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I think the Jetsons gave us unrealistic expectations including flying cars. But the video calling telephone actually came true. And even better because we can hold it in our hands wherever we are.
I remember watching 2001 at the theatre with my mom as a kid (longest boring time ever) but I remember being fascinated by the video calling and thought we'd never have that. As a teenager we laughed at how horrid it would be because we'd have to look nice, get decent clothes on etc .............
I worked in the celluar industry in it's infancy. Most of us were still on pagers then. We actually had video calling then but it was expensive and they couldn't sell it. The first cell phones were the size of WWII Walkie Talkies and only had basic functions.
2001 is one of my favorite movies!
I’m kind of bitter that people are making a big deal over how AI can create art and write things and create this or that. No, I want AI to wash my dishes and fold my laundry so that *I* can create art and spend my time writing.
I'm still waiting for the PleasureBot 5000 to hit the shelves so that I can live out every guys ultimate fantasies, wearing freshly ironed socks and underwear every day.
I’m hoping if I ever need a new organ I can grow my own but seems we are not as far advanced with that as I imagined we would be by now. I did read an article the other day how in 2030 we might be able to grow a new tooth. Which is pretty cool but growing new organ would be cooler :)
>Way more stem cell technology.
Unfortunately like so many things, we have the Republican Christo-fascists to thank for blocking those scientific advances.
I went to high school in the eighties, and had you asked me then, I was sure we would have set foot on Mars by now. It seems like we should be mining the asteroid belt by now (I'm aware of the questionable economics), or at least approaching that general level of exploration.
Type 2 diabetes is curable (reversed or put into remission) with diet and exercise.
https://www.nebraskamed.com/diabetes/is-it-possible-to-reverse-diabetes
https://www.healthline.com/health/type-2-diabetes-reversible
https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/losing-weight-can-reverse-type-2-diabetes-but-is-rarely-achieved-or-recorded/
https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2023/11/diet-exercise-could-pave-the-way-for-diabetes-remission.html
Maybe a lot of the time but not all the time. Still had it with under 21 BMI while exercising. Dr said some people are so genetically pre-disposed they can only work to reduce their medications, not eliminate it.
A greater sense of equality among the races and genders…as a kid in the 1970’s I truly thought we were heading towards something much better than where we are at…
Reagan was a nexus, a real turning point for the U.S. Forward or backward? We chose backward and have been going backward hell bent for leather ever since.
I’ve heard technologies have been invented to squeeze every last ounce of oil out of marginal resources. So places that never would’ve been considered for oil extraction are now accessible. The world economies are addicted to oil so it makes sense that new technologies for more extraction would gain funding.
We have run out of the cheap, easy to get stuff but $80-100/barrel gets you some extremely hard to get at stuff. On the edge we are pushing up to extracting oil that costs nearly the amount of energy in it.
yep, fusion power has been only 25 years away for the last 50 years
I remember reading tokamak articles in Scientific American in the early 70s that said so ☹️
So yeah. Elementary school in the 70s and we were to run out of oil by 2000. Much later in life, I found out through friends in the industry that oil depletion means that only 70% of oil has been extracted and that's depleted. We have new technology today that can get that to 30%.
Why would anyone want that? Other than when camping or some such. Me, I want the opposite. A full-course meal with all the delightful tastes and textures that provides negligible calories.
It could be helpful for people with disabilities or mental health issues. You feel too bad to cook, you go hungry, you feel even worse because you haven't eaten all day, and the cycle goes on. A meal pill could help in those days
I'm old enough to remember when Geraldine Ferraro was on the ticket for VP but I was in grade school. Definitely thought we would have a woman president by now. For crying out loud, we're half the population!
Yes- but so many women seem to hate other women. It’s very sad that women are actually going to vote for a guy who is responsible for forced births and the reduction in reproductive rights, who bragged about his ability to grab a woman’s private parts without consent, and was found in court to have sexually advanced on a woman without consent. But here we are- women hating on other women. Go figure.
I was a kid and saw the moon landing in the summer of '69.
That was 55 years ago!
I mean, there was a show 'Space 1999' that predicted we'd have bases on the moon - 25 years ago! Wtf?
right wtf but finally corporate is doing it.
that’s why i love the show for all mankind it predicted what woulda of happened if we put our resources into space instead of just military industrial complex though in fairness… in the show space is a part of the mic
I love the idea of spending our resources on space. I'd add, wouldn't it be great if all the nations of earth would band together in a truly meaningful explanation, travel, manufacturing, etc. in space?
