There will be many different perspectives and narratives, but how do you think the general consensus will be like about Trump, conspiracy theories like flat earth, anti-vaxxers, QAnon, and our response to Covid?
Both serious and comedic answers would be appreciated.
I'm interested in how the past decade in technology will be remembered.
Cell phones are largely a matured product at this point and it doesn't seem like they'll be earth-shatteringly different in the future. The only major hardware drawbacks they have are blue light, poor repairability, and terrible ergonomics/accessibility (I want there to be a renewed interest in chorded keyboards or old blackberry-style form factors in the future). These are all fairly petty issues compared to the nightmares in the software side of things. The hardware folks of the world have done alright.
Computers are no longer a novelty for business interests and rich kids and Doom and LimeWire, but instead an inaccessible and unreliable core function of daily life that gets people depressed and addicted to social media. Boomers still get made fun of for not engaging with that bullshit for some reason. Dot com busted for a reason, technology won't save the world, help grandma with her bullshit passwords.
I first used a personal computer in 1985. It was a Mac. I asked my friend how to use it and he opened up the drawing program and simply said "Draw with it." I complained I didn't know how to do anything so he so grabbed the mouse and he said "I'll make a circle." I couldn't believe how simple and intuitive things were. The mouse and Apple's GUI blew my mind.
I can't believe how years have turned to decades and other input systems never replaced the qwerty plus mouse combo.
I want a chorded keyboard phone with a replaceable battery and an e ink screen :(
Both of us need to move to an alternate universe.
Not for lack of trying, though. Voice inputs, tablets for handwriting, and other things have been around forever but a big part of why the qwerty keyboard remains is that it's a really efficient design.
I can't speak to that because I don't know a thing about how good/bad the alternatives are - but a few things are still odd to me....
Instead of one input thing - there are two things - a keyboard and the mouse.
A qwerty keyboard is pretty big
On desktop - you can't do input standing up or laying down using a traditional keyboard + mouse.
Maybe it's still waaaaaaay too expensive but there's no heads up entry either. I mean using glasses as a mouse or whatever.
To use a very old fashioned word - everything seems oddly hidebound.