Be careful what you wish for!

Many things that you could only vision to happen in the old days is reality nowadays. I do not claim to have visioned these technological innovations but surely there were some wishes for such future development back in the old days.

STREAMING

When I was a kid, I imagined how convenient it would be that when you switched off TV, you could start over from the same program next time you switch it on. Obviously, the idea was not to have to watch each and every program from the start to an end, but to be able to have a break and then continue watching. Then again, who wanted to have a break when your favorite program was shown only once a week, one hour per time. How convenient it would have been if you could have watched many episodes one after other! Little did I know back then that in future, thanks to video streaming services such as Netflix, HBO Max and Amazon Prime, just to mention few, you could actually watch a) whatever content you want, b) whenever you want, c) as long as you want and d) as many times as you like – with or without breaks.

The same is true with music. My cassette recorder generation waited in front of the radio, just to hear that awaited song and then played “record” button, to be able to replay (= stop, rewind, play) it later. It could be that you didn’t even know who the singer was but you knew it would be played on the radio, eventually, just like in that store where you first heard it. How convenient would it have been if you could have had some sort of “device” which could have identified the song when you initially heard it and tell you what it was. Indeed, one day in car my daughter activated an app in her mobile phone when radio was playing a song (e.g. “Shazam will identify music playing around you or in apps like TikTok, Instagram & YouTube.”) Well, my generation did not have apps or devices, not even an “oracle” where to scroll radio channel playlists. If we knew the good song, we typically needed to buy the whole album (later CD) from the artist. For long, there was no easy way to do playlists compiled of different artists, but at some point you could create running music list for yourself by first downloading the songs to computer and then uploading them to MP3-player. Needless to say, all this is now peace of cake with music streaming apps, such as Spotify and Apple Music.

COMMUNICATION

Not to mention phone calls. How convenient it would have been if you could have reached your pals when you missed the bus you were supposed to meet them, instead of just taking the next bus and hoping them to wait for you in the destination. Or, how convenient it would have been to have two different landlines when your sister chatted in the phone and you waited for a call, or you urgently needed to call someone. And when you finally managed to make your call, and the called one didn’t answer, how convenient it would have been to leave a message that you could get response to. Who would have thought that in future, everyone would have personal phone line and number, and that you could communicate also in writing? Thanks Nokia for connecting people! And of course all the other smart phone companies, you name them.

Even at the rather short time of mobile phones, communication has already changed. It can be seen from e.g. how children are acting. In the early days of mobile phones, kids used to pretend talking in phone by having their toy phone on their ear. Today they are talking video calls, by having the phone in front of their face. When touch screens and pads started to prevail, children were allegedly trying to swipe TV screens.

PHOTOGRAPHY

What about photography? Even as a young adult, when I was home with my first child, I still had a film camera. How convenient would it have been to get to see the pictures immediately, not to mention select the best shots, instead of taking the whole film to camera shop and waiting for few days to get the photos – both good and bad. And when you were in an unexpected or unique situation that required taking a photo, how convenient it would have been if you had taken your camera with you, to capture the moment. Or – and this I could not even vision! – when talking about communication, what if you could send the moment and share it with someone remote in real-time? That would be something!

NAVIGATING

In my childhood, before our holiday trips around Finland, my father used to study a paper map on the living room table and marked the route with red pen. It was probably read by my mum when my dad was driving. If you selected wrong road, you had to inspect the map and original route again. Depending on the age of the map some routes could have changed, and in any case the map could not anticipate roadworks or traffic jams. How convenient would it have been to have a “dynamic map” which could change its appearance according to circumstances, and how futuristic it would be if your car could actually guide you to drive to destination? Then again, only KITT by Knight Rider could do something like that, not cars in real life. Right? What next? Cars that could drive on their own? Such autonomous vehicles sound like from “Back to the future”.

SEARCHING INFORMATION

In the old days, if we needed to find information for the school project, we went to the library. We could search for suitable books using the library computer but the actual information was found from the books. How convenient it would have been if the information could have been found from the (unix) computer? For herbarium, we actually needed to pick the plants and clue them to the folder. I myself have assisted my kids in taking photos of plants with their school iPads, by keeping a piece of paper next to the plants, their name and date marked therein, in order for teachers to verify that photos are not from internet. Indeed, internet is nowadays the place where almost any information can be found. If only had we known!

AI & CHATBOTS

When talking about searching for information, one cannot leave out the artificial intelligence. You don’t even have to search the information by yourself anymore, not to mention produce pictures or text – chatbots do it for you. AI has attracted movie makers for long, so there were visionary people who have seen also this future beforehand. I have to say that based on the movies, I myself have not exactly wished for artificial intelligence at least to take such a power to people that it in those movies has had. Hopefully mankind uses its power wisely to good things such as developing cure for cancer, or to create world piece. ?

“Be careful what you wish for”. As many childhood wishes are now reality, I need to carefully consider what to wish next. ??

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