We live in amazing times, but life still feels pretty ordinary. Your computer, your smartphone, your “smart” fridge, all encompass tech that was impossible last decade, but using it feels commonplace. Everyone’s got one exception though, a piece of modern tech that still feels like The Future. What’s yours?
For me, it’s gotta be video chatting. Whether you call it Skype, FaceTime, GoToMeeting, or whatever, staring into a screen and seeing someone staring back at me always feels somehow science-fictiony. It doesn’t matter that webcams have been around since I was in high school, or that I’ve probably had hundreds of Skype conversations with people halfway across the globe. Whenever I open some kind of app or program that lets me see the face attached to the voice, I feel like I’ve somehow snuck into The Jetsons.
We all use tech for mundane stuff: Spreadsheets, email, big boring files full of bland monotony. If you explained to someone in 1914 that the average person today spends all day staring into a limitless information portal, they’d probably imagine something a lot more exciting that Excel and Gmail.
But there are still pieces of tech that bring us joy, that never grow old, that give us that little jolt of pleasure every time we use them. I know you can think of one — otherwise you probably wouldn’t be reading Gizmodo. So tell us: what feels like the future to you?
Image: The Toshiba company’s new videophone, the Model 500 View Phone, being tested at the company’s Tokyo headquarters, May 6, 1968. Via Getty Images.