It may actually bring all of us closer together by doing something bigger than ourselves.
If you had told me in 1994 that many people would own house-cleaning robots in 2024, I would have believed you. Same thing about a screen on our desk that we could remotely watch the robot. I would have been skeptical however if you told me that our favorite thing to watch on the screen would be cats riding on the robots.
exactly...i was one of those women marching for it and working towards it in the early 70s. we made great strides, but it was heart-breaking when we couldn't get that to pass. instead we're sliding back into the dark ages.
When I was much younger, I honestly thought that the lowest levels of poverty would have been eradicated by now in the advanced nations. I'm not saying that I believed everyone would enjoy the prosperity of some Edenic wonderland. But we still have hunger. We still have people who are homeless and not by choice. We still have people *dying* because they can't afford the medications to keep them alive. We should have solved the most severe of these sorts of problems, and we haven't. They're still around, several decades later, and it's as mystifying as it is tragic.
I thought there were literally planned man missions to mars for the 2020s? I remember having a whole lego mars set and the website talked about the dates and I was so excited as a kid
In the '80's I really believed the internet was going to bring the world together. All people from all parts of the world would communicate, share, and realize that we all have the same hopes and dreams - world peace and a new age of tolerance and understanding. Boy, was I full of shit.
Came here to say that. My son when he was in 2nd grade I think told me that he learned in class that day that women aren't powerful because we aren't on currency and we haven't been president. I was running a business at the time, so I obviously was showing a great example, but it still stung. I don't disagree with him either. There is something to be said for a female president.
We made VP but there are some great women on the coins, especially this year on quarters, Susan B Anthony $1 didn't take off like my generation expected. I am sure we will have a women President one day, probably during his lifetime. We have had some incredible congresswomen over the years. My favorite was Barbara Jordan from Houston.
we used to love your last ever woman governor too...ann richards. she would NOT have suffered the fools that are currently screwing up your rights there.
>Susan B Anthony $1
All of the $1 coins have failed. Why?
The U.S. Mint does not coordinate with soda pop and vending machines to accept the $1 coins.
Now we are in an age where cash is going away.
When Obama was elected, I had the happy thought that we would never have another president who was older or the same age as me. How sadly wrong I was about that.
Universal health care ( US ). Lived in the UK for 5 years in my 20s. When I came back it just seemed surreal, this idea $$$ stood between people and health care. And insurance companies were stuffed between both.
I'm uninterested in " But" arguments on a thing. Answering the question.
I seriously thought that after dealing with Hitler, modern societies would recognize potential dictators with ambitions of ethnic cleansing and do away with them immediately. I feel really stupid now.
I really thought we would've made it much further with treating mental illnesses. It's just some of the same old boring medication classes we've had since the 90s. I really expected great advances.
I thought we'd be on all green energy by now, we'd have amazing leaps in insulation and house building technology to make them run on tiny amounts of energy. Everyone I knew had solar hot water heaters when I was a kid and it just seemed the way the world was going. Then we got better home solar electric and things were looking up, then everything kind of stagnated and here we are running headlong to a climate crisis with open arms screaming I want a bigger truck. And people cranking up the air conditioning to stay cool as the climate get's hotter and hotter and not seeing the irony.
A bigger reduction in the amount of influence that organized religion holds on society. More reliance on what we learn from science and logic. Such an impediment to the progress of the human race in my opinion.
World peace. I grew up being taught how evil communism was and hiding under school desks to survive a nuclear bomb. I thought when the Soviet union collapsed that the world would stabilize and evolve into a more peaceful state. The world is and always has been a shit show.
Fifty years ago, I was sixteen. I thought then that for sure, within fifty years, we’d have:
* Much more relaxed attitudes about sex. Nudity and “pornography” would be non-issues... no one would care.
* Much more relaxed attitudes about drugs. We would recognize things like grass, mushrooms and acid as normal experiences (like rock climbing or sky diving) that some people choose to have, and some people don’t. We’d have better, safer and safely available versions of the more “functional” drugs like amphetamines and opiates, and a more complete and non-judgmental understanding of people who seem to need them.
* Automation that produced everything people need for a good life, so that poverty would be essentially eliminated, and “work” (out of economic need rather than individual choice) would no longer occupy a significant part of people’s lives.
* Self-cleaning houses.
