What happened to the future?

[Mich the Tester]

Wot about the laser? I remember those on TW in the days when power output was calibrated in gillettes (number of blades it could melt a hole through).

And bullet proof vests, demonstrated on live tv by shooting someone wearing one with a 44 magnum...

The skip proof portable cd player that was demoed with the skip proof bit switched off... (Maggie wotsit did that).

Audio cds covered in jam...


You're right.

It's too too depressing.

All these things are just improvements on what we already had. We already had phones, they’ve just become cheaper, smaller and portable. We already had lights, now we’ve concentrated the light into lasers. We had computers but they were big and hot and took up large rooms where there was space for the engineer to hide and have a cup of coffee. We had armour, we just made it stop a faster bullet.

But look at the really brilliant stuff that we had and lost. Concorde, Apollo, Saturn V, the SR71 Blackbird, Thrust SSC and mojo chews for 1p. All gone. Mothballed, out of service, too ‘expensive’. We pissed all the money into banks so that poorly educated twits from business school could lose it all in a giant fruit machine called ‘money markets’.

[DimPrawn]

But look at the really brilliant stuff that we had and lost. Concorde, Apollo, Saturn V, the SR71 Blackbird, Thrust SSC and mojo chews for 1p. All gone. .

Have you seen the Carbon Footprint of these things?

One flight in one of those and your talking about the world catching fire in a week!

[Mich the Tester]

Have you seen the Carbon Footprint of these things?

One flight in one of those and your talking about the world catching fire in a week!

If we’d continued progressing at the same rate, most transport on earth would be powered by miniature nuclear generators producing thousands of horsepowerthingies and only needing refuelling every few years. We’d be able to generate all our electricity from the sun, the wind and the waves and those brilliant machines would be running on biofuels.

That’s the thing you see; stop technological progress on environmental grounds, kill off the ambition and the sense of adventure for the sake of elf and safety and you’ll stop the progress which could ultimately give us the ability to enjoy ourselves and cut environmental damage.

[expat]

All these things are just improvements on what we already had. We already had phones, they’ve just become cheaper, smaller and portable. We already had lights, now we’ve concentrated the light into lasers. ....

As engineering, yes. For users and society, a quantitative change in what you can actually do.

[cailin maith]

With all these windmills we're well on the way towards "The Subways of Tazoo"...

That was my point

[Mich the Tester]

Particularly the SR71... with a crew of... 2.

And perpetual fuel leaks... though it did stop leaking once it had got the temperature of the skin past 100 deg C or so...

Bloody brilliant though, you have to admit. Don’t tell me that if they offered you a spin in an SR71 that you’d say ‘oh no, not for me, think of what it would do to the planet’.

[expat]

With all these windmills we're well on the way towards "The Subways of Tazoo"...

Ah. Colin Kapp. Unorthodox Engineering. Loved it.

Maybe the problem is that we don't make real Science Fiction any more, and that was the imagination fuel that got things made.

[expat]

When Concorde last flew, the Times remarked that it was as if a select group of people had been given mobile phones in the 1930s but had them all taken away again in 1970, and we had to wait another generation for them to reappear.

But what about this A2 thing?

[Mich the Tester]

But what about this A2 thing?

Brilliant! I’ve just googled that and it’s cheered me up no end. It’s British too! Now if only that **** Gordon would give them a tenth of the money he’s wasted on f**ked banks they could get it flying in time for an Olympic flypast.

[DimPrawn]

When Concorde last flew, the Times remarked that it was as if a select group of people had been given mobile phones in the 1930s but had them all taken away again in 1970, and we had to wait another generation for them to reappear.

But what about this A2 thing?

A3 is a better fanny magnet I've heard.