Things that are witchcraft.

[LookAtTheFlowersKerry]

Apple Pay.

Alexa.

Talking to Sky Q to tell it what to play.

Integrated sound systems.

Controlling light bulbs and the kettle from an app.

Even smart phones themselves.

They blow my mind. The last few years have seen such crazy advances in witchcraft technology. I feel like we're living in Star Trek.

What do you think it'll be like in a few years? It's quite exciting but I do find it all a bit discombobulating.

Oh, and I can coil up my earbuds so that they perfectly uncoil without ending up in a tangle of wires

Chromecast. That is definitely magic.

Has anyone cited Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd law yet? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27sthreee_laws

Breakfast TO THE DUCKING POND POSTHASTE! Such powers are surely godless and unnatural...

3D printing!! Blows my mind.

I can fold a fitted sheet so it looks flat......
Leant on my 'smart phone' this morning and manage to activate the Google talky thing, and it wasn't impressed with my response of stfu told me it would try again later when I was in a better mood, now even my phone knows I'm a grumpy old sod.... Lol

Something called a "steam engine". And something else called a "radio".

I love the fact I can ask my phone what song is playing on the radio and it will listen and tell me :)
Although it wont do that in the car, as the phone connects to the car and as soon as DS presses the SIRI button on the phone it turns the radio off and tries to dial someone 🙄
And yes to feeling awesome when using ApplePay or contactless 💪🏻

My mother still doesn't understand how I know it's her on the phone before she speaks

Apple Pay on my Apple Watch!!!

I am having to keep talking to myself to not get Alexa, and also to not get Philips Hue light bulb system where you can switch lights off and on via your phone, or have it switch the lights on in a room the way you like them when you walk into the room - because it recognises where your phone is!!!

I do like me a good bit of technology - but I need to calm down!

Me being able to have a conversation with a Bulgarian man on the train by talking into his phone and it translated what I said and vice versa. Total witchcraft but brilliant. (This has probably been around for years but was new to me )

The dark side of this witchcraft is that the 'internet of things' is at the moment particularly vulnerable to hackery, for which reason I'd be cautious about being an early adopter.

Honestly, believing it to be 'oo fancy and techie' and 'witchcraft' seems a bit silly to me. Why not try and actually learn what the tech is and what its capabilities are? It's not that complicated, and for me, going down the route of "oh it's all so fancy and crazy and not like in my day" is the first step to becoming a clichéd old lady with an ear trumpet wishing she still had a gramaphone.

Voice recognition isn't particularly astounding. It's no more so than the system able to recognise text instructions. Personally I find it inexact - much of the software struggles with regional accents and some, even women's voices.

I feel like a miserable old boot but technology doesn't excite me at all. I don't see the point of Alexa, it takes a second to switch a light on or off and I hate contactless. I lost my card the other day, contactless made it more worrying, plus it annoyingly takes longer to show up on my balance when I use it.

To answer OPs question what I'm looking forward to is driverless travel and I am particularly hopeful that mobility robots and prosthetics will show massive improvements - not for me (touch wood) but for others.

Advances in artificial hearing and sight will be good too.

When I get in my car and the sat nav on my phone already knows where I'm going.
Perhaps I should be less predictable.
I like having all my media on my computer now. No more massive stacks of CDs and DVDs. Its cleared an entire bookcase in our lounge.
Now that's magic!

Advances in artificial hearing and sight will be good too.

Walking the other day, trying to identify birds but they so often move before I can get my binoculars up and find where they were, and crap at birdsong beyond the obvious, I want zoomable vision, plus an app which focuses on the sound coming from where I'm looking and tells me what it is. (Maybe there's something like the latter already?)

I have a wifi sd card in my camera so I can transfer the photos to my phone. Yes I know it is wifi. No I haven't stopped being amazed.