Talk:1623: 2016 Conversation Guide

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 14:18, 30 December 2015 by 162.158.152.227 (talk)
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In response to the title text, "You know, it's such a beautiful day that I think I'll walk." See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_Such_a_Beautiful_Day. 198.41.238.32 07:23, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

A number of "inventions" from various science fiction stories of the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries are listed with how they have progressed in the present. Some are currently being used (flying car) but in a different manner than originally imagined (helicopters, which use rotating blades rather than stationary airfoils -- wings -- for lift). Some are impractical for physical reasons (floating sky city) and some have economic (moon colony) or social impediments (jetpack). The entry for "hoverboard" and the title text refer to two different kinds: the science fiction version in "Back to the Future" is a skateboard with some form of levitation instead of wheels, while the current version is a short skateboard that has more freedom of motion but less stable balance than a conventional skateboard.

There are two possibilities for "robot butler": either it refers to the "ask Jeeves" search engine or implies that P. G. Wodehouse's "perfect gentleman's gentleman" was a robot. The Dining Logician (talk) 08:36, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Jeeves is also the name of a "robot butler" in World of Warcraft. Although it's a pretty convenient item even if it's 4 years old, it's not that great compared to what you would expect from a true "robot butler". Jeeves merely allows you to repair your equipment or access your bank, both of which are really easy to do anyway. 108.162.228.89 14:03, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

My reply:

  1. We live in a parallel future. Who in the 1950s extrapolated smartphones and the Internet?
  2. Flight technology has advanced a lot in this millennium (e.g. ArcaBoard, drones, etc).
  3. So have AI & robotics (e.g. cybernetics, drones, roomba, Siri, teledildonics, etc).

-- Frankie (talk) 12:29, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Apart from the slight problem of the two actors involved being somewhat sadly aged (in different ways), there was this for Back To The Future Day, that this reminds me of... 162.158.152.227 12:59, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

So, to prevent edit conflicts I wrote the plaintext explanation and then went back in for links. Which then got edit conflicted, so I had to work quickly to combine the two. I think I then managed to get Condor70's contributions back in, but obviously it's open to further checking. See main-page history for my/their interventions... 162.158.152.227 14:18, 30 December 2015 (UTC)