Has technology really advanced in the last 50 years?

Imagine if a person from 1966 traveled to 2016. What could you show them to impress them with our technological advancement?

The internet is what comes to mind first for most people, however
>email
They had a variety of fast traveling messages back then whether it was the regular mail, intercompany memos sent by runners, vacuum tubes, or simply making a phone call
>youtube/netflix
Just turn on the TV
>spotify/itunes
Just turn on the radio
>video games
Are they really that impressive? What do they do to improve society?
>high resolution monitors
Same as above. They had 70mm film screenings back then too.
>GPS
They had maps.

Planes, automobiles? They haven't really advanced in any ways that would impress.

Houses are nearly identical to the way they were. Worse in many aspects. In general a lot of things are built with inferior quality to the past.

Medicine may be the area to look at. Advancements in the treatment of various debilitating illnesses have improved. We have things like Cochlear implants now that can let deaf people hear. But then again, the first of those was implanted in 1961 so it wouldn't necessarily be a revelation.

Search engines and deep learning AI may be impressive in the sense that one can ask nearly any reasonable question of google and get a useful response. But again, what can you really do with it you could not have done by visiting a library in the past? Did you know people used to actually call "information" lines for answers to questions like that? It's a few more steps, but the result is the same.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_(satellite)
imdb.com/title/tt2879552/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

this Nigga said runners and regular email are fast then downplayed the option lf watching/playing a wide variety of media choices at will. not only that, he implied maps can track, no, pinpoint someone's or something's location in real-time like a GPS. Sup Forums is becoming so retarded.

If you don't consider GPS to be one of humanities's greatest achievements you clearly don't know what you are talking about.

3/10 bait made me reply

Ok, if you don't want to use a map then use TRANSIT.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_(satellite)

And if you don't have access to that (like 99% of people) you can use a combination of radios and triangulation.

The idea is GPS doesn't solve a problem that couldn't be solved with 1966 technology.

MRI machines would be a technology that did not exist in a workable form in 1966.

GPS is accessible to much more people, thus a better technology. Try again.

Google, Sup Forums, your mom's pussy

Accessibility doesn't count nearly as much as true innovation of humanity being able to do things it couldn't do before.

>Teleporting is created
>"Worthless invention, you could just walk there 50 years ago"

>literally OP

I guess he wants scientific technological progress? The problem with autists is they are never clear, and if they are the questions are so autistic they don't need to be said.

Technology has made progress mainly in safety, efficiency and effectiveness.
You could argue accuracy, but I think that might fit in the effectiveness category.

>Imagine if a person from 1966 traveled to 2016. What could you show them to impress them with our technological advancement?
Probably the internet, GPS & telecommunications satellites, and our handheld supercomputer communications devices.

You are incredibly delusional if you think technology hasn't progresses since 1966

Hand them a smartphone. It would do everything they are used to using an appliance to do. See them act like the samurai in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III when they were exposed to modern culture i.e. get spoiled.

You're stupid. COMPUTERS alone, as they are nowadays, would impress the fuck out of someone from 1966, as they in fact do to some of the older programmers today. Let alone literally all the stuff you listed.

Sort of, we have just optimised and shrunk what was available back then, this alone has opened up new applications.

Computer performance has started pissing me off as of late, I've got a 60mhz Pentium 1 laptop that can perform exactly the same daily productivity tasks as my modern quad core desktop and half of it is down to our software being unbelievably abstract and larger than it ought to be.

The Windows 95 desktop is just as responsive as the latest OS on an order of magnitude more processing power. And I still see shitty programs like Word struggle to load and render a 300 page document at the same speed it did 20 years ago.

I've had my fucking Commodore 64 browsing the web with the bare essentials on a 1Mhz CPU, and its loading pages barely any slower than a modern browser saddled with megabytes of javascript cancer.

I'd hand them my now-dated phone. It would blow their mind.

>GPS, and all the things that use GPS.
>A high-resolution camera with better quality than the top-of-the-line cameras then.
>Connectivity to anywhere on the planet.
>Specs that are literally twenty million times more powerful than computers the size of rooms.
>You can point Google Translate at French, and it will replace the text on your screen in realtime with a translation.
>Natural language processing that is beyond the possibility of belief.
>The entirety of human knowledge is accessible in no time at all
>This wonder-device fits in your pocket.

