It's over 20 years since I first went online...

[HollowTalk]

I was just thinking how different life is now - then we still had five channels (just) and a dial up connection. We'd only just started using emails at work and mobile phones were huge and expensive to use. You got what was given as far as entertainment was concerned and you paid by cash or cheque for everything you bought.

What difference do you think another 20 or 30 years will make?

Some brilliant ideas here, especially about the driverless cars and the luggage and treadmills!

Anyone ever thought to turn their backs and go "off-line"??

I don't think I could go offline as I have to use it for work but I am not a big fan of social media; people post far too much personal stuff.

The first time I went online was when my dad got a free trial cd rom from HMV and we all huddled round, then no one actually knew what to search for or how to search for anything! I was remarkably unimpressed

Why DinosApple ? I look forward to no cash. Can’t remember the last time I used it tbh
As for internet it was 99 and university.

3D printing will be massive I think. If it can be made recyclable easy and cheap.

Eg, kid fancies a new lunchbox download a template for 1.99 and print one.
Need some ‘tuperware’ Print it.

I’m excited for driverless cars. I want my own private pod to read my book in/have a snooze instead of driving the commute.

My then husband borrowed his bosses computer for the weekend and we signed up to Freeserve. First thing I looked up was the Next website. We then looked for Virgin (flights) and panicked when porn came up 😳. My husband then looked for Under 16 Charlton boys (his football club), at that point we shut it down as we were worried he would get the sack!!! 😁

24 years for me... I remember regularly reading EVERY result altavista gave me on a topic!

I met DH online in 1999 when it was quite unusual and you were considered sad/ weird for resorting to on-line dating .

I printed out all of out email correspondence ( about 6 weeks of it before we met) to keep after we married. Glad I did now as we both have different email.accounts and I would have probably lost it all. It is like old fashioned letters would have been kept pre computers but both sides of the conversation!

For one thing I hope there will be driverless cars. I remember using a old fashioned computer as a child. My children have never seen a old school computer yet.
Now we use Netflix.
My friends and I used to use search engines and chat rooms as a child under my mom’s watching eye whenever they visited. I was born in 1996. Times sure are vastly different now. Technology has come a really long way since the nineties that’s for sure. Facebook was not available when I was a little girl. I didn’t start using it to communicate until I was a teenager.

My school had an internet access computer in the library when I was in 6th form so about 97/ 98 ish. I wanted to send an email, but the only email address I knew was Terry Wogan's and he read it out the following morning
They also had a data projector which was incredible!

I remember images loading one line at a time!

I was the final year group to have typewriting lessons. The pain of jamming your fingers between the keys. One computer room had the older computers with just green screens. We had Excel, but word processing was on Write, no spell check.

I remember using a old fashioned computer as a child.

If you were born in 1996 I doubt it!

When I was at primary school, the only brush with computers was that in one art and craft lesson we were given rolls of used punch tape, for creating skyscraper pictures (strips pasted vertically on a light background to look like buildings with some lit windows).

Secondary... nothing, but we did start to use calculators.

University... FORTRAN programming using punched cards, output on that big lined printer paper. Once I was a postgrad I could use terminals... 100 baud mostly, and then they upgraded to a system which allowed access to forums (such as Mornington Crescent).

Once I was a postgrad I could use terminals... 100 baud mostly, and then they upgraded to a system which allowed access to forums (such as Mornington Crescent).

and presumably you had to book time on a terminal as they only had a few?

robots.and I hate this because it reminds me of the film with will smith which I can actually think could happen with the shitty corrupt world we live in.
living in space.or hotels.
eye or thumb recognition locks.
more talking gadgets.
will it be common place for voice activated things by then.or voice controlled lights.tv.etc.

Housing for the kids. That's my concern. It was tough enough in the early 1990s when I was starting out. But now...wtf?

Home surveillance will be big. Keys will be replaced by codes/electronics.

that tennis game played on tv and then computer.with just the dot going back and forth between the two white lines you manoeuvred on the edges.
snake.
dial up tone.
sister using the phone all the time and cutting through the internet.
we used to send letters!we used to have to send letters!
at the beginning of computer chat rooms were huge.some very very bad.and couldn't be controlled then.or not properly anyway.
having to go out to buy stuff.was there really a time before online shopping
myspace.

I left primary in 1983 and we had an IBM ? Computer. I remember playing some puzzle game about how to get across a river with a chicken and a Fox.

In what seems a really backwards move, they dropped typing from the curriculum and I had to pay for evening classes when I was 16. Being RSA3 qualified helped no end when word processors came in!

I still use cash as I won’t use my card for small transactions as I know how much it costs the shops.

I really want a tech expert or scientist to tell us the future but that's obviously hush hush. Would love to know what's being planned.

The first time I went on a computer at home was in the early '90s, my father brought it home for work. First thing I can remember doing sitting with my brother as he went into an AOL chat and pretended to be famous people for kicks (I think he pretended to be Spielberg). Pretty much none of the software I was taught at school (on Macs) has been around for years which kinda amuses me greatly as they all emphasised how important working with those was going to be for our futures...

My kids and I use cash all the time, I think it would awkward for the kids particularly to not have cash as they don't really have any other method at this point like I do, though I know the school my son's hoping to go to in September uses a fingerprint system. I can see changes to finances and transport as being more likely, but worry about who will end up getting left out. I think many of the changes could expand options, but could just as easy cut people off from them.

I watched something the other month about people who genuinely are having chips injected into them which can unlock their cars etc - scary stuff!

Everyone stills signs card receipts here (US)

I still use my original email address from 22 years ago :)

Future tech development will probably deliver us a world rather like Iain M Banks' novels, he's looking right so far. The only problem is whether we will actually get there. Automation and all this voluntary work that we're expected to do needs a completely different approach to economies: basic resources like food, housing, clothing, will have to be freely and fairly distributed as automation takes over and there are no longer any real jobs left. Either that, or as Fuzzy says, millions are going to be left out - or less euphemistically, left to die.