HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ theprop

"Are we becoming controlled by the computer..." "...our computer weighs about 12 pounds, you can throw it out of the window if the relationship isn't going very well..."

And WOW, 6 minutes of discussion of privacy concerns with computers in 1981!

⬐ DonaldPShimoda

Haven't watched the video just yet, but Jobs also once said:

"Man is the creator of change in this world. As such, he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them."

I think it served as part of Apple's internal mission statement in the 80s or something.

⬐ Udo_Schmitz

The Interview that starts at 5:50 seems to be the one where this pre-show clip is from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDBiUemCSY CNN dates that video to 1978 though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb9YTXmPolo

⬐ ccvannorman

Interview starts halfway through the video. The question of privacy is brought up, and Jobs says (paraphrased) "privacy concerns will be mitigated by a computer literate public".

As I watch this on my Macbook Pro while the NSA records the event, I can only say that Jobs was right in some ways.

⬐ bamboozled

The fears about citizens privacy being severely eroded came true! Steve was speaking more like an ideaologist / optimist than a pragmatist, but I believe his intentions were sound.

It seems generations (young and old), never became computer literate to the level Steve anticipated. Personal computing access quickly outgrew computer literacy in the time frame required to stop societal damage being done.

The majority of users have become passive consumers and not free spirited, well rounded, democratically inclined, creative types that fit go with Steve's vision and observations.

Hindsight is 20/20 though and one can't blame them, who could've predicted the rapid PC uptake plus the Internet of 2017 back then?

⬐ extrastitial

Just as fascinating as Steve Jobs’ comments are the prescient privacy concerns voiced by David Burnham. Incredible that over 35 years ago, the impact of computers on civil liberties was already in public discussion.

⬐ tim333

The impact of computers on civil liberties predates that by decades https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/mar/29/humanities.hig...

⬐ fgrimes

Probably predates computers, if you look back far enough.

⬐ raverbashing

The interview is the less interesting part of the video, at least the Jobs part is "out there" and not really answering the questions.

Which Apple office was that? Bandley Drive maybe? http://www.cultofmac.com/128374/blast-from-the-past-floormap...

⬐ du_bing

Good documentary videos to understand the history of computer as a tool for humans.

⬐ jerkstate

visionary

⬐ jakobegger

What I find impressive is how confident Steve Jobs was in 1981 that soon everyone would have a computer -- just like in 2007, he was confident that everyone would soon have a smartphone. I wasn't around in 1981, but I know that in 2007 that wasn't a popular opinion. People talked about the "smartphone market" as if it would stay a fraction of the general phone market.

In retrospect, it's pretty obvious that computers/smartphones would take over the world.

What are the revolutionary things that are starting right now that will be obvious in retrospect?

Best I can think of is that electric cars will become ubiquitous in a couple of years, and they might partially drive themselves, but that's not really a big revolution.

People who tried VR seem to be pretty optimistic about it's future, but I don't see many uses except for games and maybe some specialised applications.

What am I not seeing?

⬐ superplussed

In 1981 I'm not sure that it was so obvious that computers would take over the world, definitely not to the general public. For context, I was 10 years old at the time, and was the only kid in my school that owned a computer, a TI-99 that used a cassette drive as storage. It was so left-of-field to own a computer, that I remember not even really talking about it to my friends in school, because they had no context for why anyone would want such a strange device.

⬐ melling

That's because they were expensive in 1981. When did the C64 drop to $199? 1982, 1983? That's when I got mine. Actually, I paid $299 and it dropped to $199 a few weeks later.

⬐ aswanson

You're approximately 2 years older than me. Fast forward to the Commodore Christmas of 1985. Pretty much everyone I knew got a C_64 that year.Things changed quickly.

⬐ mixmastamyk

Video game consoles were very big in the early 80's so I don't think computers were much of a stretch.

⬐ jjtheblunt

it's also very randomly skewed in time depending on your town/city...chicagoland and just a few years older than you guys, but our school district had gotten a few computers and so we saw them and started monkeying with them...and there were Radio Shacks in the area, and Bell Labs a few miles away (in Illinois, secondary site), so lots of math-ish parents. Just random circumstance from the view of a kid.