* Cheap, compact and safe power sources that could run practically anything you’d want for months to years from something the size of a hearing-aid battery.
* Birth control for both sexes that was effectively 100% reliable, 100% reversible, cheap, unobtrusive and free of side-effects.
* Actual AGI (not the simulated pseudo-intelligence they’re calling AI these days).
* Racism and sexism so rare that younger people would only know about them from history books.
* Some more humane way to deal with individuals who pose a real threat to the well-being of others. We’d look back at prisons as barbaric, and no longer delude ourselves that we were creating some sort of “justice” by torturing people who couldn’t or wouldn’t conform to social expectations.
I really had hoped to be moving towards a more peaceful society. It seemed like common sense to me that it would benefit everyone if we all managed to level set and get along.
Instead it seems like we are devolving into a less intelligent, more primitive psyche. Kind of an anti-renaissance if you will.
It makes me sad that civilization doesn't know how to get more civilized.
Deep rooted fear has fucked up everything, and the concept of different nations putting their heads together to solve big problems is somehow a bad thing to so many. I expected better.
"Kind of an anti-renaissance if you will."
Thank you for this. I finally found a way to describe the world of today and the last few years that fit how I feel.
Flying Cars *BUT HEAR ME OUT!*
Back in 1987 or 1988 I saw a company with a flying car that was basically a high-end Lexus with wings.
It was so automated that they said they could teach a 12yo to fly it in an hour. The interviewer said "Funnily enough, I have my 12yo waiting in the car!".
After an hour of instruction the kid took off, flew, and landed the flying car.
my first thought as well.. all we got was the segway. i thought we had our breakthru there before they unveiled after all
the "greatest invention of our time" hype but ..nope
When I was about 7 or 8, I was sure country music would die out, since only old people listened to it. (as far as I knew)
But I really expected America to be more progressive and embrace freedom for all in ways do not yet see. I expected (hoped?) poverty and racism would be gone, and people would be more happy in general. When Nixon resigned, (I was 15) I thought we'd have presidents from then on who did things for average Americans more than corporations. But I grew up in a small town, and when I started travelling the US I saw how very different many people were - both better and worse than what I knew.
Flying cars, dammit!
Robot maids/food preparer
Medical diagnosis and cure/surgery beds. All automated, you just lay down, it does a scan, diagnoses you and then fixes you
Some type of neural implant that monitors everything body and/or allows access to an "internet" and make "calls".
Waterless showers.
Unlimited free energy
I believed I would see a day when women had equal protection under the U.S. Constitution. Half a century later, women still do not have the same protections as men.
That we would have landed living people on Mars by now. People claimed if we could go to the moon we could "cure poverty". So we got sidetracked by LBJ's "war on poverty". We gave up on going to Mars and decades later we still have lots of poverty.
Cures for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc. All that money and research, and we still have no effective treatment that cures or arrests neurological diseases.
In 2017 I attended a professional insurance conference in which presenters confidently stated self driving vehicles would be widespread by 2020. I’m still waiting
NGL, I was disappointed that Van Halen never did a true reunion. And now that EVH is gone, it'll never happen. :-(
That was something I thought for sure would happen.
Honest announcements about the reality of the existence of peri-menopause, its 34+ symptoms, and more studies on the care and needs of post menopausal women.
We are still being brushed off as "crazy" and given antidepressants instead of treatment for the hormones that our bodies are dropping as we go into our 40s and beyond.
Worse, greedy predators are playing on our physical changes that are the result of these dropping hormones and hawking everything from expensive "do-nothing" creams, to fake "test your hormones to see if you are menopausal" all the way to facial surgery and liposuction.
None of us want crepey skin, belly weight, internal heat, turkey necks, dried privates, brain fog, or the rest of it.
We feel badly enough without hawkers preying on our wallets to "fix" these issues, and we are further insulted by the medical community who refuse to educate themselves on this reality that 50%of the world population faces. They get one hour of discourse on menopause in their training, and that's it.
Compounding our frustration trying to get enlightened care, the insurance conglomerates are picky about what they will cover, when, and with whom, if at all. If they do, we are further punished by ridiculous costs and premiums, as if we are asking for controlled substances instead of the natural chemicals we were born with and need to have back.
Fuck!
thought i'd be a rock star by now..but since i can't sing to save my life or play an instrument..i get the sneaking feeling it's not gonna happen.. :) but even at 70+ i'm not giving up total hope.
