And there you go: orbit

[kinzel]

In the pulp mags there were stories criticized for having nothing happen, stories that were about the goshwow of living in the future instead of being about ... action stuff.

So today, here I am, Mr. Life-in-2007, chatting with my wife via teletype (well, IM) as she works miles from here, and while I perform ordinary function of my business. Behind me, a disc of plastic spins and is read by lasers, proving me with music, and on one corner of the "view screen" I employ there are images from a spaceship, freshly launched as well as images from the base it was launched from in Florida ... as Jules Verne predicted. While I wait for the radar in the kitchen to finish warming lunch I continue to monitor the space launch and print order for my most recent product orders from Canada, Australia, the UK, Alabama, and NY. I've been invited (but declined due to workload) to visit with several friends by teleremote (in Second Life)...

Oh yes, products of my company. Books: written electronically and sometimes delivered electronically; even the paper copies are printed from electronic records rather than hot-gutsy linotype.

I can bank 24 hours a day, order and sell goods 24 hours a day, and besides having spoken with my mother this morning (she's in Maryland) and IMing with Sharon I'm mostly on task, if still trying to locate a portable with a price point approaching the Foleo's expected price point... sigh.

Nothing happening here. You can move on. Goshwow!

Comments

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

As I sit here in my living room in Ohio working for a company in Georgia to install software on a computer in North Carolina for a university in Arkansas, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

[ambug666.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of this song:

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It's good to be reminded that we are living in "the future", and even though we don't have flying cars yet (or some of the most negative predictions) it's still pretty fantastic to those of us who grew up when TV was still a grainy monochrome picture, space flight meant a device going "beep beep" and computers took up large air-conditioned rooms and cost millions of dollars.

Every so often I look at the box sitting under my desk and consider that it has more computing power than existed in the world when I was a teenager. And I still think it's slow...

[claydowling.livejournal.com]

As somebody who just used a laser to help build his deck, and whose wife received a routine surgery to cure a disease that was a death sentence when I was born, the future sure seems grand.

Of course, I want a more powerful laser.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the magic amulets opening car doors and such, or the wands making the viewscreens show the crowned heads of Europe and similar marvels.

It's a wonderful life :-)

Thanks for the reminder. Whatever happened to those "world of the future" projections in Popular Mechanics, Boys Life, and so forth?