⬐ mtgx

Design babies. I think we're no more than 20 years away from that becoming a rather mainstream thing to do. It will start off with people wanting to eliminate genetic diseases and other potential health problems from their babies before they are born. But I'm sure the the Paris Hiltons of the world will want their babies to "look perfect" too and have other enhancements. And eventually that will probably become more mainstream, too.

Before then I think we'll also all but have solved cancer through immunotherapy and gene editing, but it will probably still be out of reach for most people who won't be able to afford the drugs (especially in countries without a single-payer or nationalized healthcare system).

Solar and wind power will produce at least 70% of the world's electricity needs in 20 years. Probably close to 95% of the new cars sold in the market will be EVs by then. There may still be 20-30% ICE cars on the road by then, depending how aggressive governments decide to be about it.

I think we'll have solved both fusion power (but not yet deployed at scale) and have quite powerful quantum computers in 20 years. I don't know where "AI" will be in 20 years, but our current notions of AI will probably be rather quaint.

⬐ tyingq

>>What are the revolutionary things that are starting right now that will be obvious in retrospect?

You could make a good case for the internet turning into something more like AOL or cable tv. Net neutrality going away, search engines preferring to show their own content, DRM going into browsers, various monopolies forming up, etc. At the very least, what's usable on the internet might be different depending on your path in. You'll have the iPhone internet, the Comcast internet, and so forth.

Not a great development, but there's probably money to be made in there somewhere.

⬐ hammock

Could it be confirmation bias? I'm sure there are many videos of people confident everyone will have a flying car, you just don't see them.

⬐ coldtea

Actually we see them (or, well, read them), so much those predictions have become the pop culture laughing stocks of futurology -- "where's my driving cars and robot assistants?".

https://www.google.com/search?q=where%27s+my+flying+car&oq=w...

⬐ thom

Long term, I expect some combination of VR/AR/drones/telepresence will arise. Desktops gave people easy access to information and processing at home, smartphones gave you access anywhere you are, drones take you anywhere you're not. If we get to the point where drones the power of your current smartphone are cheap enough to be effectively disposable (or rentable by the hour from Amazon warehouses), I think that people will start to rely on them for all sorts of things.

People are going to "drone in to the office", they'll send one to look around new houses or office space before bothering to turn up themselves, they're going to be on holiday but connect to their drones at home to check that their house and cats are okay, they'll rent drones far away and just _explore_ stuff.

And eventually there will be undesirable things, schools will cut costs by sending drones on field trips instead of kids. Ubiquitous eavesdropping will arise. If the hardware and connectivity becomes hard to trace, trolls aren't going to just dox you, they're going to film and break into your house. The gated communities of the future will be Faraday cages.

No idea of a timeline for this stuff, and would certainly like to believe some of it isn't inevitable.

⬐ rcpt

Corporate universities. For example, the Google Brain Residency is already replacing grad school for a prestigious few. With how expensive and bureaucratic colleges​ have become more programs are bound to appear.

⬐ tim333

>What are the revolutionary things that are starting right now that will be obvious in retrospect?

AI takes over the world?

⬐ dilemma

It is also possible that he wasn't as confident as he seemed but his role required projecting confidence in his company's idea, so he did.

⬐ MarkMc

> People who tried VR seem to be pretty optimistic about it's future, but I don't see many uses except for games and maybe some specialised applications.

I've never tried VR or AR, but I'm confident that in 50 years we will spend most of our waking hours having an image projected onto our retina from a pair of glasses or contact lenses.

People now spend an hour or more each day commuting to work because face-to-face communication is so much more efficient than via the internet. But that advantage will slowly erode as VR/AR improves. Eventually most people will work remotely, and this will have huge consequences: People will no longer need to live in an expensive city; companies will be able to hire workers without regard to international borders.

⬐ Markoff

Nokia smartphones were already pretty big at the time iPhone was released, innovative thing was capacitive touch screen instead of resistive

so idea of smartphone was pretty safe bet, touchscreen was risky choice

⬐ dualogy

Seems to me like Apple also furnished, perhaps not immediately but very quickly, a much superior developer story than.. "Nokia's smartphone" did.

