Amazingly Accurate Tech Predictions

[v10superduty]

Not really RV related but I just had to post this somewhere.. :@

I just watched an old TV show called "Beachcombers".
Since was a Canadian show many may not have heard of it?
This particular episode was from 1988. The gist of this show is a couple competitive guys with boats in the coastal British Columbia town of Gibsons Landing (actual place)who salvage logs, barges, whatever, that need towed in off the ocean.

In this episode Relic (one of the dudes) gets a bill from government that he knows he paid, when his enquiries are answered with the "computer" must have caused issue, he calls in a young fellow he previously met to figure this out.
So this 15ish year old brings his laptop, (the size of a portable sewing machine) and "hacks into govt website and solves the problem.
He then encourages Relic to look farther and they figure a way to steal deals from Nick (the other salvage guy) so Nick puts out a call for help.

So now a 16ish (has a drivers license) girl shows up with her 25 pound laptop and they hack into the (all DOS)government website and battle back and forth over the net.
The kids end up becoming friends and as they are leaving town one of the dudes says to the other something like

"Imagine if a bunch of these kids gang up together what they could do?"

How could a writer back in 1988 so accurately predict this stuff? If he is still alive today he must be chuckling.. :B

[stetwood]

In 1972 I bought the first calculator I could find for under $100. It was about the size of a small book and could add, subtract, divide and multiply. No square roots or memory or battery either. The computers also used punch cards and where the size of a living room with a special raised floor.

[Francesca_Knowl]

v10superduty wrote:

How could a writer back in 1988 so accurately predict this stuff? If he is still alive today he must be chuckling.. :B

:h

How old ARE you, anyway??? You talk as if 1988 was back in the Stone Ages.

By 1988, practically this whole country had not only electricity, but cable TV, microwave ovens, and cordless phones. As for computer/internet technology: Ever see the movie "War Games"? link. Made in 1983, and based on then-existing technology.

[joebedford]

WA7NDD wrote:
I worked at a collage for 35 years

I have to ask: what were you using to make your 'collage'?

[azrving]

WA7NDD wrote:
I worked at a collage for 35 years, and had the opportunity to be on the "so call" Internet before Windows. All IP addresses were numbered addresses type in and all "web pages" if you want to call them that, were in plane text, and no pic's. This was around 1988 as I remember. At that time, collages and industry were the only facilities with a connection to the web, and Al Gore had nothing to do with it.

But but....I thought big Al invented the net? Lol. Mr global warming and his massive pontoon boat with a jet ski lift on the back. lol what sucks more fuel than a jet ski? NOTHING!!!!!

[SCVJeff]

Where's Ferris.. ?

[WA7NDD]

I worked at a collage for 35 years, and had the opportunity to be on the "so call" Internet before Windows. All IP addresses were numbered addresses type in and all "web pages" if you want to call them that, were in plane text, and no pic's. This was around 1988 as I remember. At that time, collages and industry were the only facilities with a connection to the web, and Al Gore had nothing to do with it.

[robsouth]

"Greetings Professor Faulken. Would you like to play a game?"

[MrWizard]

Remember the movie "War Games"

There was another one with Dabny Coleman, where some espionage was hidden in the code of a kids game cartridge for his Atari

[SAR_Tracker]

I was in US Navy logistics and configuration in the 1980's, and I remember our first transfer of a ships' database (about 350mb - it was all text based) to the East coast. Took overnight to transmit it!

[Fishinghat]

Amazing, isn't it? MSDOS dates back to 1981 when IBM licensed it from Microsoft for use on their new line of personal computers. Still, by 1986 Windows had just been introduced but wasn't very popular - yet. While the Internet dates from the 80's, the World Wide Web is from about 1990, so those kids were really in the forefront of technology.

I remember prior to the Internet in the 1980's, transmission of data was by use of a modem over telephone lines, where the operator's computer program "called" another computer's phone number. The two computers would "shake hands", and data could be transferred. If you lacked the phone number, passwords or the right protocol, you didn't connect and couldn't access the data. When it worked, it was SLOW! Using this procedure was necessary for two completely separate assignments at work.