On 4/12/2011 9:15 AM, Invisible wrote:
> When I was a kid, I used to enjoy watching TV programs about the future.
> Stuff like Tomorrow's World and Beyond 2000. Basically programs where
> they show you crazy new inventions. Some of them seemed fantastic, some
> of them seemed utterly stupid. There aren't that many that I still
> remember.

Beyond 2000 was my favorite growing up. I so miss that program. Always 
liked the opening sequence, too. The title music was catchy.

> Yeah, well, /that/ never happened. :-P Today of course, it wouldn't be a
> telephone number. It would be some kind of Internet operation. But there
> are a number of security, safety and reliability questions to consider.
> Do you want random strangers to be able to control your oven, or open
> all your windows? Probably not. What happens when the system stops
> working? On top of that, given that they've yet to come up with a way
> for the component parts of your stereo system to communicate with each
> other unless they're all from the same manufacturer, the chances of your
> entire *house* cooperating are pretty non-existent. ;-)

You'd have to have some kind of private/public key authentication system.

> Another week, they had a plastic key with a microprocessor inside it.
> When you stick it in the lock, it transmits a code to the computer in
> the lock, which makes the door unlock. [Actually, it didn't. The key
> snapped off in the lock, leaving the presenter to tell us all how
> wonderful it is, and how this is only a prototype.] It seemed pretty
> stupid to me, but today electronic locks are all over the place. They
> just don't make them shaped like mechanical keys any more - because
> that's silly.

Yep. My FIL's Toyota pretty much has a transceiver in the fob and a 
button you push to start the engine. No key involved. The fob stays in 
your pocket the whole time. I wonder how far someone could get, though 
if say, they hopped in your car while you were standing near and took 
off. (Would the car keep running even though it was out of range of the 
fob?)

> Unfortunately, towards the end of the show, every invention they
> featured was "hey, somebody took [random household object] and put a
> small computer inside it, allowing it to do [list of largely useless
> functions]". I guess that's why they eventually cancelled it; they just
> couldn't find genuinely interesting inventions any more.

Yeah, that and the title "Beyond 2000" seems kind of silly for a show 
about futuristic inventions when we're, you know, beyond 2000 already ;)

> I do remember them demonstrating the Sony MiniDisk, which *did*
> eventually become a commercial product. It was supposed to kill the old
> magnetic cassettes. At the time, recordable CDs hadn't been invented. So
> while you could *buy* pressed CDs, if you wanted to *record* anything,
> the _only_ available option was cassette. The presenter explained how
> loud sounds mask out quiet sounds, and MiniDisk uses this effect to
> squeeze more data than would usually be possible onto such a small carrier.
>
> (Today of course we know that MiniDisk belongs with Zip and Jazz in the
> category of "kind of successful, but not very". Zip disks were supposed
> to kill the 3.5" floppy. LS-120 was supposed to kill it. Jazz was
> supposed to kill it. CD-R nearly killed it. But in the end, flash drives
> are what actually finished the humble floppy. Similarly, cassette was
> killed not so much by MiniDisk but by a combination of CD-R and
> ubiquitous MP3 players, not to mention the Internet.)
>

Once people could duplicate a CD, and MP3 went mainstream, yep. Cassette 
died. The only way it could survive is if you have an old car radio, but 
I suspect people just simply replace those with something that can play 
CD's full of MP3's anyway.

I have a feeling the CD is a dying species. Soon everything will either 
be on a high-density ROM or flash chip.

> I remember seeing the first automatic speed cameras, and thinking this
> was a neat idea. Oh how wrong I was... ;-)

Terrible, terrible idea.

> So if this technology is the future... where is it? How come it's
> completely vanished off the face of existence?
>
> There seemed to be some suggesting that the entire IC might work by
> processing light instead of electricity. I'm sceptical about whether
> that could work. I'm not aware of any light-based switching technology.
>

Seems like I saw that Intel was playing with this very thing. Only, as 
you mentioned using light as a replacement for the copper traces, rather 
than the actual switching. And even more interesting, one trace can 
contain several signals by transmitting different wavelengths down one 
path.

-- 
~Mike

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