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What do cell phones look like in the year 2144?
Obviously they won't have a screen anymore. They'll be pop-up displays. So if you're sitting on a train and your romantic partner sends you a steamy selfie...guess who has an audience?
Has this annoyed anyone else?
If they're tactical screens, that makes sense. But I still don't think transparent displays on personal devices will be a thing in the future.
Obviously they won’t have a screen anymore. They’ll be pop-up displays. So if you’re sitting on a train and your romantic partner sends you a steamy selfie…guess who has an audience?
What we expect a new tech to deliver and what it actually becomes are two very different things.
Eg: Video calls.
When 3G (first video call capable network) was rolled out in the early '00s every telco and tech pundit was talking about the coming age of the video phone where everyone would video call everyone else.
What happened?
Voice call traffic fell off a cliff (and video calls died for a decade) as everyone was texting rather than calling on their phones.
2023, and I HATE video calls. I mean, I don't like audio either, but video is just.... Please let me just do my work. At the very least don't make me come on camera to talk to people who also don't want to talk to me.
Same. It's one thing if I'm calling my 7-year old niece that lives 100 miles away but I miss her and want to see her face. It's something else entirely when I'm on a call I don't want to be on in the first place, listening to people I don't need to hear from who aren't even talking to me.
I suspect it'll be neural implants. embedded on the optical nerve somewhere, injecting hologram-like images into our field of view. Maybe toss in some sort of marking system for our fingertips for the implant to track as an interface device.
this could also conceivably provide tactile feed back through weak shocks to the fingertips, mimicking touching something, giving you the floaty keyboard and private conversations.
Adverts piped directly into my brain? Oh joy
You can be sure that the day someone invents ads that get piped directly into your brain is the day before someone invents an adblocker for them.
You can choose between a pair of nintendo power gloves or tattooing your fingertips and little qr-codes on the fingernails.
I was thinking some sort of IR reflective ink. or UV reflective ink tattooes... on the pads and behind the fingernails (ouch)
So many movies and shows have phones being transparent rectangles that look like a piece of glass. It's impractical for so many reasons from privacy to even being able to hold the thing.
Honestly I don't think cellphones will change that much going forward. They will get more powerful. Maybe they will continue to replace other computing devices for people such as laptops, desktops and gaming consoles, but the form factor is as practical as it gets.
Yeah, from an actual usability and privacy standpoint, that's horrible design. It does make for good visuals with the actor and the display in frame at the same time. No more "closeup of a message on a phone display"
I'm personally hoping for smart stuff to get a bit more distributed. A phone-like CPU unit in my pocket streaming display content to my watch and AR glasses or a full size screen on the seat in front of me on the subway. Simple visual and vibration notifications from a smart ring.
This is my bet as well. I think at some point, foldable screens will get good enough to get mass market, and then it will be about how thin/light they can make those so they get bigger screens but the device remains pocketable. Not to mention, screen tech matches/exceeds today. That's the practical appeal of things like holos outside of just being aesthetically "future looking."
I'm also very interested in the idea of AR glasses that can be worn normally, but that's pretty limited by physics right now (battery and camera tech especially.)
Don't worry, everything will be owned by a few companies, and privacy won't even be an understood concept.
In the futuuuuuuure, the concept of privacy has become obsolete. You share everything with everyone and the thing is, no one cares. Everyone has seen everything. Nothing is embarrassing any more. Until one day, the Cringelord is reborn...
I'm hooked, when's this book coming out?
Honestly, probably Star Wars’ fault for the popularization of the blue kind of glitchy hologram specifically. Would be interested to hear if anyone can name any pre-SW hologram effects.
In film, sure.
Holograms we’re around in one way or another. What’s her name in the Naked Sun (Asimov, the victims “husband”…) produced holographic art. That was first published in book form in ‘57.
Star Wars may have been the first largely because they were special effects pioneers.
What seems most off to me is that they’re holograms but aside from that basic fact, they look like shit. Monochrome line drawings… really? A hologram of that is better than a high res, full color picture? Why can’t the holograms be full color and high quality?
Take Star Wars communication holograms, for example. They’re fucking freestanding 3D entities that walk around your room and sit in chairs and shit. But they’re grainy, with washed out colors and static distorting them constantly. Why???
The Expanse actually made immersive 3D holographic interfaces that looked great and seemed useful. They filled the room - you could walk into them, grab them, zoom them around, pan, etc. This is really the only compelling depiction I’ve seen.
I always saw holograms as a cinematic device rather than something we'd actually used, much like the superbright monitors that would project what was on the screen onto the the actors, which allowed the fourth wall audience more information about what's going on.
It's much like the Star Trek transporter, less a plausible technology, and more an instrument of the medium.
OK; that's starting to make sense. Thanks.