Basically, everything about a smartphone would be unimaginable to them, much less its practical uses that we take for granted.

This. Smartphones would impress the shit out of anyone from the past.

Sure, modern technology doesn't do a lot of new things compared to 1966, but it makes those devices a lot more refined and accessible. In 1966 you needed a separate camera, address book, telephone, television, paper map, etc etc. Now a device that fits in your pocket does all of that much better and for much cheaper.

It really hasn't. It's gotten cheaper and more available but it hasn't really changed. Example, Lcd HD tech was around since the early 70's but it cost $10,000 to produce 1 square inch. The "cloud" is nothing more than server tech that we had 40 years ago. If anything, that has gone backwards. The entire PC revolution was based on getting away from that and allowing users to store their own content in the home. Now we are back to Chromebooks.

Smartphones, you idiot. You forgot the miniaturization of literally EVERY KNOWN FACT on earth into the palm of your hand.

"I can store every hit record on the billboard top 100 from 1956 to 1966 on something the size of a dime."

Tell someone from 1966 that factories without workers exist/are in construction. They'll be blown away.

If I could go back to 1966, I'd probably show them a Hatsune Miku concert just to get their hopes up about sexbots and robots.

We can remotely control a robot driving on Mars and send images made by the camera all the way back to Earth.

Not very impressive. Could have just used a telescope.

They'd probably just think every aspect of it is weird, from the music to the holograms to Miku's appearance.

>implying they wouldn't burn you at the stake for being a damn nip-lover.

As many people ITT pointed out, making technology cheaper and more accessible is a HUGE accomplishment. There's a lot of political and economic reasons behind pic related, but technology is a huge contributing factor to the drop in poverty as well. It makes it easier for third world entrepreneurs to buy the materials needed to start a business. Improvements in technology allow them to reach a larger customer base and search for talent in employees more easily. Everything has become so goddamn efficient since 1966 it's amazing.

>hurp but you could use this tedious and roudabout way of accomplishing something that's comparable to what GPS does!
wow op i gues ur rite an abacus is the same thing as a calculator

...

>what are smartphones

If you think the smartphone didn't completely change her man society then you are a fucking moron and/or underage and never experienced the world without smartphones/tablets/laptops

Everyone you see pack in their pockets a supercomputer capable of instant worldwide data transmission, it can make calls pick pictures and record high definition video, not to mention you can use it to access pretty much every piece of information accessible to human race

But the people refuse to use it for a good cause, watching picture of cats falling down stairs ir pretty much everything the people do

Planes wouldn't impress a man from the middle ages since they had horses and ships.

How about a mechanical horse that can sail?

Nuclear bombs wouldn't have impressed Napoleonic militaries, they already had cannons you know.

>GPS
>They had maps.
3d maps generated from satellites isn't impressive?

Nah. They could figure out where they are by using a sextant.

Doubt it, I think OP is trying to get at the fact that we have all this great shit but happiness is still just around the corner, like that Louis C.K. bit.
Also the fact that every computer owner had a powerful machine in the IBM times, but today we have more specialized devices that kinda suck if you want to that extra step i.e. hard to program on a cell phone.

Google Cardboard

Imagine if a person from 1966 traveled to 2016. What could you show them to impress them with our technological advancement?

The sad thing is the biggest achievement since 1966 would probably be the Moon landing.

>But the people refuse to use it for a good cause, watching picture of cats falling down stairs ir pretty much everything the people do
Pretty useful if you want to distract someone from the 60s who's never seen a stupid viral video playing on a smartphone.

The secret to making a good OP is to ask a question you want to hear some answers for, and then answer it yourself while pretending to be an asshole and an idiot at the same time. But keep an element of truth to it so you have plausible deniability. That's how you get the most replies.

Nothing
APL is still the most efficient language

Because material things don't actually make you happy. It doesn't matter if I can look up all of humanity's knowledge on my phone, it'll never take away tfw no gf.

Computers were around in 1966 and already doing some amazing things. What we're doing with them today isn't such a big leap as you're proclaiming.

