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Tech NewsA Brief History of Tomorrow’s High-Tech Living Room
Today companies like Microsoft and Sony aren’t just trying to sell you the video game console of the future, they’re trying to sell you the living room of the future, a central hub that connects you to your family and your family to the world. But our expectations for what tech should be included in … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityThe Privacy Dangers of a Cashless Society Were Clear Over 40 Years Ago
Your bank and credit card companies have quite a file on you. They know how often you go out to eat, how often you drink, how often you fill up your gas tank, along with the time and location of all these activities. Cash is all but dead, and with that comes a digital trail … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & Security
An Early Online Privacy Expert Revisits His 1985 Predictions Today
Back in 1985, Larry Hunter was a grad student studying artificial intelligence at Yale. He had access to the kinds of computers and networking tools that few Americans even knew existed at the time. And for that reason, he saw into the future. Specifically, the future of online privacy. So how did his predictions hold … Continued
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Tech News
What Futuristic Promise Are You Most Skeptical About?
Within the past decade we’ve seen technologies that had been promised for years finally become mainstream successes. The smartphone? Yep! The tablet computer? You betcha! Ebooks? They now account for nearly a quarter of book sales. But we’re still waiting on plenty of other technologies that were dreamed up by the generations that preceded us. … Continued
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Tech News
The Dust Bowl Skyscrapers That Were Supposed to Make It Rain
The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was vicious. Crops were ravaged, dust clouds darkened the sky, and thousands fled the Great Plains to look for work elsewhere. But one meteorologist in France had an idea that very much appealed to the parched farmers and ranchers of yesteryear — enormous weather-manipulation towers that would dwarf the … Continued
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Tech News
This 1950s Futuristic Food Truck Could Bake Bread in Just Nine Seconds
These days you can get just about anything from a food truck: pulled pork waffles, cheeseburger sushi, and even snail lollipops. But how about freshly baked bread, made to order in just nine seconds? That was the vision of a 1956 ad for, of all things, ball bearings. No matter how mundane the product, modern … Continued
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Tech News
How the U.S. Government Waged War Against the House of Tomorrow
Americans were promised one thing during World War II: life was going to be amazing in the “world of tomorrow.” But when the war ended many companies, along with the U.S. government, turned back on that promise as quickly as they could. Americans were told that as soon as the war was over, everyone would … Continued
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Tech News
There Were Plans for 3D Movies Even Before There Were Talkies
If you think the glasses you have to wear at every 3D movie today are a pain, remember to be grateful that we’re not all stuck with the early 20th century’s version. Back in the 1910s, many people were experimenting with next-big-thing technologies for motion pictures. Much of the promise was in developing synchronized sound, … Continued
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Tech News
An Internet Pioneer Foresaw the Tech Bubble’s Filthy Rich Programmers
In 1969, internet pioneer Paul Baran predicted that by the year 2000, computer programmers may very well be the richest people in the world. Remember, this is when Bill Gates was just a 14-year-old nerd in Seattle. The ARPANET had not yet drawn its first breath when Baran wrote his 1969 paper, “On The Impact … Continued
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Tech News
Fat-Shaming Eugenicist Will Get His Own Statue in Silicon Valley
Good job internet! Nikola Tesla—a noted promoter of eugenics who hated fat people and once fired one of his secretaries for being overweight—will soon have his very own statue in Silicon Valley! The Tesla statue’s Kickstarter campaign surpassed its goal of $123,000 over the weekend, riding the wave of Tesla boosterism that has helped add … Continued
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Tech News
How the 1920s Thought Electricity Would Transform Farms Forever
The ’20s may have been roaring for well-heeled urban centers, but on the farm? Rural electricity in the 1920s was as rare as Google Fiber is today. Which makes these 1922 predictions for the farm of the future so brazen. Last week, you may have seen this awesome 1921 map from the Star Tribune archives. … Continued
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Tech News
The 1960s Office Desk of the Future Was More NASA Than Mad Men
With its hovering videophone, modern dictation machine and space pod design, this 1961 executive desk of tomorrow would fit in better on the ISS than at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. The February 5, 1961 edition of Arthur Radebaugh‘s “Closer Than We Think” gave millions of people reading the Sunday comics a peek at the office … Continued
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Tech News
The Father of Radio’s Stunningly Accurate 1960 Vision of the Year 2000
Flat-screen TVs, online shopping and men on the moon? These were all sci-fi fantasies in 1960. Somehow, though, inventor Lee DeForest predicted that by the year 2000 they would all become a reality. Turns out you don’t necessarily need a crystal ball to see into the future. The Father of Radio The January 17, 1960 … Continued
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Tech News
What Will Happen When Your Driverless Car Crashes?
Driverless cars are nearly here, at least if Google has its way. But what happens when we’re all zipping around, hands-and-feet free, nary a care in the world, and BAM! we’re in a terrible accident? Who’s responsible? And perhaps more importantly, will we make any attempts to stop it? When something goes awry and it … Continued
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Tech News
How Yesterday’s Feminists Invented the Food of the Future
These days, foodie messiahs like Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan preach the gospel of whole foods and get quite a lot of ink and airtime for their ideas about a more healthy way of eating. But the most progressive idea in food from a hundred years ago would likely shock the slow fooders of today: … Continued
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Tech News
The Retrofuture of Outdoor Advertising Was Even Worse Than What We Got
Outdoor advertising is at least 5,000 years old (the ancient Egyptians used to hang papyrus notices advertising rewards for runaway slaves), and fears about how invasive it could be have been around nearly as long. For every glitzy video billboard you curse at today, know that your forbearers dreamed up much, much worse. Drive through … Continued
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Tech News
Milwaukee’s Future: Predictions from 1900
At the turn of the 20th century, Milwaukee was a force to be reckoned with. Milwaukee was a town that made things — a town built on machines, radical politics and beer. Lots of beer. Milwaukee is a city that was hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs that started in the 1960s and … Continued
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Tech News
The Futuristic Robot Surgeons of 1982 Have Arrived
A futuristic technology hasn’t really arrived until someone files a lawsuit against it. And in that case, the robot surgeon is here. Welcome to the future. The da Vinci surgical robot (or, more accurately, its maker) was acquitted on Friday in the case of a man who died in 2012 after a botched robotic surgery … Continued
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Tech News
Twitter, Fan Letters and the Quest for Interaction
For all of Twitter’s weaknesses, it indisputably triumphs in one area: Letting the average person contact famous people with unprecedented ease. But the compulsion to cheer, goad, or yell at (mostly yell at, I suppose) our sacred celebrity cows goes back much further than the @reply. In fact, in many ways, your tweets are just … Continued
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Tech News
The First Movie On TV Was In Theaters At The Time
Only about half a dozen people in the Los Angeles area owned a TV in 1933. But those handful of early adopting TV geeks were in for a special treat on March 10th of that year when the movie The Crooked Circle was broadcast in its entirety. That day the campy detective flick became the … Continued
By Matt Novak
Matt Novak
Matt Novak is a reporter at Gizmodo covering news and opinion, with a little history thrown in for good measure. Novak started at Gizmodo in 2013 and has been writing about past visions of the future at Paleofuture.com since 2007. Novak is fascinated with the history of technology and got his start writing professionally for Smithsonian magazine. Emails telling him to "stick to tech" can be sent to [email protected].
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