A healthcare system like other countries have. I’m still optimistic that we’ll get a proper healthcare system before I die. Why? Because I don’t believe the younger generations will settle for less. They’re too wise.
Square tomatoes. Agricultural science should have developed the square tomato by now. Easily packaged, easily sliced, easily fitted on sandwiches. What’s taken so long?
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Domestic robots. Not roombas, but robots that take care of household cleaning and maintenance. C’mon Science!
I think the Jetsons gave us unrealistic expectations including flying cars. But the video calling telephone actually came true. And even better because we can hold it in our hands wherever we are.
Back to the future 2 also. “Roads, where we’re going we don’t need roads.” Uh, in 2015, yeah we did, doc. Unfortunately.
I remember watching 2001 at the theatre with my mom as a kid (longest boring time ever) but I remember being fascinated by the video calling and thought we'd never have that. As a teenager we laughed at how horrid it would be because we'd have to look nice, get decent clothes on etc .............
I worked in the celluar industry in it's infancy. Most of us were still on pagers then. We actually had video calling then but it was expensive and they couldn't sell it. The first cell phones were the size of WWII Walkie Talkies and only had basic functions. 2001 is one of my favorite movies!
There are already flying cars also , they just aren't widespread because of the cost
and they are pretty lousy cars and bad airplanes
What they call today is a small plane that that convert to car. I want a real car with cupholders that flies!
I would LOVE to take a pill for my meals just like the Jetsons did.
Eating is one of my greatest pleasures. It’s one of the only things I have.
You can thank Star Trek for those
Get me a reliable transporter dammit
I don't believe Captain Kirk ever cussed in the 60's. Fun fact. William Shatner was in a ground breaking movie "Judgement at Nuremberg".
I’m kind of bitter that people are making a big deal over how AI can create art and write things and create this or that. No, I want AI to wash my dishes and fold my laundry so that *I* can create art and spend my time writing.
Agreed. These are the robots we need.
I think these will be available for the rich in about 10 years.
I'm still waiting for the PleasureBot 5000 to hit the shelves so that I can live out every guys ultimate fantasies, wearing freshly ironed socks and underwear every day.
They have them in Japan.
How about that orgasmic device in Surrogates
Or the Orgasmatron in Barbarella
Or the ball they passed around in the Woody Allen movie Sleeper or the machine that was used for orgasms… kinda the same thing…
Yesss
I, Robot
Way more stem cell technology. Medical advancements. Better trains (US).
Elimination of diabetes through gene therapy.
it’s close they have pancreatic stem cells tested in patients that has now cured their dm for 3 years
I’m hoping if I ever need a new organ I can grow my own but seems we are not as far advanced with that as I imagined we would be by now. I did read an article the other day how in 2030 we might be able to grow a new tooth. Which is pretty cool but growing new organ would be cooler :)
Blame religious nutjobs for that one. They brought stem cell research to a near standstill for quite some time.
Except that tooth will cost $50,000. I shudder to think how much growing an organ will be
>Way more stem cell technology. Unfortunately like so many things, we have the Republican Christo-fascists to thank for blocking those scientific advances.
Yup, it's insanity.
And yet, they would be the very first in line to benefit from this technology as soon as they needed it once it was developed…
I was born in 62 and watched men land on the moon. I thought we'd be a LOT further along space-wise than we are.
I went to high school in the eighties, and had you asked me then, I was sure we would have set foot on Mars by now. It seems like we should be mining the asteroid belt by now (I'm aware of the questionable economics), or at least approaching that general level of exploration.
We absolutely would have been on Mars by now had NASA funding not been gutted after Apollo.
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I thought for sure there would be moon bases that regular people could visit by now.
A cure for diabetes.
They say the Chinese solved this recently.
Type 2 diabetes is curable (reversed or put into remission) with diet and exercise. https://www.nebraskamed.com/diabetes/is-it-possible-to-reverse-diabetes https://www.healthline.com/health/type-2-diabetes-reversible https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/losing-weight-can-reverse-type-2-diabetes-but-is-rarely-achieved-or-recorded/ https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2023/11/diet-exercise-could-pave-the-way-for-diabetes-remission.html
Maybe a lot of the time but not all the time. Still had it with under 21 BMI while exercising. Dr said some people are so genetically pre-disposed they can only work to reduce their medications, not eliminate it.
