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?

@Harryo as long as you don’t still use the same password.

That's a great thread!

First home computer - late 80s I think. Only thing we were able to do with it was play computer games from floppy disks. We had to lug my sister's small TV to the spare room and connect it to the terminal as no separate display.

Second home computer - 1995. No internet. I did my Abitur (A-levels) at the time and used it to do my coursework a lot.

My sister was already at uni at this point and was using e-mail / the internet. I was intrigued, but my parents' didn't see the point. When I went to uni in 1997 it was my time. I do remember going to the computer lab first time and asking the student assistant there "How do I get to the internet?" He showed me how to use a browser and how to write an e-mail. Terminals were massive and most of the computers broken at any time.

I would write my university coursework with pen and paper first and then go to a lab to type it up. Crazy. One of the libraries still worked with index card searches! A few weeks into starting my degree, I got an early e-card with flowers from the guy who became my boyfriend.

Two years later I got my first own PC and one an 'internet scholarship', which meant 10 hours (wow!) of free dial up internet with an advert popping up in a corner.

In 2000, I went to study in the USA and urged my parents to go online to keep in touch. They still couldn't see the point. However, once they had internet, they loved e-mailing me. My dad discovered Ebay. Biggest thing he ever bought there was a garden shed. Biggest thing I ever bought there cost about a tenner. Nowadays dad is an avid Whatsapper as he realizes that I am most likely to answer to a Whatsapp message - I live in the UK now.

I will launch my first online cause in the spring and dabble in research online teaching. I could never have imagined that 20 years ago!

Mums will be using hover prams!

When I was in Sixth Form the school got a computer and we all crowded into a small room to gawp at it. It was like we were looking at something from space - weird futurey shite that would never take off.

In the early 90s I worked for an IT consultancy - it was all DOS based stuff. At some point we switched to Windows and had special training on how to use a mouse. I remember at some point getting into trouble for using the internet when I hadn't booked it out and I was stopping someone else from using the internet.

My first email address was from the witchcraft.net forum. I can't remember the details now. I was 16 when I started using the internet 14 years ago.

I worked for an internet company in 1999. I was paid to answer the phone twice a day and chat to people in chat rooms. I loved it.

In 1994 someone told me the internet was going to change the world. It has in some ways, but a lot things are still the same.

Primary school in the 90s - began with one computer in the school.
Then progressed to an ICT suite - containing 3 computers. Each child got a turn once a term
Gradually became one computer per year group and in year 6 one per classroom
Interactive whiteboards appeared in year 9 in a handful of classrooms and were in most by the time I left (2006)
First mobile: Nokia 3210 with multiple covers!
Facebook - not till uni! So glad I didn’t have to deal with social media at school- msn could be hard enough

I reckon in 20 years? Cashless - definitely won’t be able to get away with not having a smart phone.
Possibly driverless cars
I reckon by then that there will be trips to space for “normal” people (the very rich anyway) the technology is already there - quick trip up to the atmosphere, quick look at the earth and back again
Laptops /computers I reckon will be pretty much gone and it will be tablets all the way.
Everything will be completely linked - house will be controlled by your tablet (which I know already exists but it will be everyone, not just the tech savvy)
Everything will be voice or finger print controlled - paying for things, opening your front door, starting the car etc

And the way that schools are going it wouldn’t surprise me if online school becomes the norm....one teacher far away and everyone signing in at home....

In the future I think I think there will be a backlash against the internet and people will go back to the old ways again.

Oh! I also reckon the high street shops will be almost all gone by then and it will ultimately be giant warehouses for every shop instead

@FairyLightBlanket45 so many have shut down in my local town recently - another few and it'll just be phone shops and tescos left

Rather than the high street dissapearing, I wonder if product placement will become reality placement with the high street being product placement settings. Rather than branded shops. For example in a restaurant and like the plate/ glass/ cutlery you could scan it and have it delivered to your home. In a library browsing and download or have the paperback delivered, like the soundtrack and download it. At the doctors and like the art on the wall - buy it or download it. See it, scan it, buy it.

