[HN Gopher] How close are we to a vision for 2010?
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How close are we to a vision for 2010?
Author : ColinWright
Score : 62 points
Date : 2026-02-23 04:16 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shkspr.mobi)
(TXT) w3m dump (shkspr.mobi)
| xp84 wrote:
| This was really fun - it's interesting how many of the scenarios
| involve public internet terminals. I can see how at the turn of
| the millennium it would have sounded absurd that we'd be able to
| hold in our hand a mobile terminal that would allow any serious
| business to be accomplished, what with text entry being painfully
| slow, mobile screens being low-resolution, and mobile data being
| incredibly slow and just rolling out in most places. Indeed,
| "logging on" from someone else's computer out of necessity was
| quite common, even in the mid 00s. Of course, the login processes
| of some websites are still operating on the same assumptions.
| Gotta love the whole "Keep me logged in? Don't check this on
| public or shared devices." Like I'm doing my banking at an
| Internet cafe or something.
| bandrami wrote:
| Internet Cafes are still a thing in Asia outside of the big
| cities. People have feature/sub-smart phones that they can do
| chat and banking with but use the cafes for anything else.
| aib wrote:
| That work like this often predicts a good portion of the
| technological advancements, but usually completely misses the
| mark on the execution and the enshittified commodification is why
| I like reading cyberpunk and other dystopian sci-fi.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _she is able to stroll through immigration without stopping
| because her P-Comm is dealing with the ID checks as she walks.
|
| We're getting closer to digital ID. But outside of a few
| experiments, there's no international consensus. However, every
| modern passport has an NFC chip which can be read by most
| airports. You still need to hold your passport on the reader, but
| it's usually quicker than queuing for a human._
|
| As far as immigration to the US is concerned (and I guess it is,
| because I haven't heard of the term "immigration" applied to
| business travelers or tourists anywhere else in the world),
| expecting to be able to "stroll through" it sounds increasingly
| naive after reports of various unsuspecting travelers being
| detained for weeks and then deported
| (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/karen-
| newton...), and the current to-and-fro around TSA PreCheck and
| Global Entry
| (https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/22/politics/shutdonw-tsa-
| pre...).
| edent wrote:
| OP here. As the meme goes, I am one of literally _dozens_ of
| people who live outside the USA.
|
| "Immigration" is the commonly used term in the UK. See
| https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/question/99775/eurostar...
| and https://www.heathrow.com/arrivals/immigration-and-passports
|
| Similarly, Australia uses the term if you want to apply for a
| visitor's visa - https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/
|
| You'll also notice that the original report was written by an
| EU group.
| rob74 wrote:
| Ok, thanks for setting the record straight, I stand
| corrected. Interestingly enough, while I have been to the UK
| several times, I don't remember coming across the term
| "immigration" (probably because most of those times were pre-
| Brexit, so immigration was much less of a hassle for a EU
| citizen than it would have been when visiting the US).
| m4rtink wrote:
| Seems like a political rather than technical problem ?
|
| Going from EU to Japan is very close the presented scenario.
| Like you know, threat people with dignity and things work fine
| ?
| nstart wrote:
| One piece that I find interesting is how hopeful people sounded
| about tech that had access to your data. Folks higher up in the
| tech world often complain about how the media complains about
| them too much. And while the media definitely has issues in how
| they report, it's easier to see how we got to this point where
| tech is vilified. You compare the hope of the past and match it
| to the exploitation of the present, and you can't help but feel
| sometimes that in a game of picking straws, the current timeline
| picked dystopian over utopian.
| dijit wrote:
| Reminds me of the old adage: your most bitter employee is the
| person who was most full of hope.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| > the current timeline picked dystopian over utopian.
|
| If you structure your society around maximizing short-term
| profits, this is a utopia. We just picked the wrong way to
| structure society.
| techdmn wrote:
| > but no one wants to use a pay-phone when they have their own
| mobile!
|
| I have a hobby-level interest in avoiding pervasive surveillance,
| and have been thinking about ditching my phone more often.
| Something like no-cell Tuesdays.
|
| What if I have a family emergency? I don't have a desk phone, but
| I could pay more attention to my work email.
|
| What if my car breaks down? I could use a payphone, except those
| don't really exist these days. I could walk to the nearest gas
| station and ask to use their phone, but they would probably think
| I was crazy.
|
| The other thing payphones used to have (at least here and there)
| was an attached phone book with Yellow Pages where I could find a
| tow company. Lets say I do manage to beg access to a phone, how
| do I know who to call?
|
| Now that everyone carries all these things in their pocket, other
| systems for handling these problems have atrophied.
| cbdevidal wrote:
| If the car breaks down maybe ask a stranger to look up the
| number for a truck and hit dial, then hand the phone to you. In
| a public place, of course. If I were in a gas station and
| someone who was dressed normally asked me that I probably
| wouldn't refuse.
| Cyan488 wrote:
| I use a TCL Flip for this purpose. Phone calls and texting work
| well enough, the web browser is painful on the small non-touch
| screen but works in a pinch, and the phone can create an LTE
| hotspot.
|
| Sometimes I also carry my smartphone but I don't /need/ to.
| I've told my family and trusted contacts that any emergency
| should be a phone call.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Put a solar powered MeshCore repeater on top of your house &
| give a MeshCore companions/clients to your family members.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeshCore
|
| https://meshcore.co.uk/
|
| https://meshcore.co.uk/map.html
|
| Your family memebers should be able to send you encrypted text
| messages using the MeshCore network only, with no dependence on
| cellular network or the Internet.
|
| They just need to be in range of your repeater or in areas
| covered by other nodes that can transitively reach yours. If
| you are too far from other repeaters to connect, you might need
| to arrange for some intermediate repeaters being installed. But
| due to their solar nature (with solar charged battery for night
| operation), only a secure mounting is needed - this makes
| gaining permission of their installation a lot easier. With
| good placement a repeater has a range in dozens of kilometers.
|
| Some example hardware currently recommended for use:
|
| client/companion: Meshtastic Nordic nRF52840 SX1262 LoRaWAN
| LoRa Arduino Positioning Devboard Low Power TFT Display BLE
| WiFi Mesh node T114 V2.0" -
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007593391057.html
|
| solar repeater: SenseCAP Solar Node P1-Pro for Meshtastic -
| https://www.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-Solar-Node-P1-Pro-for-M...
| randallsquared wrote:
| > _Do you want an always-on Alexa in your hotel room?_
|
| I encountered literally this for the first time a couple weeks
| ago. At one point we noticed it was doing the "listening for
| command" thing during an unrelated conversation, and my wife
| said, "Alexa, stop listening!", whereupon it told us to use the
| physical switch for the mic on the device if we didn't want it
| listening.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| Back in my undergrad years c1994 a professor brought a new
| assignment to our special topics course in design thinking. It
| was a report from a NY telecommunications firm.
|
| I can't recall the details. Only that I "predicted" a dark vision
| of your refrigerator competing in a foods market to buy your
| staple products at the best price whenever your stock became low.
| And then, of course it all goes awry when you end up with 6 cases
| of milk.
|
| I tried searching for some hint of the telecom project that was
| the start of our class assignment. No luck. But I did find this
| viddy on YouTube with a great intro with interviews of the
| "person on the street".
|
| https://youtu.be/waQy2WKHiwY
| WorldMaker wrote:
| A possible catalyst might have been the 1993 AT&T "You Will" Ad
| Campaign. It was very prescient but also the joke is that the
| commercials ended with "and the company that will bring it to
| you will be AT&T", which did not pan out in the ways that ad
| campaign thought.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvZ-667CEdo
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