Computer phones. As in I just connect to screen and keyboard, and phone is my main desktop.
Cheaper EVs.
Working lab fusion.
If its just for a productivity office type work, samsung phones can do this but it is account locked which is annoying
EVs are pretty cheap now. How cheap did you think?
Slightly cheaper than fuel by 10% for similar cars (including country of origin)
As cheap as gasoline cars
Compassion, empathy, socialism.
Ability to live in balance with the earth
Only after the nuclear winter
Guillotines and a lineup of billionaires in straight jackets
Really fancy guillotines, with Internet Access, Bluetooth, and AI, of course.
“I’m Alan, your Virtual Execution Assistant. I can offer you a choice of a Last Cigarette, or Last Words, which would you like to choose?”
I thought we would be able to redo our dna in adults using viruses or other vectors completely. Where we are now I thought we would be in like 2010. So we are making progress but I thought we would be farther along and genetic disease would be a thinf of the past.
Hoverboards.
I think the self tightening shoes would have been doable. But we still didn’t get those.
Nike actually did make those. they sell them.
LED light bulbs were supposed to last a bajillion hours. When they came out around 2010-ish they were still expensive and I spent many hundreds of dollars replacing every single light bulb in my house, thinking I would basically never have to replace a light bulb again.
It’s 2026 and I now replace the LED bulbs in my house almost as often as I replaced incandescent bulbs. Seriously? LEDs are solid-state technology. There are no moving parts, no gases, no hot filaments…
I understand that it’s probably on purpose; if everyone replaced all the light bulbs in their house with LED bulbs that lasted basically forever then who would buy more light bulbs from light bulb manufacturers.
But it’s still just dumb. Either LED technology is flawed, or our economic system that incentivizes a constant cycle of replacing bulbs is flawed. This should should not exist in 2026.
Oh that’s a fun one. Original incandescents lasted a very long time. Too long (over 10,000 hrs, and there are many examples of ones that have been lit for decades!). The various manufacturers actually conspired(spent a lot of money on research and development) to a 1,000 hr operational benchmark. Profits exploded.
This is common (engineered predictable fault.)
The Phoebus Cartel was objectively terrible, but it turns out there are perfectly good engineering reasons to limit them to 1000 hours. It has to do with the chemistry of tungsten. Those bulbs that last forever give off exceedingly little light, and the 1000 hour rule is from a standard that predates the cartel.
That was clearly not an engineer.
no hot filaments…
There may not be filaments, but heat is still an issue for LEDs.
Some bulb manufacturers basically overdrive cheaper diodes to get extra brightness at the cost of generating extra heat. Some of those manufacturers compensate for the heat in some way, others don’t even bother and produce bulbs with a service life of months instead of decades. Some of these are fly-by-night online sellers that won’t exist anymore by the time their products start to fail. Others are established brands that people will blindly purchase based on a reputation that no longer matches reality. There are some reliable brands out there if you read up on it, but why the fuck should we have to research every little inane item in our life?
Aside from corporate greed, though, there are other reasons heat causes early LED bulb failure. Two common ones are incompatible devices on the same circuit (like light dimmers), and installing the bulb in an enclosure without adequate heat dissipation (like a ceiling ‘boob’ light).
I’ve been all LED for well over a decade, and have had a good experience so far. I personally tend to buy smart bulbs that can put out way more light than I need, and run them at 20-50% brightness most of the time. Feit Electric and Govee’s basic smart bulbs have been pretty reliable for me, but I admit I’m a pretty small sample size. I know I’m paying a premium for that approach, but it’s not unreasonable and I do prefer not having to worry about it.
I was there for the transition period between incandescents and LEDs: The CFL.
Something is wrong with the ones you’re buying, then.
Studies show that they do, on average, last dozens of times longer. Personally I replace them way less often than incandescent.
I suppose the earliest ones were worse and there are definitely garbage ones out there. And even good brands have a did here and there. And if you have poor/inconsistent power, or placing them in hot, enclosed fixtures, they don’t perform as well as they could.