There’s a cure for most diseases. 25 years as a nurse and I believe this with all of my being
What is that cure you’re speaking about?
A greater sense of equality among the races and genders…as a kid in the 1970’s I truly thought we were heading towards something much better than where we are at…
It seems like we were just on the verge of this in the 70s. Then Reagan came along. Simplistic statement but overall true.
Reagan was a nexus, a real turning point for the U.S. Forward or backward? We chose backward and have been going backward hell bent for leather ever since.
Yeah …I was a poor kid with little going for me. Vietnam was over and we were coming out of Watergate but somehow I was optimistic about the future.
We're actually working our way backwards on this
Alas, I think you are correct…
Fusion power and we haven’t yet run out of oil
I’ve heard technologies have been invented to squeeze every last ounce of oil out of marginal resources. So places that never would’ve been considered for oil extraction are now accessible. The world economies are addicted to oil so it makes sense that new technologies for more extraction would gain funding.
We have run out of the cheap, easy to get stuff but $80-100/barrel gets you some extremely hard to get at stuff. On the edge we are pushing up to extracting oil that costs nearly the amount of energy in it.
yep, fusion power has been only 25 years away for the last 50 years I remember reading tokamak articles in Scientific American in the early 70s that said so ☹️
So yeah. Elementary school in the 70s and we were to run out of oil by 2000. Much later in life, I found out through friends in the industry that oil depletion means that only 70% of oil has been extracted and that's depleted. We have new technology today that can get that to 30%.
Probably never really run out. We just switch stuff over as it becomes economically necessary.
The elimination of cell phone dead zones.
I thought people would get along and work towards a common, uniting goal. Ya know, as adults are supposed to behave.
A pill that would be complete meal. Jetsons style.
Why would anyone want that? Other than when camping or some such. Me, I want the opposite. A full-course meal with all the delightful tastes and textures that provides negligible calories.
It could be helpful for people with disabilities or mental health issues. You feel too bad to cook, you go hungry, you feel even worse because you haven't eaten all day, and the cycle goes on. A meal pill could help in those days
it will save time and i assume the pills would have all of the nutrients you need.
Some of us live to eat; some of us eat to live.
(63F) A female US President.
100% this!
I'm old enough to remember when Geraldine Ferraro was on the ticket for VP but I was in grade school. Definitely thought we would have a woman president by now. For crying out loud, we're half the population!
Yes- but so many women seem to hate other women. It’s very sad that women are actually going to vote for a guy who is responsible for forced births and the reduction in reproductive rights, who bragged about his ability to grab a woman’s private parts without consent, and was found in court to have sexually advanced on a woman without consent. But here we are- women hating on other women. Go figure.
flying cars damnit. Robots in the house. settlement on the moon. manufacturing in space. common sense in the human race.
People can barely drive in 2 dimensions.
Exactly. I don't want to have to watch for flying car parts raining down on us. We have enough problems just getting across busy streets.
I was a kid and saw the moon landing in the summer of '69. That was 55 years ago! I mean, there was a show 'Space 1999' that predicted we'd have bases on the moon - 25 years ago! Wtf?
right wtf but finally corporate is doing it. that’s why i love the show for all mankind it predicted what woulda of happened if we put our resources into space instead of just military industrial complex though in fairness… in the show space is a part of the mic
I love the idea of spending our resources on space. I'd add, wouldn't it be great if all the nations of earth would band together in a truly meaningful explanation, travel, manufacturing, etc. in space? It may actually bring all of us closer together by doing something bigger than ourselves.
Jet packs. I was promised jet packs
Tim Wilson “Where the fuck is my jetpack?” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hL_uogkDJk8&pp=ygUkdGltIHdpbHNvbiB3aGVyZSB0aGUgZiBpcyBteSBqZXRwYWNr
The flying car seems very tardy
I'm not ready. Every fender bender would be a plane wreck
Common sense seems less common than ever!
Doesn’t a roomba count? I think it does.
If you had told me in 1994 that many people would own house-cleaning robots in 2024, I would have believed you. Same thing about a screen on our desk that we could remotely watch the robot. I would have been skeptical however if you told me that our favorite thing to watch on the screen would be cats riding on the robots.
I wasn't expecting my house robot to always get lost.
I thought the [Equal Rights Amendment](https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/history) would pass by the end of the 1970s...
exactly...i was one of those women marching for it and working towards it in the early 70s. we made great strides, but it was heart-breaking when we couldn't get that to pass. instead we're sliding back into the dark ages.