⬐ stephen_g

It was an entire year before third party apps were allowed. I think the first iPhone and its stock OS and built-in apps stood pretty well on their own compared to what was around. I recall getting an iPod Touch (the iPhone wasn't available in Australia until the 3G) and the Google Maps application (at that point written by Apple) and mobile Safari were just mind blowing for the time (remember that not only were capacitive touch screens rare at that point, multitouch was still just something most people had only seen in research videos if at all).

⬐ godzillabrennus

Hydrogen fuel cells. Elon Musk is talking them down like Steve Jobs talked down native apps in favor of a web app.

⬐ slackingoff2017

Hydrogen is a shitty fuel. Hard to contain, burns too easy, explosive.

⬐ paulddraper

For pedestrian uses, yes. But it could be used in more specialized applications that already require a lot of attention. E.g. commerical airplanes.

⬐ coldtea

That's not really life or industry changing though.

⬐ paulddraper

Depends on your life or industry.

⬐ coldtea

People talk down things for all reasons, one of them being they legitimately such. Not everything is like this Jobs example (and in fact Jobs himself has earnestly talked down lots of stuff that he never changed course on).

In this case fuel cells seem to have the same issues they had 20+ years ago when they were touted as the feature.

⬐ erik

Has the tech improved in recent years? Last I looked into it, there were still big problems with lifespan.

⬐ audunw

That would assume that hydrogen is a superior fuel. It's not. It's much less efficient than batteries and worse than hydrocarbons in every way except for CO2. But CO2 is not a problem if the hydrocarbons just isn't from fossils.

In an abstract way: we are all part of a gigantic hydrocarbon economy. We are carbon based life forms, we're everything absorbs and emits CO2. We need hydrocarbons for almost everything we make. Why would we create a new hydrogen economy? Does it have any use except for energy storage?

Elon Musk is sceptical because he thinks about the fundamental physics behind technology.

Hydrogen is a gimmick which plays on a knee-jerk reaction against CO2, and a very short sighted view which assumes the that batteries won't get better or that we won't get efficient fuel cells for hydrocarbons and CO2 neutral production (while assuming a breakthrough in hydrogen fuel cells).

If you want to predict the future, you have to consider physics, not what's cool (the exhaust is water! )

⬐ mandeepj

> What am I not seeing?

Quick ones -

1. Revolution in civil engineering - virtually viewing the final bridge before even laying one brick

2. Medical - performing any surgery to learn before even touching a patient

3. Theatre - previewing your setup and practice like it is live

4. Speakers - practicing your speech before thousands of people (of course, virtual)

⬐ JustSomeNobody

Computers and smartphones got popular because anyone could write and sell an app for it which then fed into the loop of everyone else needing and wanting them. Look for ideas that are like that; something that can be built off of.

⬐ None

None

⬐ ClassyJacket

Augmented reality will be a part of everyday life.

⬐ chubot

It will take awhile from the breakthrough to when it becomes part of everyday life.

The internet was around for a decade or more before the web. The web was the breakthrough required for mass adoption -- rich media over the network. Also ubiquitous PCs were necessary.

I argue that the internet didn't become part of every day life until 2004 or so. I've been on the web since 93, and am a programmer, but in 2002 I went a whole summer without internet access because I was subletting a room without it.

Before 2004 or so, the web was really for looking up stuff. After Facebook and MySpace, "life" started happening on the internet. The nightly news would report things that happened on Twitter.

So I'd say that augmented reality hasn't had its www moment yet, and after that it may take a decade or more to become part of every day life. Really adoption is a social issue, so what needs to happen is that the old generation dies.

That said, Snapchat might later be viewed as the precursor to AR, and it has wide usage. It might be that generation or the next.

⬐ noir_lord

> The internet was around for a decade or more before the web.

Though the definition is fuzzy the Internet traces it's roots back to the 60's, specifically the first connection between two machines on arpanet was 1969.

1981 (a decade before the web) did see a big exapansion but there where already several hundred machines talking to each other by then.

⬐ adventured

> What are the revolutionary things that are starting right now that will be obvious in retrospect?

- The taxing of robotic / AI systems, to offset the losses in tax revenue from human labor. Regardless of whether I agree with it, it's guaranteed to happen. It'll dramatically reshape taxation.

