But then they stand there and flail their arms around to move objects and entities back and forth. Now, imagine controlling a computer for an entire work day like that; You'd be fucking exhausted and crying from the muscle strain.
Keyboard and mouse have been standard for half a century now, and for a good reason. Something else will probably replace it at some point, but YMCA-dancing the instructions will not be it.
I like to think he's just fucking extra. If you rewatch the scene, another dude is working on a pretty normal computer setup, sitting at a desk, not flailing around wildly, normal sized monitor (except the monitor is transparent), etc. He seems to have the option to do gesture interaction too as he selects and moves some images with his pinky pointed at the screen, but seems like there is still a keyboard-like or touchpad interface on the desk. Then they transfer data over with a weird physical drive to Tom Cruise's giant curved monitor and gesture controlled setup using the gloves. He's just an early adopter into more experimental tech formats, like the rich kids who had the power glove for the Nintendo, or someone who has a 8k 60inch curved monitor. I bet even the amount of movements he is putting into the gestures is entirely unnecessary and over the top. He just thinks it's cool.
On the other hand you have Star Trek, which basically invented our modern computing interfaces that aren’t keyboard and mouse.
Yup, they just never figured out to have fuses and relays in the instrument panels. No wonder Geordi is blind.
The sparks are just the UI telling you someone is attacking. Think of it like force feedback on a controller.
There’s an episode of DS9 where they use pen-based computing for a scene. It’s hilarious.
I'm struggling to remember this episode. Which one is it?
Can’t remember but i think it was mid-series. Dax and the doctor were in the scene iirc. It was in the - y’know, command area outside Sisko’s office.
If you did it all day everyday you would not be exhausted you would be nice and fit like Tom Cruise.
Hackers was my favorite.
I ONLY hack from a payphone mounted on a turntable.
Hotkeys, bash aliases, and a couple of hacks in perl I bet
This is something i love about The Expanse, the technology actually makes sense.
Most people just have a disposable phone/tablet consisting of plexiglass (just so you have something transparent to actually hold) and a little square in a corner (which is all the actual hardware and projects a holographic interface ontop of the plexiglass), which acts much like an oldschool terminal for a central mainframe system, and you just use it like normal except it can also detect gestures around it.
Next most normal is larger versions of this mounted on the walls, which you can just swipe stuff onto from other devices and interact with more like a TV except your hand is the remote.
And that's like 90% of what people actually use, fancy 3d holographic stuff is only used when the 3d aspect is actually helpful, like visualizing the solar system or if you wanna play a board game or something like that.
And actually i almost feel this moreso for Subnautica 2, the tech in that game actually feels really sensibly futuristic to me. I struggle to put into words what exactly makes it feel so natural but i think generally, it's the same thing as how we have super advanced technology IRL yet most of the stuff we actually use day-to-day are just better versions of what was used in the past.
Candles were replaced with gas lamps, then incandescent flashlights, and now you just use the LED on your phone. Subnautica 2 does that with most of the technology and it's so fucking satisfying.
Fashion repeats every 20 to 30 years.
Yes. 20 to 30 years ago I had long black hair and looked like the average black metal enthusiast. However, when people weren't looking I wore a white jumpsuit with capton belt, and a green-tinted fraggle-hair wig.
Kids, gather round. Grampa Simpson needs to tell you something about the times as they was.
Computer concepts that structure our everyday lives were not just unknown to everybody you knew, for most of them they simply made no sense.
Desktop, mouse, file folder (or if 1337, ‘directory’), pixel, distributed, packets - hell the concept of ‘online’ (or “cyberspace” to my peeps. Sup y’all) was more than they cared to grasp and they would just tune out and immediately forget anything you’d said about it.
When this picture was conceived, the amount of people who used computers to talk to other people on a daily basis would have fit in a sportsball stadium. The rest of us lucky enough to have some beige box to kick around were only dreaming. AOL was still half a decade away.
Everyone else in the world - and definitely all of your teachers, parents, extended family, any grown up not already a maths graduate - had NO idea, didn’t want to know, and thought you were weird for caring.
OK, but this was Unix world magazine...
Well there's your context. Even for nerds it was open land.
This is 100% accurate.
I grew up in the sprawling suburbs where every other kid had a moped and a swimming pool, but next to nobody had a computer.
My giant middle school, with thousands of kids had a computer club. And there was a grand total of 8 of us computer-owning nerds. Not to mention my Apple ][e cost something $4000 (USD) in todays money.
Alright, flex harder on us cool guy lol
I'm so excited! I just can't hide it! I'm about to lose control and I think I like it! Oooh, yeah!
Damn you, now I have that song in my head.
Tune wedgie!
Hahaha, I've never heard this term before, it's perfect!
Doin' the neutron dance?
What song is this
I'm so excited.
Please calm down then.
And then try to answer the question.
"You are sad," the Knight said in an anxious tone: "let me sing you a song to comfort you."
"Is it very long?" Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
"It's long," said the Knight, "but very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it—either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else—"
"Or else what?" said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
"Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'."
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested.
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed.
"That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged Aged Man'."
"Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself.
"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is called 'Ways And Means': but that's only what it's called, you know!"
"Well, what is the song, then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting On A Gate': and the tune's my own invention."
Yeah I see, but what is the song called?
The pointer sisters, OK!
Right on, daddy-o!