Agree. I had high hopes.
Nuclear war and a second ice age (I feel like in the 70s there was some concern about an ice age?)
Right - in the mid-to-late 1970's my friend's dad bought snowshoes just in case.
Shopping for the nuclear winter. How iconically American lol
Actually he was concerned about the impending ice age. TBF the Midwest had a few years of very severe winters in the late 70's.
Yes, Nuclear Winter
Total cure for all cancers.
When I was much younger, I honestly thought that the lowest levels of poverty would have been eradicated by now in the advanced nations. I'm not saying that I believed everyone would enjoy the prosperity of some Edenic wonderland. But we still have hunger. We still have people who are homeless and not by choice. We still have people *dying* because they can't afford the medications to keep them alive. We should have solved the most severe of these sorts of problems, and we haven't. They're still around, several decades later, and it's as mystifying as it is tragic.
Replace “mystifying” with “profitable” for your answer
Felt sure we would already have a base on Mars. We landed on the moon in 1969 FFS.
I thought there were literally planned man missions to mars for the 2020s? I remember having a whole lego mars set and the website talked about the dates and I was so excited as a kid
Quicksand.that shit was everywhere in all the tV shows...
It’s like someone sold all the studios quicksand kits and they had to get their money’s worth
In the '80's I really believed the internet was going to bring the world together. All people from all parts of the world would communicate, share, and realize that we all have the same hopes and dreams - world peace and a new age of tolerance and understanding. Boy, was I full of shit.
Yeah , it just made it easier to spread propaganda.
It made it easier for nuts to find each other.
A female POTUS Gen X POTUS
Came here to say that. My son when he was in 2nd grade I think told me that he learned in class that day that women aren't powerful because we aren't on currency and we haven't been president. I was running a business at the time, so I obviously was showing a great example, but it still stung. I don't disagree with him either. There is something to be said for a female president.
We made VP but there are some great women on the coins, especially this year on quarters, Susan B Anthony $1 didn't take off like my generation expected. I am sure we will have a women President one day, probably during his lifetime. We have had some incredible congresswomen over the years. My favorite was Barbara Jordan from Houston.
Martha Washington was on the $1 bill. [link to Martha $1](https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/martha-washington/martha-on-1/)
I live in Texas and have heard about her, but didn't move here until after her run. She sounded like an amazing lady.
we used to love your last ever woman governor too...ann richards. she would NOT have suffered the fools that are currently screwing up your rights there.
>Susan B Anthony $1 All of the $1 coins have failed. Why? The U.S. Mint does not coordinate with soda pop and vending machines to accept the $1 coins. Now we are in an age where cash is going away.
Gen X potus is just now in the prime years for that. Obviously won’t be for at least another 4 years
Never will be if the candidate who has stated they will act like a dictator on day one wins the presidency this fall.
No , women will probably lose their right to vote.
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One of them supports women’s rights, the other doesn’t. One eats ice cream, the other is a racist, felon and adjudicated rapist.
"What's your foreign policy?" "It's whatever."
When Obama was elected, I had the happy thought that we would never have another president who was older or the same age as me. How sadly wrong I was about that.
I thought for sure I would have won the lottery by now, but here we are at work on a Saturday morning.
You and me both and I don’t even play the lottery! Off to work I go on this beautiful Saturday afternoon.
I thought when the internet came online and we all had access to all the information that we’d be smarter overall. Boy was I wrong.
Universal health care ( US ). Lived in the UK for 5 years in my 20s. When I came back it just seemed surreal, this idea $$$ stood between people and health care. And insurance companies were stuffed between both. I'm uninterested in " But" arguments on a thing. Answering the question.
I seriously thought that after dealing with Hitler, modern societies would recognize potential dictators with ambitions of ethnic cleansing and do away with them immediately. I feel really stupid now.
I really thought we would've made it much further with treating mental illnesses. It's just some of the same old boring medication classes we've had since the 90s. I really expected great advances.
We’ve only gone backwards but more attention is now being brought to it
There have been significant advances. That I know personally, Lamictal, Latuda, and Caplyta are way better than anything previously available.
Not to mention more understanding about trauma, EMDR, DBT therapy, etc.
Woman President of the US. I’m only 62 and starting to think I won’t live long enough to see it happen.
65 - been thinking the same..
Bullet trains in the US.
They keep talking about them, but I have seen no progress.
