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Comment by jonathan-adly | Hacker News Reader

A time-traveler from the 80's would be disappointed on how far we progressed technologically in everything, except video games. They would be amazed!

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Electric cars/bicycles/scooters/motorcycles, computers in everyones pocket, huge cheap TV-s, fast wireless internet, robotic lawn mowers, radar cruise control and the list goes on and on and on...

Drones that have a 30+ minute battery life. 4k cameras. Rockets that land themselves.

Are 4k cameras actually that much better than film from the 80s? (other than convenience)

depends what you mean by convenience. The image quality of a 4k camera isn't that much better, but that's largely because it doesn't need to be. Cameras in the 80s already produced great pictures. The difference is that they can weigh less than a pound and be run for hours at a time without worrying about paying ridiculous amounts for film.

Hmmm, a 4K camera that can fly around for 30+ minutes with a controller attached to your cell phone (which in and of itself would blow the mind of any person in the 80s) that has the visual clarity of an image shot on 35mm motion picture camera weighing in at 70+lbs that could only be used aerially by renting a professionally piloted plane/helicopter at more $$ per hour rental than the drone you fly on your own costs?

No, I can't imagine any benifits for modern tech from the 80s ;-)

well, high quality digital is a whole different game from film. in the 1980's the closest thing was a VHS camcorder and my 4k micro four thirds digital camera absolutely blows a 1980's VHS camcorder out of the water.

Yes the image quality of a 4K camera is technically less than that of a film video camera, but show a 1980's movie producer a digital workflow and their mind would be blown. You shoot the picture and can then immediately review and even edit.

So 4K video beats home VHS on quality by leaps and bounds, and for anyone who would have been producing video on film the workflow for digital is amazing.

Drones, for sure. Only a few years ago, a decent digital camera cost $400. Now I can buy one just as good, for the same price, that fucking flies.

Anyone who doesn't experience a genuine "Holy shit, I'm actually living in the future" moment when they first encounter a Mavic Mini or similar modern consumer drone is probably in need of pharmaceutical help or talk therapy.

My mind was blown out the back of my head the first time I saw Super Mario Bros in an arcade in 1986-7. I wonder what would have happened to my sanity if someone had shown me a modern game one minute later.

I am a time-traveler from the 80s - It just took me 40 years to travel to here.

I am way more disappointed on our societal progress than I am on our technological progress.

But to be completely honest, I was expecting at least a moonbase by now.

Time travelers from the 50s/60s wanted flying cars too. And jetpacks.

Instead, they got Tang

”Hey Siri, show the time-traveller something cool!”

…

“It works sometimes, I swear.”

The way people use computers and the Internet has been a huge change. Wikipedia sounds like something that couldn't possibly work, except it turns out that it (mostly) does. Self-landing rockets are pretty impressive. I think the rise of free and open source software would be surprising to most people. The fact that Russia and the United States haven't directly fought a war with each other in all this time and our cities haven't been reduced to rubble by nuclear weapons would seem pretty remarkable to an 80's person. (Though one might want to hold off a few weeks/months before declaring premature victory on that front.) Dystopian predictions about the environment were kind of right -- the effects are there, but American cities don't look like Blade Runner quite yet. Manipulation of society doesn't look like 1984 unless you're in an authoritarian country. Instead, big brother watches you from electronic devices that people voluntarily buy and use, and "big brother" is usually a private adtech company.

There's a Gopherpedia and back in they day you could query the wikipedia via Telnet.

The pocket computer that I'm reading this on might not be amazing but I don't think it would be disapointing.

> A time-traveler from the 80's

You don't exactly need time travel to get an opinion from someone who lived the 1980s... try asking your parents?

That hurt.

My parents weren't just released from prison after having been locked away from society since the 80s. Nor have they just awoken from 35 year comas. Sure, they'll have a different perspective than someone who doesn't remember the 80s but they'll surely also have a different perspective from someone with a more abrupt and recent introduction to the latest modernity.

Indeed.

They'll have watched The Jetsons, Blade Runner, 2001, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, and a host of other science fiction that all made the year 2000 look like the year 2100. In 1981, we sure didn't think the Berlin Wall would fall and the USSR would cease to exist a decade later (unless that came about by an apocalypse).

I mean, yeah, if they're satisfied with viewing demos on Youtube. The vast majority of people can't actually play the newest games at their best settings :D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_Part_II

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