What the year 2008 is like! (hint: no jetpacks!)

A transcription of a 1968 magazine article. Amazingly, they hit quite a number of things spot-on or very close. There's a definite utopian feel to it IMHO, but that's ok. They totally skip over the oil costs of plastic and ignore waste and power. And they totally miss the boat on domed cities, underwater/outer space vacations, and auto-cars.~

Still, an amusing read. I wish I'd read it in '68, but my dad subscribed to Popular Science, not Mechanix Illustrated.

My mom once asked me what I thought computers would be like in X years, I don't remember the number she used. I said "small, more powerful, a little less expensive, and anything else is a guess." I hold to that, especially after seeing the specs on our AS/400 in the back room. ;-)

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/03/24/what-will-life-be-like-in-the-year-2008/

And there's some cute comments on Slashdot: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/25/2337211

I hate it when Walmart does something I like!

;-) It looks like they may be dragging the music industry into a more reasonable price structure for music CDs. Apparently, Walmart sells 20% of the major label's output, and they want lower costs to them. It only accounts for 2% of Walmart's annual sales, so they can stop selling music and they won't notice the diff, whereas it would be catastrophic to the music industry.

This is a good thing, the industry has been gouging consumers and shafting bands for a very long time for their own enrichment. The price on music has gone up without an increase in compensation to the artists. But it doesn't address my fundamental problem with music: there's just nothing new that really grabs me. The last new music that I acquired outside of my wife's music library being merged with mine, are The Ditty Bops, because the bands that I really like no longer record, and, as I said, I haven't heard much new that really grabbed me.

And this isn't even thinking about what things like iTunes are doing to the industry. BTW, I haven't bought a single tune off iTunes, though my wife is a regular shopper. And I'm totally ignoring the censoring that Walmart does because normally it is with the permission of the artist as to whether or not their work is edited.

I really need to find some more tunes.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6558540/walmart_wants_10_cds

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/25/1856245

Edit: heh. Just noticed a comment at the end of the article that this article is over 3 years old. Obviously nothing much changed because of it. Still, it's a pleasant thought.