Things that used to be impossible

[Moontanman]

I was playing with my Laser Pointer last night and I got to thinking about how impossible such a thing seemed 40 years ago. I remember make a $100 dollar bet with a science teacher that one day there would be hand held lasers. Of course he said such a thing was impossible due to the size and power requirements of lasers. Now a laser pointer is smaller than a pencil and cheap enough to be a toy to use to drive dogs crazy as they chase the point of light. Anyone want to add a a item of their own that was impossible when they were a kid but now is common place and cheap.

 

I nominate lasers.

[sanctus]

internet, mobile phone,dvds,

[freeztar]

Cool thread!

 

The idea of the laptop I'm typing on would have probably been laughed at around the time I was born, some 30 years ago.

 

MP3 players are another good example. Tapes seemed like they would never go out of style. Then came CDs and they seemed infallible (we had to find a use for those cheap lasers :shrug: ). Now, I have an MP3 player built into my mobile phone that can store multiple albums.

 

The internet is of course a big one, but it's the technologies that it has spurned that are the most interesting. Mapping technology is immense. I can get on Google Earth and visit nearly everywhere in the world from the comfort of my home, for free! When I need directions, mapquest is always handy. I usually take it for granted now, but there was nothing even close when I was a kid. The days of paper maps have been replaced by GPS and internet sites. Who woulda thunk it?

[Theory5]

plastic wrap, plastic casing etc. My dad says that when he was a kid some 40-50 years ago, they didnt even have plastic (whenever he or my mom says something about what was the norm when they were kids I respond with something like, "was that when dinosaurs roamed the earth?" ) :-P

Its so amazing how far we have come so quickly, and how much further we still have to go.

[Tormod]

Games where you could walk around in huge worlds and interact with things.

[freeztar]

plastic wrap, plastic casing etc. My dad says that when he was a kid some 40-50 years ago, they didnt even have plastic

 

Did your dad ever own a vinyl record? If so, he had plastic. :shrug:

According to wiki, vinyl records were produced as early as 1940.

 

The first human-made plastic was invented by Alexander Parkes in 1855 [5]; he called this plastic Parkesine (later called celluloid). The development of plastics has come from the use of natural plastic materials (e.g., chewing gum, shellac) to the use of chemically modified natural materials (e.g., rubber, nitrocellulose, collagen, galalite) and finally to completely synthetic molecules (e.g., bakelite, epoxy, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene).

 

But yeah, it wasn't nearly as ubiquitous as it is now.

[Moontanman]

Lots of interesting thing have been listed here, some of them are not what I was thinking about. Things like CD's or video games were not even conceived of so they don't really qualify as something we knew about but didn't think would ever be a realistic part of our regular experience. When I was a kid it was widely conceived that crystals would be the ultimate way we recorded information (science fiction i guess claimed this most often) But so far it hasn't happened. Science fiction also claimed had held lasers would be in our future and they were but not quite the way science fiction claimed they would. Of course for some people space travel was often touted as being inevitable but many said no it would never happen. Buck Rogers was the gold standard of science fiction then and while space travel did indeed became a reality it wasn't quite the way Buck Rogers conceived it would be. Cell phones were first conceived on Star Trek (is it a coincidence they often look similar?) but cell phones aren't quite the same as the communicators on Star Trek. I wonder if the idea of laser pointers wasn't brought about by the idea of a hand held laser weapon?

[Buffy]

Female engineers....

 

At any given moment, there is always a line representing what your boss will believe. If you step over it, you will not get your budget. Go as close to that line as you can, :)

Buffy

[freeztar]

Female engineers....

 

Female doctors

Female lawyers

Female anything having lots of power and/or money

 

Good one Buffy!

At any given moment, there is always a line representing what your boss will believe. If you step over it, you will not get your budget. Go as close to that line as you can, :)

Buffy

 

Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems. :eek:

[sanctus]

GPS as some1 said, I remember when I was a kid hiking with family in the Alps and then said there should be a red dot on the map that always shows where we are...