- CRISPR (gene editing broadly). There won't be a major pharma/biotech company on earth that isn't working with it, within 10-15 years. We'll be able to cure dozens of major and minor diseases in a few decades using it. The public mostly has no idea what's coming nor how fast. The mainstream media has only just begun to cover it from time to time. There will hardly be a person in the developed world that doesn't utilize gene editing for something in their lifetime, within a generation (whether for improvement or therapy). This century we'll permanently strip dozens of diseases & serious medical problems from the human genome, it'll be akin to what vaccines have accomplished. CRISPR will also solve the antibiotic resistance problem (the first headlines on that have finally begun to show up, in a few years it'll be widely agreed with).

- Gene software. There will be a $100+ billion company created in the genetics space around software. AI + personal gene technology is interesting 15-20 years out. Persistent micro regulation of the genome through editing + AI guide. Instead of responding with gene altering treatment after disease has well set in, we'll quickly move to the next logical level which will be frequent early course correction & disruption. It'll make the most sense to have AI doing this for us on a productivity / cost effective level. Improvement (not therapy due to disease) will also obviously be a major segment. It'll take a while (50-70 years?), but eventually our bodies will be treated more like genetic software platforms; we'll likely deploy into ourselves some kind of human genome operating system, that will have updates & patches as improvements come along.

- Bio-reactors, growing organs, etc. Vast progress has been made here and it's moving very fast. 20-30 years out we'll have the ability to grow most organs for routine implant. Today it's a very, very (barely existent) small niche segment vs the traditional transplant market. This is interesting as well in line with CRISPR:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603857/crispr-may-speed-p...

- The scale of the worlds that will be built in VR and the demands that will place on all computing resources. It's not something that is being widely considered right now, even on HN you'll routinely run into high skepticism about the scale of what's coming. Whatever scale you think it'll be at in 20 years, multiply that by 100x, you'll probably still be undershooting.

⬐ coldtea

>What are the revolutionary things that are starting right now that will be obvious in retrospect?

The decline of the middle class and a new developed world of low wage working slaves straight out of Dickens / Hugo?

⬐ ransom1538

upvote.

⬐ MarkMc

It's counterintuitive, but the decline of the middle class has coincided with a significant increase in real income for poor people.

This video graph shows what I mean: https://twitter.com/conradhackett/status/857739376444493824

⬐ dyarosla

That graph is terrible and hard to decipher: from it alone I would not be able to say that there's any indication of a significant increase in real income for the poor.

⬐ MarkMc

OK that's a fair point. But suppose instead I said, "the percentage of the population living on less than $50k per year in real terms has dropped by about a quarter since 1971". Does the graph support that statement?

⬐ dyarosla

If you do use the graph as reference, it is actually more like the percentage dropped by ~ 11.5% (this is by counting out the cumulative percentage represented by each bar)- which is not at all what you would eyeball it at. Like I said, really bad graph to showcase anything.

⬐ MarkMc

> 11.5%...which is not at all what you would eyeball it at.

I don't understand this point.

Here is the same graph with 3 areas shaded: http://imgur.com/a/xco37

It looks to me like Area A is about a quarter of area B and about an eighth of Area C. Isn't that about what most people would eyeball it at?

Relevant & cogent discussion from 1981 Nightline I found on Obscure Media sub-reddit just yesterday. Jobs makes some spot on predictions but managed to avoid speaking too directly on privacy. The author is not nearly as charismatic nor accustomed to speaking on camera/in public... and makes some validated predictions, too.

Intro is a good watch for nostalgia and perspective; relevant Jobs interview starts @ 4:20.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H-Y-D3-j-M

⬐ pleboidal

Watching the whole video, you can safely overdub everything Steve Jobs said with the phrase "My words are meaningless, because by the time any of these ideas represent credible threats, I'll be long dead."

Seriously. Everything Steve Jobs says, whatever point he argues in favor of, listening to it is like letting the dead sell you cigarettes.

"Here, try this amazing thing! Yes it's bad for you in all the ways described by critics, but so what?! I need to live an incredible life right now, before a terminal disease kills me (just as the bad times begin), so give me as much money as possible."

⬐ joshu

What the fuck?