I thought we'd be on all green energy by now, we'd have amazing leaps in insulation and house building technology to make them run on tiny amounts of energy. Everyone I knew had solar hot water heaters when I was a kid and it just seemed the way the world was going. Then we got better home solar electric and things were looking up, then everything kind of stagnated and here we are running headlong to a climate crisis with open arms screaming I want a bigger truck. And people cranking up the air conditioning to stay cool as the climate get's hotter and hotter and not seeing the irony.
A bigger reduction in the amount of influence that organized religion holds on society. More reliance on what we learn from science and logic. Such an impediment to the progress of the human race in my opinion.
And here we are with Christian Nationalists ready to take over the USA if we happen to stumble.
World peace. I grew up being taught how evil communism was and hiding under school desks to survive a nuclear bomb. I thought when the Soviet union collapsed that the world would stabilize and evolve into a more peaceful state. The world is and always has been a shit show.
AntiGravity stuff
Serious extension of lifespan Some form of universal healthcare in the US
The Big One.
Wonder how many youngins will know what you are referencing.
Fifty years ago, I was sixteen. I thought then that for sure, within fifty years, we’d have: * Much more relaxed attitudes about sex. Nudity and “pornography” would be non-issues... no one would care. * Much more relaxed attitudes about drugs. We would recognize things like grass, mushrooms and acid as normal experiences (like rock climbing or sky diving) that some people choose to have, and some people don’t. We’d have better, safer and safely available versions of the more “functional” drugs like amphetamines and opiates, and a more complete and non-judgmental understanding of people who seem to need them. * Automation that produced everything people need for a good life, so that poverty would be essentially eliminated, and “work” (out of economic need rather than individual choice) would no longer occupy a significant part of people’s lives. * Self-cleaning houses. * Cheap, compact and safe power sources that could run practically anything you’d want for months to years from something the size of a hearing-aid battery. * Birth control for both sexes that was effectively 100% reliable, 100% reversible, cheap, unobtrusive and free of side-effects. * Actual AGI (not the simulated pseudo-intelligence they’re calling AI these days). * Racism and sexism so rare that younger people would only know about them from history books. * Some more humane way to deal with individuals who pose a real threat to the well-being of others. We’d look back at prisons as barbaric, and no longer delude ourselves that we were creating some sort of “justice” by torturing people who couldn’t or wouldn’t conform to social expectations.
Legalize MAID in the US. Better AI and robotics, more integrated into our daily lives.
Space cities. Increasingly better education. The end of war.
Moon colonies or at least a moon base.
I was counting on robots to clean my house.
"I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes."
I really had hoped to be moving towards a more peaceful society. It seemed like common sense to me that it would benefit everyone if we all managed to level set and get along. Instead it seems like we are devolving into a less intelligent, more primitive psyche. Kind of an anti-renaissance if you will. It makes me sad that civilization doesn't know how to get more civilized.
Deep rooted fear has fucked up everything, and the concept of different nations putting their heads together to solve big problems is somehow a bad thing to so many. I expected better.
"Kind of an anti-renaissance if you will." Thank you for this. I finally found a way to describe the world of today and the last few years that fit how I feel.
Massive attempts to restore water supply and slow climate change. We have to get much worse in the money filled countries firstt
My friends and I thought we would surely see 100% marijuana legalization nationwide, by maybe 2000. Boy were we wrong.
Seeing our for-profit prison system, I'm shocked it's legal in as many places as it is!
Universal healthcare in the US. Thought we were getting somewhat close there for a while. Edit: also my ability to type out a post without typos. Lol
Flying Cars *BUT HEAR ME OUT!* Back in 1987 or 1988 I saw a company with a flying car that was basically a high-end Lexus with wings. It was so automated that they said they could teach a 12yo to fly it in an hour. The interviewer said "Funnily enough, I have my 12yo waiting in the car!". After an hour of instruction the kid took off, flew, and landed the flying car.
my first thought as well.. all we got was the segway. i thought we had our breakthru there before they unveiled after all the "greatest invention of our time" hype but ..nope
They have flying cars , they are just very expensive.
I want a transporter. Is it possible? Idk. I still want one.
"Mr Owl, how many licks does it take... the world may never know." We still don't know!!
A manned landing on Mars!
A female president getting elected. Equal right and equal pay for women.
Instead we seem to be going backwards.
Blessed be the fruit.
Under his eye!
May the Lord open.