Oh man, I can't wait!
The Network-Over-CareBear-Stare-Protocol will be much faster, more reliable, and more secure than ethernet and wifi!
The best part is that its real and reading the article does nothing to explain what is going on in the picture.
So it might just be what some photographer randomly thought up.
When your only tool is the refraction of light, etc.
Does anyone have the entire magazine archived? I want to find out exactly where they were in computing.
This was some prophet's interpretation of what later became Linux socks.
losers using keyboard and mouse or even touchscreen, all my homies use rainbow pads, gayest and best eay to use the Internet
For some reason it doesn't feel too far off from scanning QR codes.
Except that she's smiling while she does it.
Bluetooth and Wifi are also what that idea might be. Wirelessly moving data from a storage device to your PC.
Well, Bluetooth has been around for over a quarter century and it's still the same old unreliable, roll a six to start standard it ever was. The sooner we switch to rainbow lasers the better
is this one of those things people just complain about because it's cool to complain about it? I've never had much issue with bluetooth and what little i had was solved by realizing my computer is years old by now and i should probably get a modern bluetooth adapter..
Yep.
+screen casting
+app interactions
Idk, if you look at it a certain way, we just used radios to transfer instead of light.
The highwaisted pants are already back in and the copper belt could be a flex.
We have three years to crack this mullet though. We need to get moving.
Most information is transferred using light, specifically with those desk toys that everybody had in the 90s .
Fwiw, radio waves are light. Just lower in frequency with longer wavelength
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
That's how I do it when I'm on ketamine
We’re actually ahead of schedule. That’s how I show the computer my fake ID. McLovin, organ donor, Hawaii.
Funny enough you actually need to show ID to buy bitcoin to donate Annas archive.
The haircut is just Yolandi’s cut dyed silver. So we’re halfway there.
This is just the end of halt and catch fire.
I need to re-watch that
It's just as good the second time round.
I do believe CRTs are going to make a comeback.
But for a vastly different reason.
well .... whats the reason? :3
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20220082358A1/en
As much as I want them to, I don’t think they will. Incredibly expensive to retool manufacturing to produce the tubes again. Who knows though maybe a rich retro gamer would invest.
Dare I ask?
Alien aesthetics mainly, it goes well with the oligarchic world order.
Love me some cassette futurism.
Is that an ashtray in the 2nd GIF, bottom-left?
Yes.
Smoking was mandatory back then in the future.
Super smash bros competitions, obviously.
Close. HERF guns.
Hans-exclusive radical feminists?
They got the gender right tbf :3
:3
I'm already growing my hair out in preparation 👍
Kapton Tape belt is ready to go!
But do you have an all-white one-piece pant suit?
The one piece shall be mine!
we are kinda there: bunch of nonsense input to get nonsense outputs from multiple computers
What. What the fuck is that even supposed to be?
Post-futurism QR code scanning?
"i showed u my data chits. Pls respond"
What sort of drugs were they on when they predicted this?
The good stuff.
Indeed...
Qualudes ofc
Doesn't look that far off from a lot of Unix socks posts with the color stripes between the user and multiple monitors.
Gotta make a reminder in march 2029 to send this in my group chat.
Accurate
They got the date right too!
no notes
You guys haven't been wearing your leftover Xmas tinsel as a hat?
The original post: https://vox.ominous.net/@occult/116103841606429399
In a thread of similar posts featuring retro-computer advertisements.
My cousin's had wigs like that in the 80's. It was fantastic.
Was your cousin's name Andy Warhol?
WTFuck is that hair?
It's a late 20's trend that should be starting up any day now.
Hahahahaha
I like the idea of hairstyles following technology. If vr/ar goggles/helmets become mainstream daily wear the styles would morph to fit.
Awesome
With the right combination of mushrooms you probably see the wifi electromagnetic waves in these colors.
You keep drinking the mushroom tea until you are vibrating at the same frequency asthe light waves.
I think we are still on track.
The reflective belt should have figured into this UI more.
"Strap in!"
I have that hair now. Checkmate!
Always amazes me the lack of imagination in media like this.
3 generic CRTs - like you couldn't envision a single, wide, curved flat screen?
I suppose she's supposed to be holding oddly shaped punched cards? (Though punched cards were already dead?).
Oh, wait, those are floppies.
Are the floppies projecting data to a screen using color light bars?
Just so bizarre. I thank the creators for giving us this to look back on.
I can answer the question of, "what is she holding?"
It's wireless communicators.
At that time, people really, really wanted wireless communicators like Star Trek and Dick Tracey's watch. It was the generic representation of, "the future" for all things pop art.
Why was she holding them like that? To represent the concept of these three machines communicating with each other via her wireless control/communicators.
"Prismatic" transfers of energy/information was actually a common trope in sci fi and computer book art all the way into the 1990s. Watch some old black and white sci-fi TV shows and you'll see beams like that everywhere.
How much budget do you think they had to do this? Someone had the wig from a costume already, they borrowed the jumpsuit from a friend, scrounged up what they could in the office, printed off a """'calendar""""", and had an intern add the rays once the photo was developed.
Even if they had the imagination, they simply didn't have the time and resources to do anything.
They could have at least turned the CRTs on.
...or maybe that's what's happening.
They WERE on, but the magic handhelds are siphoning all the data and power.
At least they got the multiple display setup right
The JoyCon 3.