I've read a lot of Sci-Fi novels, more in the past I must admit, but I've always found it funny/interesting how some of the common tech of today was not predicted at all. The classic example is phones. Generally at best there's some sort of pager, but in most cases people have nothing. Home phones, often with video, are more the norm. I can understand this too, 'cos I was growing up while mobile phones were becoming a thing. I knew people with a mobile phone and I never really saw the point. You kinda expected someone to be home or at work, and if you wanted to catch them in between you left a message, either with a machine or a person. What's the big hurry contacting someone when they are in between? Surely they are focused on doing what they are doing?
I eventually got a mobile phone myself in 1996 as I joined the Navy and I didn't have a home phone. So that made sense to me within my established concepts of "why one wants a phone". To my surprise only about a year later many people I knew had phones, including people without a job, and the year after that it was more who didn't have a phone. I have no real idea why this all happened. Phone calls were pretty expensive at the time, SMS didn't work on most peoples phones so that wasn't an option. (I know this as I had a 2110e at the time and it was one of the first Australian phones to support SMS, and I had no one to chat to for years...) All I can put it down to was a general desire to look more important...
Continuing on, at the time I was really into PDAs (Sharps and Psions) and I saw that being the way portable computing would keep evolving in the future. Better and better portable computers that would interact with physical connected networking, and mobile phones being a voice centered device. I didn't see the need for someone to be able to do that kinda work on a mobile network. I did eventually buy a Treo 600, but that was just my PDA interest converging with my lack of interest in phones; I used the desktop sync feature. Aside from being able to link my phone book with my desktop contacts the systems didn't really intermesh. (Side note; my first phone that had a camera...)
...and once phones got better it all expanded. This I kinda understand. But the success of phones was before this...
But like the Sci-Fi writers I just didn't get it. I still don't to be honest. The same people I used to know when I was younger didn't play games. But they do on mobile phones. They didn't buy cameras or take photos. But they do on mobile phones. (Chat is one common aspect; that could be an interesting related rant.)
I do get why they succeed now as they are a convenient convergence device, but how it all got there really blew my mind at the time. So I do get why the Sci-Fi guys got it wrong...
...although...
...often I think it could just be a deliberate. So many stories are based on not being able to be contacted, not being able to prove something, not being able to be found.... tech like modern phones do invalidate a lot of those!
Anyway, ranted too long. Later.