I'm not sure when computers reached a point of diminishing returns in terms of usefulness. Sometime in the early to mid 80s perhaps. By that time there were powerful and relatively small workstations with full GUIs that could be used to do any kind of important work a person would want to do with them that a modern desktop computer would not do much better.

You could argue computers are available to the masses now, but does that matter? The people who needed and could use a computer to its fullest capabilities had access to them in the past.

The low hanging fruit has been picked.

Internet is better than the moon landing.

The vikings discovered america without any modern technology, thus it must all be shit and isn't really needed, right?

What's this webm from

Just show them a 4K OLED next to their shit tv box. Show them a 4tb HDD, 256gb microsd card.

I wouldn't show them anything technological at first. I'd tell them the cold war ended peacefully and the resulting economic and social development in the world because of it. To me, that's way more impressive than the technological advancements because of the cold war was still going on, 1/3 of the world would be denied access to all these wonderful advancements due to the iron curtain.

>>A high-resolution camera with better quality than the top-of-the-line cameras then.

The best phone camera of today would not even come close to the best film camera of 1966.

If you used a more fair comparison the best phone camera of today would not compare to a medium format film camera of 1966 which could be carried around by a single person and used without a tripod.

Are you retarded? The personal computer is one of the greatest and most influential inventions in human history. The PC literally changed our society. It doesn't matter if computers existed in certain professional settings in 1966 you fucking sperg, what's important is that when it reached the masses it literally changed the fucking world.

11.22.63
imdb.com/title/tt2879552/

It's really good.

Internet is cheap entertainment. Nothing about it is a technological marvel. The biggest thing about it would probably be access to things that didn't exist:
>Oh, you can get ACCURATE weather forecasts whenever you want?
Tomorrow's forecast was hit or miss back in the 80's. The ability to get a pretty decent 3 day and reasonable out to a week is a major advance.
The ability to chat online wouldn't impress someone from 1966. "Oh, so everybody doesn't have a Star Trek viewscreen?"
Yeah, you could set up a Skype, but you have no one who would want to Skype with you. Try explaining your neckbeard life to someone from 1966.

I suppose my view is skewed because even non-print material (As in, stuff that wouldn't fade with age) from that time has colors that look really bad.

11.22.63
A guy goes back in time to stop the assassination of JFK.

That's it? You can listen to more music? Some innovation. Kids in 1966 could already listen to all the music they would ever want with multiple radio stations just a turn of a dial away.

This is bait do not respond.

>The PC literally changed our society.

I don't know, man. I just don't know about that. People are still working 40 hours a week (often more). Still driving around in shit-ass combustion vehicles and crashing into one another. Life from 1966 to now hasn't really changed a lot other than we sit on our asses more and read off of a screen instead of a page.

>Youtube/Netflix
>Hurr just turn on le Television
Right, because television in the 1960's had limitless content, customization, and didn't turn off after 10 PM

And we are getting far more done in those 40 hours a week than we ever did before, because a computer is a productivity tool.

If you really think planes, both commercial and military, haven't improved vastly since the 1960s in the areas of speed, fuel efficiency, safety, and capacity, then you're a complete retard and should probably learn something before you post. I would say you're a troll, but its obvious that you put a lot of effort into your OP and wanted to look smart. Fuck off underage luddite

Even those internal combustion cars have gotten safer, and we're currently in the beginning of the transition away from them.

no, because of microsoft

Yeah, you have to keep in mind that stuff looked amazing when it was new. And there were a lot of little trinkets and gadgets around that accomplished the same tasks we use our phones for today. Listening to your transistor radio while reading a magazine is not a completely difference experience from sitting on the bus flipping through reddit while listening to spotify.

People used to chat anonymously to one another over CB and ham radio. Shared music too. The mail was a really big deal and got used a lot. Same for libraries.

OP is an underage faggot whom has never known a world without the internet, smart phones and personal computers. No wonder he can't appreciate how much they've changed our world.

The point is that I can listen to the music I want on demand. You had to ether wait for a radio DJ to play your song, had to walk to a diner with a jukebox, or buy a physical record at a record store.

And if you missed a TV program back then, you're fucked.