I need to add to see it, scan it, buy it that....waitresses/ receptionists/ bank clerks etc could be modeling latest clothes, jewellery, makeup. Typically young attractive and customer facing you could observe products in use and be soft sold.

I still ask DC's "what's on TV tonight" and they all stare blankly at me and sometimes have the grace to tell me that THEY'LL decide later when THEY feel like it

Think the wealth gap will be wider, we will be controlled/influenced more by tech . All vehicles electric , no health service , insurance controlled by monitoring- health apps , dna scans checking life expectancy . still wont be flying cars, chips will allow us to consume info/entertainment/knowledge easier, no physical media being produced.

we will be living on the moon, or on enhanced space stations

see it scan it buy it already exists in a basic form, mostly from celebs media, qr codes augmented reality, etc,

Also see porn, usually at forefront of tech, robot sex, consumer led, easier payment methods

I honestly can’t think of anything worse than driverless car share. I am disabled and need my own with its wheelchair hoist. Even if I didn’t I like my own vehicle.

My DS thinks that free driverless cars will pick you up and take you to one supermarket.

On the way an ad will tell you about special offers.

When you've finished your shopping you will call another free driverless car from the supermarket to take you and your shopping home.

We had three BBC computers at school in 1979 because the maths teacher was a geek.

I remember my first mobile phone in early 80s which wouldn't fit in my handbag! It had an antenna and was bigger than a landline handset. It was very sci find because it had buttons instead of the dial used on landlines. I Felt like I was on star trek.
I remember being told at school that we'd all be working just one or two hours a day and hunger wouldn't exist because we'd all eat via little pills.

I think we were a lot more hopeful about the future then. Now I think the future will be shaped by climate change and the chasm between rich and poor will widen massively. Only the rich will afford proper food and water and air conditioned homes to escape the heat and also flooding.

Rich people will live even longer with personalised medicine but poor people will be exposed to more pollution and the consequences of extremes of weather.

I could also see the day when pregnancy and childbirth will be seen as barbaric and babies will be grown in incubators with custom dna choices like in brave New world.

Brizzle - 'and presumably you had to book time on a terminal as they only had a few?'
No, because while there weren't many computer terminals in my department (chemistry) there were every fewer regular users of them.
I had to walk over to the other side of campus to get my printouts from the computer building.

A few years later at work we got a new Unix graphics workstation which was considered quite cheap at £43 K. I remember the price because it was about the same as my new build 3 bedroom detached house.

The thing that makes me dubious about driverless cars is that although my car has automatic parking capability, I've never used it - I think this is quite common. More sensors and collision avoidance built in, absolutely- but I'm not convinced everyone will want to relinquish control.

'every fewer ' ... 'even fewer'

Ok, one thing I really Hope happens, and soon, is more intelligent autocorrect... case in point I did not type 'Hope' with a capital letter, either time, my iPad has evidently decided it's most likely to be a proper noun. It seems to have got worse recently.

Not really answering the question but funnily enough the song 'Jumping Jack Flash' came on the radio today and it always makes me think of Whoopi Goldburg in the film trying to work out what the lyrics are.

I thought 'well you would just Google it now!'

Massive leaps in such a short time.

I don't think tech will change at the same speed again. DH reckons we will all have driverless cars in the next 5 years 🙄 I'm still waiting for my hoverboard.

@ErrolTheDragon Bet you have someone or something named Hope in your Contacts...

We talk about robots as if they are 'the other'. But my worry is that with compulsory implants (and this will happen) we will all, essentially, eventually be somewhere on a spectrum of artificiality.

Nope, I don't know anyone called hope in real life. And guess what, in a context where it would be clearly correct to assume it was a proper noun, it didn't capitalise it.
I don't think I'm going to trust driverless cars until AI can get that sort of thing right!