Absolutely fascinating. The technology that already existed in the 60’s and 70’s is mind boggling.
Also, there is something really exciting about looking at pictures of an alien planet. :)
The United States landed probes on Mars in 1976.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program
The Voyager program:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1
The Space Shuttle was developed in the 1970’s
Supersonic commercial flight… bullet trains in Japan and France…
As a kid in the 1970’s, I imagined 2021 would be much more futuristic.
In 50 years, even people in the worlds poorest countries will have be able to send a letter that arrives instantly to any place in the world, have a color camera and video camera that can take almost unlimited photos and that you can view immediately and send to your friends instantly, a TV that can watch any TV program or movie ever filmed, a record player with all of the music in the world, a library with every book, a clock that is never wrong, a TV phone that can call anyone on the planet for free, a computer more powerful than every computer currently on the planet added together, a map of the entire world that knows where you are and can tell you how to get to anywhere you want to go to, in one candy bar sized piece of glass, that they all carry around in their pocket.
or
In 50 years, the US and Soviets will have colonized the entire solar system, and traveling to space will be as mundane to people then as riding the bus is now.
> a library with every book
LOL. Reality wants a word with it's licenses and DMCA-s.
The 'Sec was the standard size of all such units, determined by what can fit comfortably in the human hand. At a quick glance, it did not differ greatly from one of the small electronic calculators that had started coming into general use at the end of the twentieth century. It was, however, infinitely more versatile, and Duncan could not imagine what life would be like without it.
Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it had no more controls than that of its ancestor of three hundred years earlier. There were fifty neat little studs; each, however, had an unlimited number of functions, according to the mode of operation - for the character visible on each stud changed according to the mode.
-- Arthur C. Clarke, Imperial Earth, 1976
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1267
That itself was nearly a decade after the newspad of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968):
http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=529
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=-3949GAIokg
See also "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush, 1945. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-ma... (Numerous HN discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). You'll find similar notions proposed by H.G. Wells (1930s), Paul Otlet (1930s), and arguably Denis Diderot (18th century).
The notion of universal access to media is hardly novel or original. The technology to make it happen did take some time, but the outlines were clear by the 1960s and before. It is indeed the property and rights aspects which have principally held us back. It's interesting to note that for any printed materials, with SciHub and LibGen, the battle is very nearly completely won.
In the 1970s, we had calculator watches. Now we have smartphones. So that's one way to look at it :)
Sure, some things have greatly improved in the last 50 years.
Color television was a big thing in the late 60’s. Now we’ve gone from analog to digital at 4K on huge flat panels.