Holograms are my gripe as well. Three dimensional holograms have at least some use, but those 2D holograms are always worse than just having a regular screen. They're washed out, sometimes not even full colour just greyscale (or blue, yellow, whatever). You'd need hard light holograms that can produce solid objects like in Star Trek for them to be useful. Like, in that case you could hide displays while not in use, easily carry the small holo emitter around and adjust the size to your liking.
Another non-favorite of mine is the sci-fi bend. Where everything just has a 125 degree bend in it for some reason. Screens? Just cut out a bit at the corner with a 125 degree bend. Door? Seam down the middle will have a 125 degree bend in it. Wall panels? Random 125 degree bend in the line.
Shown in what? Movies and series? In those holograms and transparent screens are used because it allows the audience to see what's happening, trading realism for improved visual story telling.
As for realistic where mobile tech is going, my guess it will be pretty much what we have now, just more compact and foldable.
Eventually advances in AR and brain interfaces might make the "rectangular slabs" be replaced by something more discrete which no longer requires physical inputs. Doubt they'd be called a mobile phone though.
I really liked what was used in The Expanse series.
The expanse remains my favourite portrayal of future technology, it looks actually nice to use and seems very realistic if we assume we can become able to make those things.
Like the fact that the main device is a dirt cheap mass-produced plexiglass phone that are just terminals and rely on servers, that some people have larger ones in a tablet format at home, the way it takes advantage of holograms to expand content outside of the device itself when useful, and my favourite part is how most of the interaction is entirely gesture-based, because who the fuck wants to go around shouting at their phone???
Interfacing is such a pet peeve of mine in scifi, i don't want to tell the room to turn on the lights, i want to make motion of turning a dimmer in the direction of a lamp and have it act like i'm actually turning a physical dimmer!
Similarily i don't want devices talking to me, i want them making intuitive noises and if they ever do have to speak to convey complex information i want it to be in a clearly artificial voice because otherwise it's creepy.
Voice interaction has a time and place, it's useful for communicating very complex stuff quickly and without needing a free limb (that scene), but good god it just becomes annoying if you use that as the primary way of interacting..
Similarily i don't want devices talking to me, i want them making intuitive noises and if they ever do have to speak to convey complex information i want it to be in a clearly artificial voice because otherwise it's creepy.
I would love to find some interesting voices of this type for my phone TTS. Everything is "natural" now, but what if I want a voice like SHODAN or something?
Me too
That far ahead it'll definitely be neural implants. Beam it straight into your eye or brain.
Yup, see through screens too. Like in the future people would rather show off than have privacy. Actually with the ubiquitousness of apple and Samsung products it's probably true.
It's far more likely it's displayed directly into your brain.
I mean, we're talking about 121 years from now - enough time to go from the telegraph to VR multiplayer games played by people from 5 continents over a worldwide network: it kinda seems logical that some kind of direct brain interface tech (for which there are already some very early stage things) will have been developed by them.
It's very simple. The ad gets into your brain just like this liquid gets into this egg.
Can't remember the title or author. Co-ed space crews working in heavy environmental armor. Each person can set their armor to allow different levels of transparency. You can set it so only your prefered partners can see your face, or see more if you're so inclined.
100 years from now? All technology will be wearable or implanted, screens won't exist anymore for personal devices but data will be either projected or beamed directly. Woeln't be at all surprised if by then it's largely organic and implanted at birth.
Maybe the content of the display can be encrypted and is only accessible by the wearer in a certain mode
It's like that trick where you take out the polarizing layer in a screen, then you can only see the screen if you have the polarizing layer in front of your eyes
Nah, the hologram is just the TV representation of what's playing in the user's brain via neural implant. They don't show the part with the direct-to-brain 5 minute unskippable ad though...
Worse than that, when they are talking on a hologram phone the speaker is always looking down at the hologram and the hologram is looking up at the speaker. On both ends. If it was a hologram of the speaker they would be looking down.
AI in the system can fix this. Basically real-time deep fakes
Yep. And it’s already been a thing for a few years now. Facetime makes it look like you’re looking right at each other.
But then it would always look like the hologram was starting at your crotch, which might get awkward.
That’s always annoyed me too. Same with holographic computer screens that allow people on the other side to see what you’re doing. Only way it’d work is if there was a way to limit the view to the person using the device.
And holographic keyboards that appear on an otherwise blank desk. They’d better have really strong tactile feedback or not only would you be poking the hard desk all day, you have to stare at the keyboard the entire time.
Yes it's annoying and this is the reason holographic displays like this will probably never be marketed even when the technology is readily available. Probably it will be something more like augmented reality glasses (which I find equally obnoxious) where people just see their own holographic display when they have the glasses on. If we're talking all the way in 2144 it probably won't be actual glasses but some kind of contacts or a chip implant or something