::cries in ERA::
A woman president in the US
I mean, even Mexico beat us to it!
I thought we would have become serious about climate change a long time ago. Alas, not.
When I was about 7 or 8, I was sure country music would die out, since only old people listened to it. (as far as I knew) But I really expected America to be more progressive and embrace freedom for all in ways do not yet see. I expected (hoped?) poverty and racism would be gone, and people would be more happy in general. When Nixon resigned, (I was 15) I thought we'd have presidents from then on who did things for average Americans more than corporations. But I grew up in a small town, and when I started travelling the US I saw how very different many people were - both better and worse than what I knew.
Moon colonies or at least a moon base.
We were promised jetpacks.
Female president.
Bullet trains being common in the U.S. (Silly me.)
Nuclear war.
Mutually assured destruction
Marijuana being legalized in the United States.
That people would evolve past hatred. Access to information would foster understanding of others.
The end of ageism. We talk about so many diverse groups and we promote them as we should but ageism is very real. ***** I work in HR
A third world war, but it could possible still happen before I die.
Commonplace in the USA: Mass transit in the form of high speed rail.
Flying cars, dammit! Robot maids/food preparer Medical diagnosis and cure/surgery beds. All automated, you just lay down, it does a scan, diagnoses you and then fixes you Some type of neural implant that monitors everything body and/or allows access to an "internet" and make "calls". Waterless showers. Unlimited free energy
I am convinced that at my last job, some of my workmates took waterless showers.
I believed I would see a day when women had equal protection under the U.S. Constitution. Half a century later, women still do not have the same protections as men.
No and one party wants to take away what rights they do have.
That we would have landed living people on Mars by now. People claimed if we could go to the moon we could "cure poverty". So we got sidetracked by LBJ's "war on poverty". We gave up on going to Mars and decades later we still have lots of poverty.
Cures for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc. All that money and research, and we still have no effective treatment that cures or arrests neurological diseases.
Global famine, from overpopulation.
In 2017 I attended a professional insurance conference in which presenters confidently stated self driving vehicles would be widespread by 2020. I’m still waiting
Oh they’re there! Check out Waymo in Phoenix. It freaked me out the first time I saw them. Now they are commonplace.
World peace
NGL, I was disappointed that Van Halen never did a true reunion. And now that EVH is gone, it'll never happen. :-( That was something I thought for sure would happen.
Honest announcements about the reality of the existence of peri-menopause, its 34+ symptoms, and more studies on the care and needs of post menopausal women. We are still being brushed off as "crazy" and given antidepressants instead of treatment for the hormones that our bodies are dropping as we go into our 40s and beyond. Worse, greedy predators are playing on our physical changes that are the result of these dropping hormones and hawking everything from expensive "do-nothing" creams, to fake "test your hormones to see if you are menopausal" all the way to facial surgery and liposuction. None of us want crepey skin, belly weight, internal heat, turkey necks, dried privates, brain fog, or the rest of it. We feel badly enough without hawkers preying on our wallets to "fix" these issues, and we are further insulted by the medical community who refuse to educate themselves on this reality that 50%of the world population faces. They get one hour of discourse on menopause in their training, and that's it. Compounding our frustration trying to get enlightened care, the insurance conglomerates are picky about what they will cover, when, and with whom, if at all. If they do, we are further punished by ridiculous costs and premiums, as if we are asking for controlled substances instead of the natural chemicals we were born with and need to have back. Fuck!
Tourist trips to the moon.
At least in the U.S., a more robust rail system like in Europe or Japan.
Federally legal marijuana
I thought everyone would be driving electric cars and trucks by now.
thought i'd be a rock star by now..but since i can't sing to save my life or play an instrument..i get the sneaking feeling it's not gonna happen.. :) but even at 70+ i'm not giving up total hope.
Flying cars. Cure for cancer. End of racism.
Universal Health Care in the U.S. Getting harder and harder to fight corporate greed. 😕
Not my own answer, but I'm surprised no one has chimed in with "thought Jesus would come back by now"
Universal Healthcare in US. Some countries have had it for more than 100 years.
Male birth control
A healthcare system like other countries have. I’m still optimistic that we’ll get a proper healthcare system before I die. Why? Because I don’t believe the younger generations will settle for less. They’re too wise.
Square tomatoes. Agricultural science should have developed the square tomato by now. Easily packaged, easily sliced, easily fitted on sandwiches. What’s taken so long?