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Tech Level 8
I now own an iPhone 5. Gifted to me by Kirsten's coworkers, who cobbled together two phones to make this one. I've been playing with it.
Yes, I'm a generation behind the current standard. I don't care. I am not a power user. I do not need to the latest and greatest. But I am impressed.
Video quality is excellent. The camera has features that mean I'm going to need to charge it at Burning Man, like panoramic photos. Tons of memory. I have Siri, and she doesn't do pod bay doors. (First thing I asked.) All my apps work again, and I'm able to add more as needed.
My main needs are being able to contact people when I'm out, mapping/driver help, social media, and some games. One of the big things is using Swarm to mark where I've been. There is a non-zero chance that I could suffer another stroke or other event, and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs is extremely important. If we somehow get the money for a new truck, I'm getting a F-150 with Fleet Management so Kiri can track me as I drive.
But as I look at the App Store I'm seeing there is very little my phone can't do. Really, it rivals my old desktop in many ways. I could dictate a story, edit it, post it to friends for commentary, convert it to .pdf, submit it, and manage the incoming payment. Then ask Siri to find me the nearest burrito place to celebrate. All from my phone. Pretty amazing.
Which brings me to Traveller and the dangers of predicting technology. One of the items available in the original edition of the game (1977) was the HandComp. A device with the power of a basic starship computer but portable (good thing, since starship computers weighed several tons and could run two or three programs at a time. Vacuum tubes and card readers?) In early illustrations the HandComp was shown as being this bulky thing strapped to a forearm.
Now I have more computing power in a device that can literally fit in my wallet.
Predicting the future is tricky. Although Douglas Adams nailed Wikipedia in The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
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available in the original edition of the game (1977) was the HandComp
A hah, not so fast.
> Hand Computer (11) CR 1500 - Provides services of a
> programmable calculator, plus serves as a
> computer terminal when linked (by its integral
> radio, or by other circuit) to a computer.
> Weighs .5kg.
Book 3: Worlds and Adventures, 1977, p. 14
“the power of a basic starship computer” - it had the power of a TI-55, is what it had, plus an IBM Selectric typewriter used as a computer terminal. A Commodore 64 could run laps around it, in other words.
Hand Computer, TL 11.
I'm not poking fun, I'm actually agreeing with you. Project Apollo went to the Moon with less computing power on board than an 8-bit Commodore home computer. For all his gee whiz super-science, Tom Swift Jr used a slide rule. With the possible exception of the “pocket computers” of Niven and Pournelle's A Mote in God's Eye, no one predicted the explosive implosion of processor power.
If you have never seen “Alt1977,”
http://www.alexvaranese.com/work/alt1977
then Merry Christmas.
… Re-imagining four common products from 2010
as if they were designed in 1977: An MP3 player,
a laptop, a mobile phone and a handheld video
game system. I then created a series of
fictitious but stylistically accurate print ads
to market them…
Now, insofar as applications, i e Now What?, you'd have to go far to beat Sir Arthur Clarke. In his 1964 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written before even the first Gemini mission ever left the ground and only four years after transistors came on the market, we see Dr Heywood Floyd using his laptop data terminal to surf the World Wide Web while sitting on the Space Shuttle waiting to be launched up to an orbiting space station. No joke. (Sir Arthur didn't predict computer viruses or Internet porn, but you can't win 'em all.)
p.s. On the other hand, Wah Chang's Star Trek communicator is why cell phones flip open. Tru fac.