I found an old Popular Mechanics from November 2002 in my dad's garage. There was this big article about how by 2005 we'd all be commuting in flying cars. They had these wild drawings of traffic lanes in the sky over Chicago. Made me laugh because I was stuck in a 45 minute traffic jam just yesterday. Anyone else find old tech predictions that feel like they're from a different planet?
I got suckered by one of those old 1990s predictions that portable internet was just around the corner. There was this gadget called the PocketNet modem I dropped $200 on back in 1996. The ads showed a guy emailing from a beach, but in real life you had to plug it into a phone jack at a motel. I tried using it at a bus station payphone once and got yelled at by some lady waiting to call her mom. The thing worked maybe two times before I gave up and sold it for twenty bucks at a garage sale. Anyone else fall for those pre-smartphone portable internet dreams?
I just overheard this guy at a Starbucks in Austin telling his friend that by now we'd all be watching movies in VR headsets and cinemas would be a thing of the past. He was dead serious too, said it was a sure bet back in 2018. Here it is 2025 and I still had to wait in line for 20 minutes for a popcorn last weekend. Has anyone else noticed how these predictions just ignore the fact that people actually like going out and sharing an experience together?
Honestly, I picked up this old Linksys WRT54G from a garage sale for $5 thinking it would be a fun nostalgia piece. Tried to set it up last weekend and the thing just bricked on me every time I hit save. After three factory resets and a firmware downgrade from a 2008 forum post, it finally booted up. The connection speed is like 15 Mbps max, way slower than my phone hotspot. But for a daily driver from 2005, it actually runs my Pi hole and an old printer without crashing. Anyone else mess with retro networking gear just to see if it still works?
I was cleaning out my dad's old bookmarks folder on his PC last weekend and stumbled across this gem from 2005. It was some tech blog predicting the iPhone would crash and burn because physical keyboards were superior and people would hate typing on glass. The funny thing is I remember thinking the same thing when I first saw the iPhone in 2007. I legit told my friend it looked like a toy. But fast forward to today and I can't even type on a BlackBerry keyboard without getting frustrated. It took me like 3 hours to dig through all those dead links and cached pages but it was worth it for the laughs. Anybody else have old predictions they personally believed that turned out hilariously wrong?
Found a box of Popular Mechanics from the 90s in my uncle's garage last month. One article predicted flying cars in every driveway by now. Also said we'd be commuting via personal hovercrafts. Meanwhile I'm stuck in traffic watching a guy eat cereal in his Honda Civic. The article even had a mockup of a flying Ford Taurus. Looked like a pizza box with wings. They got the internet part right I guess but totally whiffed on the transportation stuff. Anyone else find old predictions that make you laugh?
I just found an article from 2016 where some tech CEO said by 2025 everyone would be in VR offices. Meanwhile I'm still squinting at my 7 year old monitor and using a $20 webcam for Zoom calls. My coworker tried using a VR headset for a meeting last year and ended up bumping into his bookshelf three times before giving up. Anyone else remember when the metaverse was supposed to replace everything?
I was debugging why my ecommerce cart kept breaking on checkout, and after swapping out every single plugin one by one I found out the host had me running PHP 7.2 instead of 8.1. The error logs never even hinted at the version mismatch, it just showed generic 500 errors. Has anyone else wasted an afternoon on something this basic after assuming the hosting was fine?
So I was checking my old analytics and found a post I wrote back in 2014 about how flip phones were making a comeback. It got 100,000 views over the years which blew my mind. But the funny part is all those articles from 2010 saying 'mobile internet will never work, screens are too small.' Now my phone does everything my desktop did back then. Some of those predictions aged like milk. Anyone else dig up old stats that make you laugh at how wrong experts were about mobile adoption?
I had to choose between buying a VR headset last year or sticking with my old flatscreen for gaming. I picked the flatscreen because I remember reading that Wired piece calling wearable displays the future by 2010. Twenty three years later and I still don't know anyone who owns one. The article said we'd ditch monitors completely by 2005. My 2023 decision feels exactly like betting against that hype all over again. Anyone else ignore VR because of old predictions that flopped?
Found a 2010 Wired piece in a box of old magazines where they said tablets would make paper books obsolete in 5 years. I work in construction and back then I bought right into it. Now here in 2024 I stack more physical books on my nightstand than ever. My local bookstore in Portland still does twice the business they did in 2010. Has anyone else kept a collection of these old predictions just to see how silly they got?