![\"\"](\"http:\/\/192.168.3.178\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/pexels-photo-1251175-1024x746.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nWho knew the internet would be such an important part of our lives when it started out? In fact, who knew the internet would be a thing at all?<\/p>\n
It turns out that over centuries (yes, literally), plenty of people have had wild predictions for what is to come in the future. Some of these people were brushed off, but some were considered to be amongst the brightest minds in the world.<\/p>\n
So, which major tech discoveries were predicted long before they came to fruition?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The things we take for granted like freezers and microwaves were once a figment in Isaac Asimov\u2019s imagination. In 1964, Asimov \u201d\u201c a respected writer and professor \u201d\u201c wrote an article in the New York Times<\/em>, detailing what life would be like in 50 years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n Asimov believed food preparation would become significantly easier as \u201cgadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs.\u201d\u009d This meant that we would use a machine that would heat water to convert it to coffee \u201d\u201c which we do \u201d\u201c as well as a gadget to toast bread for us \u201d\u201c which we do.<\/p>\n Although he assumed that technology would have advanced even further and we could pre-order meals that our machines would whip up for us at a given time, he did point out that there would be resistance to the idea of \u201d\u02dcmock-turkey\u2019 and \u201d\u02dcpseudosteak\u2019. Is Asimov pointing to in-vitro meat creation? This isn\u2019t the only prediction Asimov had that came off pretty well.<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s former head honcho, Bill Gates, envisioned a world where our homes would be jam-packed with devices to help make our lives much easier. Given his background in tech, we\u2019re not surprised he was on the money with this one.<\/p>\n Bill Gates wrote a book, Business @ the Speed of Thought, <\/em>way back in 1999 that eerily predicts the future of technology in strong accuracy. One of these predictions included smart devices.<\/p>\n Gates said: \u201c\u2019Personal companions\u2019 will be developed. They will connect and sync all your devices in a smart way\u201d\u00a6 The device will check your email or notifications and present the information that you need\u201d\u00a6 It will inform all the devices that you use of your purchases and schedule, allowing them to automatically adjust to what you\u2019re doing.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Gates was an early adopter of building tech into his home that would help him to control certain aspects, but he also knew this would become much more intuitive and a lot faster.<\/p>\n Looking back on some grand predictions, there are a few people that either believed the internet would come to be or they saw the true potential in what it could become. Google immortalised Marshall McLuhan in a doodle and attributed the internet as his brainchild.<\/p>\n In 1962, decades before the internet became a reality, McLuhan wrote, \u201cThe next medium, whatever it is \u201d\u201c it may be the extension of consciousness \u201d\u201c will include television as its content, not as its environment.<\/p>\n \u201cA computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organisation, retrieve the individual\u2019s encyclopedic function and flip it into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n We can\u2019t argue with that one. McLuhan seems to accurately describe what the internet is as we know it. Not only that, McLuhan was wary of potential dangers of this medium and its capabilities. \u201cOnce we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don\u2019t really have any rights left.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n In spite of the concerns, there are a few people who truly believed in what the internet could do. Once of them was David Bowie, who famously fought the internet\u2019s corner in a 1999 interview with Jeremy Paxman.<\/p>\n David Bowie was influential in his style and music, but what would he know about technological advancement? Whilst Paxman disregards the internet, claiming it\u2019s \u201cjust a tool\u201d\u009d, Bowie felt very differently.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying. The actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything we can envisage at the moment \u201d\u201c the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in simpatico it\u2019s going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n The Thin White Duke was ahead of the curve when he released his 1996 track Telling Lies<\/em> exclusively online.<\/p>\n When the Apple iPad was unveiled in 2010, it became a tech disruptor and a very successful product. Owning a tablet became more and more common, allowing us to move away from the traditional, chunky laptop for something much more streamlined.<\/p>\n No one would doubt Steve Jobs\u2019 impeccable vision but, was this idea actually thought out long before 2010?<\/p>\n It would appear that the tablet was predicted as far back as 1968, by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. Kubrick\u2019s seminal work 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em> showed two astronauts reading from a flat screen \u201d\u201c that looks a lot like an iPad.<\/p>\n Dubbed a Newspad, it plugs into the ship and processes information from Earth. It featured major news outlets so you could get information from around the globe, as long as you put in the specific code for the paper.<\/p>\n Whether he was the first to predict it remains to be seen, but back in 2003, actor Ben Affleck had his finger firmly on the pulse when it came to streaming movies and music.<\/p>\n In an interview, Affleck was discussing filesharing, relating to the now defunct site Napster. Whilst there was clearly some concern around piracy and how that would affect (or Affleck-t if you will) the industry, Ben believed that the industry needed to move forward with subscription-based streaming.<\/p>\n Affleck felt there were \u201d\u02dcinefficiencies\u2019 in the music market that were being worked out. He believed the most effective way to consume music was through consumer-based technologies that the listener could try for free before they pay a subscription.<\/p>\n As consumers were already paying $200 a year (Ben\u2019s numbers), they would pay that same amount for a service that gives them access to an entire library of movies and music.<\/p>\n The time frame for this to become a reality, was five years. Ben must have a psychic touch because Spotify launched exactly five years later in 2008. Netflix, on the other hand, started streaming to computers in 2007.<\/p>\n Whilst some predictions occurred within just a few years, the idea of the smartphone came about in the 1900s.<\/p>\n Both Nikola Tesla and John Elfreth Watkins discussed the possibilities of making contact across the globe with ease.<\/p>\n In 1900, Watkins wrote an article titled What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years<\/em> and what he was expecting by 2000 was extraordinary. He covers a number of bases that can be attributed to the workings of the smartphone, such as \u201cWireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Not only that, Watkins felt that digital photography and photo sharing was on the way. \u201cPhotographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence, snapshots of the most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later.\u201d\u009d Sounds like citizen journalism to us!<\/p>\n Tesla, believed to be one of the most intelligent men who ever lived, said 26 years later that: \u201cWe shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared to our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Has the next big thing in technology already been predicted?<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/192.168.3.178\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/pexels-photo-1072851-1024x682.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nSmart homes<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/192.168.3.178\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/apple-computer-google-40185-1024x634.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Internet<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/192.168.3.178\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/pexels-photo-221185-1024x682.jpeg\")
<\/p>\niPads and tablets<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/192.168.3.178\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/freestocks-org-618080-unsplash-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/p>\nContent streaming<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/192.168.3.178\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/pexels-photo-1440727-1024x682.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nThe smartphone<\/h3>\n
\n
![\"Start](\"http:\/\/192.168.3.178\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/startselling.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"