I bought some on clearance about a decade ago, my wife thought I was crazy buying 20 bulbs, I gave 1/4 of them away and I’ve still not run out.
Who were the studies done by? Philips?
The DOE, Energy Star, others
From my experience, what tends to get messed up is the internal wiring. The actual leds will continue working fine, but cheap/shitty wiring will make the lamp stop working
Buy dimmer, filament style LEDs. They don’t burn themselves out hy heat at least.
Otherwise you’re facing planned obsolescence.
When I was a kid in the 80s I thought we’d absolutely have some kind of moon base by now. More space stuff in general. What is more “future” than space?
Green energy is maybe 10 years behind where younger me would have wished it to be, it feels we’re close to some big breakthroughs. I’m still hopefully to see some game changing things in my lifetime.
There’s just really not a very useful reason outside of “because we can”, so it hasn’t really been a priority. Still, that’s kinda the point of the Artemis program, so we’re getting there.
Usefulness is no fun. Those 80s and 90s attitudes wouldn’t worry about something like that. We’d have done it just show off and/or to keep the Soviets from doing it first. Don’t tell us we have rocks at home, I want space rocks. I want a bucket full of ice from the rings of Saturn. I want a slab of something that got melted by Venus. That stuff is cool.
I hope they do something fun with Artemis. It doesn’t feel like most people are excited for space anymore and that bums me out.
For All Mankind is coming back in a few days, so that will have to do for now.
Eh, the 80s and 90s were a marked shift towards usefulness. Gotta maximize shareholder value, dontcha know.
Synthetic meat that’s actually edible/palatable
It’s hard to synthesize the animal suffering that people crave
That is objectively a silly thing to say.
I’m not a vegan but I do believe that eating meat from an animal that suffered it’s whole life surely passes on to the person who consumed it.
I don’t eat meat that often but when I do I always buy free range.
I tell people, even if you can’t go vegetarian or vegan (I’m one of those) you can reduce your consumption of animal products. Be more mindful of wasting animal products and always buy free range when possible.
If everyone scales back a bit that would make a huge difference.
I think it depends on what you mean when you say “synthetic meat”.
I use quorn mince when I’m making spaghetti bolognese and lasagne. If you add marmite to the “mince” when you’re doing the initial cook the final dish is indistinguishable from real meat tbh.
I agree that other meat replacements aren’t the same and probably won’t be for a while, although Aldi have recently started selling something that resembles a steak which I want to try.
I refer to - Not meat from animals.
We have that already and I’ve eaten it.
I’ve tried a lot and have not found any of it very appetizing.
Most has a very rubbery texture as soon as it cools slightly.
Very unpleasant.
I’d rather just not have any meat than have it.
But it you have had the good stuff, please send me your recommendations.
Good synthetic meat exists, it’s just more expensive to produce so you usually can’t buy it at like a corner store or something
I thought VR/AR would be farther along. There was a pitch 10 years ago that VR would be the “final platform” in that anything a phone, TV, tablet, or computer could do could be easily emulated in VR.
Unfortunately it’s still all walled gardens. Also nobody wants to wear that shit for more than an hour.
Brain implants are progressing, so I’m still hopeful to see full-dive VR in my lifetime. Also scared of how it will be enshtitfied.
More specifically I thought one of the approaches to an omni-treadmill would catch on enough for an at-home model to be available to the public.
I thought we’d have affordable 8TB SSD’s.
I thought we would finally have haptic touch in our devices. There were some experiments in the past, but it never happened outside of niche industry applications.
Makes me a little bit sad, because being able to feel elements is really useful - I can type blind on my Titan 2 phone (which has a real keyboard) and in cars, it would really improve safety.
What would improve car safety is you beeing focused on handling your car and nothing else
Yes, by being able to feel the controls so can focus your eyes on the road in front of you.
Windshield wipers that don’t smear.
Level 4 self driving cars.
I too thought self driving cars would be further along. It just seemed like they were already decent… so 5 to 10 more years… and we are not much further. We have self driving cars in some select cities, but they still struggle even then.
Actual hoverboards, as promised.
