I've heard this story from a few places. A father watches Back to the Future II with his kid. The 1989 movie view of 2015 looks entirely different when in fact not much has changed except for the fashion and the lack of mobile phones. This is supposed to be a parable about the lack of technological progress.
I disagree. It's about a lack of imagination of the future because of those phones. Phones that are hidden from sight, and have become so ubiquitous we take them for granted.
The phone in your pocket is more powerful than the most powerful computer of 1985 and it's not even close. But that's the least interesting thing about the phone.
You no longer need a printed newspaper, encyclopedia, atlas, almanac, dictionary, thesaurus, dining guides, programming manual or any other reference book. The printed sports almanac at the center of the plot of the movie doesn't exist anymore.
You can read virtually any book ever published, listen to any song ever recorded, watch any movie ever filmed. You have access to nearly all publicly available information. You can watch major sporting events live. On that phone.
You can buy tickets to any event and save and use them on your phone. You can pay for just about anything with your phone, and if you wish ship it anywhere.
You no longer have to fold a map or ask for directions. The phone will give you directions, taking account traffic and transit delays, and guide you along the way.
When visiting a foreign country you can point your phone at a sign in Japanese and have the words magically replaced by English. Take a picture of a menu in German and have it describe the dishes in English. Instantly translate voice as well.
You can have a conversation with your phone about anything. It will understand your voice and respond likewise.
You can take photos and videos on your phone and share them instantly with your friends or with everyone around the world. The quality is far superior to any consumer-level camera from 1985. Or you can have the phone create its own photos and videos based on your descriptions.
It's also, of course, a phone. You can speak to anyone anywhere, with video if desired, for zero marginal cost. Back in 1985 it cost about a dollar a minute to call someone in a different state, and much more internationally, on a landline. You can have impromptu video meetings and you can send messages to anyone and share them with everyone.
And I'm just scratching the surface.
So between the phone and the flying hoverboards, I'll take the phone any day.
Star trek used flip-Phones. Many shows made in the past but set in the future use rotary phones. To quote either Yogi Berra or Niels Bohr its hard to predict things, especially abuot the future.
ReplyDeleteI prefer my Kindle to a phone. When I'm out of the house, I'm playing music, taking photos, walking places I've not been before, doing stuff, and don't want to be bothered. And the Kindle's better for reading books outdoors or on the train than a cell phone.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, my peecee is a better computer than your cell phone (although not by much other than the GPU), has better speakers, has a 32" display for videos, photos/photo editing, and is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier to type on.
Sure. Everything you said is true. But everything you said can be done better on some other device. Even talk on the phone: smartphone audio is really bad, often really hard to make out, and a real telephone handset is way better.
But DavidinTokyo, was Japan not the place that made flip phone popular and also the activity of reading entire novels on flip phone while cruising on the JR Yamanote Line? Well I've heard stories about young folks flipping phone on the Ginza metro line too.
DeleteIn back to the future, i wonder how the movie took and stole from Japan's forward looking visionary city Tokyo, and its anime culture.
In any case, where in Tokyo would u walk usually; admittingly a huge city but by now I'd presume the major location should have been checked out.
Nowadays, when I ride the trains (off peak of course; I ain't crazy), there's 8 or 9 blokes with their noses in cell phones to 1 bloke reading a real book. Thus there are still quite a few real book holdouts. (One guy I saw was reading a book titled "Gun to Hyougen", which I knew enough Japanese to know that it meant "Groups and Representations", but (at that point) I didn't know enough math to talk to him about it. Sigh.)
DeleteI've used the Ginza Line. A lot. Most of the time, it's too crowded to use a phone. When I was at AT&T's Tokyo Unix office, it was Ginza line every day. Nowadays, my guitar teacher plays a gig once a month in a funky jazz bar at the end of the Ginza line. This year's been problematic medically here, and the hospital that's been saving my life is 3 stops on the Ginza line from here, but it's about 1 km from home to the nearest Ginza line stop, and the hospital's another 1 km from that stop, so I just take a cab. So I'm spending way more on cab fares than on medical care. (Japanese medical care is amazing and cheap.)
Dunno much about anime or manga; prose literature is my thing. (Well, one of my things.)
Off hand, though, I'd think that Back to the Future (1985) probably predated the West's interest in manga and anime. That was early bubble period Japan, and the foreigners speaking Japanese were were into business, at least by the time the bubble got really crazy (late 1980s, it fizzled in the early 1990s). Also, flip phones were like late 1990s, early 2000s.
Regards walking, the eastern 1/3 of Tokyo (which is actually a state level entity) consists of 23 "special wards" (that pretentiously, but logically reasonably) call themselves "City") and that together have roughly the population of NYC: 8 million souls in 619 sq kilometers (that's well over 100 sq miles). Each is a major city in it's own right, with different historical and cultural stuff. It's enourmous. And since the public transportation is amazing, there are more places to walk than there are days to take walks in a normal human lifetime.
Oh, yes. And Edo was the capital of the country before the pilgrims mucked with Plymouth rock. So it's got history.
I agree with David: most of the things you mention aren't specific to phones, and I find they work better without them. I also think phones create pressure to be constantly in contact, which doesn't seem healthy. Just from the amount of time that people spend with them, it's clear that phones have had a major impact, probably more than hoverboards could have, but I'm not convinced they're a net positive.
ReplyDeleteThe wording of this is confusing.
ReplyDelete"A father watches Back to the Future II with his kid. The 1989 movie view of 2015 looks entirely different when in fact not much has changed except for the fashion and the lack of mobile phones. This is supposed to be a parable about the lack of technological progress."
In what year are they watching the movie?
"2015" in the movie was very different from 1985. Flying cars, flying skateboards, 3D holographic movies. self-drying/heating clothing, biometric locks, smarthomes, TV walls at home, casual video conferencing, dehydrated meals that could be rehydrated in moments, the kids were wearing technology headsets at dinner that could very well have been the equivalent of their mobile devices, etc.
I see no such parable in this.
Lance didn't either, but then he wrote, "It's about a lack of imagination of the future because of those phones. Phones that are hidden from sight, and have become so ubiquitous we take them for granted."
DeleteBut there was no lack of imagination, as your examples show. They also had small flying drones with cameras and practically instantly updating newspapers. Drones would also walk your dog. They also had fundraising being done on mobile device with on-device payment. The dad was floating around in some flying back brace. Ordering at a diner by talking to an AI avatar. Also don't forget the small fusion reactor that converts trash to electricity.