zlacker

>>NotInO+(OP)
The future is gone. I'm in my 50s, and for nearly all of that time I thought, dreamt, and worked towards a future that I read about, researched, talked to others about, and consumed media about. But over the past several years I realize it is gone. I thought maybe it was just my age, but it seems like the world is doing the same, so maybe not my age. Another thread mentions that no one talks about "life in the 22nd century". People are focused on what's in front of them in the present. Even companies don't really talk about the future anymore, just vague AI thoughts (and often crazy negative ones, witness the CEOs talking about the white collar bloodbath coming).

Things aren't really changing in many ways, but changing crazy fast in other ways, but not toward anything in particular. Maybe it is some sort of singularity-type thing approaching that I'm feeling. All I know is that my life hasn't changed much in the past decade. Smartphones, awesome computers, instead streams of videos, a sea of video games and books and music, but nothing new and remarkable. AI is here, probably, but that is just weird and terrifying, and this coming from someone that has watched and participated in it's development the entirety of my adult life.

Instead of new categories being created, we're just optimizing the hell out of everything.

>>gilbet+BG
I'm in my 60s and think the future is here. I remember writing for my college admissions essay about at some point computer intelligence would overtake biological and here we are, pretty much. I guess weird and terrifying but also with possibilities for abundance and immortality. Should be interesting at any rate.

>>tim333+P21
YES! I am in my mid twenties and I have only seen unimaginable technological progress from the early 2000’s to now. From the small white Panasonic television in my childhood kitchen and having to reboot my family desktop computer when zoo tycoon froze it, to playing massive multiplayer games like runescape and Roblox with real people, that was incredible!, to seeing an iPhone for the first time, the higs boson being confirmed, gravitational waves, electric cars becoming a real thing, how you can go nearly anywhere in the world and touch your phone to pay without cash, or use google maps to figure out when and where to go anywhere no matter where you are, to ChatGPT and LLM’s, which can alchemize all of our human knowledge to approximately/exact answers to questions that have never been asked before.

The future has been a lot more interesting than people are giving it credit for, atleast my brief slice of it so far.

>>jmogly+mR1
If you think this all is "unimaginable technological progress", what's your take on all the things that happened in the 25 year before that - you know, when we actually got personal computers to begin with - or going back even further?

If you only look at a relatively short slice by itself, you just see the change. You need to look back at history to compare the relative pace of it. And when you do, it's hard not to get the impression that things have slowed down substantially.