I think that's the one big advantage of present-day technology. It's on demand, and contains limitless content.

I guess for somebody out there that's a benefit, but for the average working man it's no difference.

>instead of sitting in front of the TV with my family, I sit in front of the computer with my hand down my pants.

Well you're a NEET so maybe you shouldn't talk for the average working man.

Have you ever talked to someone that was an adult in 1966? I seriously doubt you ever have. Everybody I've talked to that was alive to remember 1966 is amazed by how far technology has come.

>The people who needed and could use a computer to its fullest capabilities had access to them in the past.

That is blatantly not true, knew a guy who helped the Army Core of Engineers set up their system in the 70s and it was a huge change. And that was in the US Gov, if you wanted a computer in someplace like Saudi you had to smuggle one in as parts.

If YOU weren't a NEET you'd know how much technology had changed the workplace.

I was literally just arguing about how much technology has changed the workplace, idiot.

I was born in 1975. I'm amazed by MikuMikuDance's physics. That you can do that in 5MB is amazing.
And your average car has gotten a lot nicer.

Is music really such a big deal? I feel like as a whole society going on since the 60s we've put far more importance on it than it deserves. The same goes for sports.

People in 1966 had access to more entertainment media than they could ever exhaust. Dime stores had new novels coming out every week. Every day even. New TV shows. As you said, new records.

Yeah, it's easier to get to now, but it was piss-easy then. In terms of things I'd look to as examples of technological achievement I don't think I would list itunes.

However, the idea of a SD card being able to hold the entire personal information of every single person in the country is a different concept worth mentioning.

Please note I was talking about the 80s in that post.

You tell me.

Yes you sperg, it is a big deal. There's a reason that music predates fucking WRITING.

>something you could hold in your hand in 2005 you can now hold on a fingertip in 2014

meh

>One holds a few pictures, possibly a photo album
>The other can hold more information (photos, Pdfs, music, movies) than most people would use in a lifetime
Really makes you think

>born in 1990
>still amazed by the progress of technology today

Something tells me that OP is an underage faggot.

>technology hasn't really progressed in a meaningful way

Without computers you would not have memes. Without memes you would die.

>The other can hold more information (photos, Pdfs, music, movies) than most people would use in a lifetime
>128GB
>information used in a lifetime
user, I have watched over 600GB of anime

Ok maybe not movies

I had a 300gb hard drive in 2005 that I could take anywhere with me with nearly the same the ease I can take an SD card. That's what I was getting at.

wow, 1990? That's so long ago!

If I was born 26 years ago and am amazed by the progress of technology someone born 50 years ago will be absolutely blown away you fucking sperg.

Sorry OP I am an oldfag and you are wrong

up until I was 15 there was no internet

>call someone, tie up whole line for the house
>card catalog sucked, you have no idea how much better info at your fingertips is
>all photos are taken blink and take a week to process and you don't even know if they are going to turn out and it costs fifty cents per pic
>you are just wrong, shit sucked nigger

>blink

blind

>People in 1966 had access to more entertainment media than they could ever exhaust.

it was in no way the same you have no idea what you are talking about

there were 3 channels of TV and they were all super super boring and mainstream

>posting on Sup Forums about how much better life was before interactive websites

troooooooool

>has technology advanced?
>lists technological advancements
>but thats not technology!
you're retarded op kys lad

>Internet is cheap entertainment. Nothing about it is a technological marvel.

and its only going to get crazier

>best part of old tech
quality
>best part of new tech
quantity

if you refrained from dropping your phone onto concrete it would be fine in 50 years

>implying people watched black and white TVs with no hookups for anything for 100years

seems legit

show them the memes

show them Sup Forums

show them BLM

You're fogetting the fact that the phone has flash storage, which won't hold 50 years, not even close.

if you say so

>show them Sup Forums
>show them BLM
>in 1966
>literally just go outside

That's because you're an idiot who has confused a change for a meaningful advance.
>We've gone from incandescent to CFL's to LED's!
So from a light bulb to a light bulb to a light bulb.

since 1990 we have gone from no real useful internet to the internet taking over the world and privacy evaporating

it's the biggest revolution since the printing press, and probably bigger in terms of change than that was

u r retarded