i’m talking about things we use without a second thought that might seem utterly ridiculous or inefficient in 50-100 years. like landlines or vhs players seemed to us. what’s your pick?
i’m talking about things we use without a second thought that might seem utterly ridiculous or inefficient in 50-100 years. like landlines or vhs players seemed to us. what’s your pick?
These things are always impossible to predict. But I’ll try anyway.
What things like VHS and diskettes have in common is that they’re clunky. They’re a hassle to use, and they’ve been replaced by something easier. So what is currently a hassle to use, but we use every day?
Nothing obvious springs to mind, but I’m thinking of dishwashers and washing machines. Their main purpose is to save human time and effort, and they do a fantastic job at that compared to before, but there’s still a lot of room to improve.
Dishwashers need to be carefully loaded and unloaded. (Also they often don’t clean the dishes well unless you wash them a bit beforehand, defeating much of their purpose. Don’t tell Alec from Technology Connections I’ve said this, but I tried putting dirty dishes in there and it just doesn’t clean well enough. Maybe my detergent powder isn’t good enough.)
Maybe in the future there would be a dishwasher-cupboard hybrid, where you just put the dirty dishes into it (WITHOUT having to think about how to place them) and it automagically cleans them and places them in the cupboard ready to take.
Washing machines also require a lot of hassle. Same idea but with a closet.