Living in the Science-Fiction Present

Ten or twenty years ago (hell, 2003 is 20 years ago indeed) if you pulled me out from the street and told me that

Bro, you are going to stream your favourite everything (music, movies and series) for a minuscule price to your phone without any battery and connection woes

I would have called you mad. It is not that I am a technological philistine. On the contrary, I was the child in the neighborhood who owned a Commodore 64. I was one of the first people in my university who took notes with a Palm Zire. I owned a broke a pocket pc before PDAs were cool. The list goes on and on.

However, back in the day, when we used discmans (and walkmans) to "stream" our music, used bona-fide pcs to go on the internet (no mobile road warrior stuff!), and read real books; the internet was more fun - at least for me. You had your IRC channels, ICQ and MSN Messenger for the private one-to-one stuff and the social media was Myspace. You know the kind that does not actively seek your attention.

I think this attention grabbing nature of the modern web makes it a tad bit... weird and not fun. At any rate, the fact that we are surrounded by technological wonders and their commonplaceness makes them so normal, it boggles the mind. My mind at least.

Internet became a common thing. How did that happen? I remember, clearly remember, that I waited for six months for an ADSL port to be available to get on to the broadband wagon. Before that I was using dial-up and it was a shitty thing. You paid monies to the phone company, and you paid an additional fee to the ISP. And boy, were they cheap! Don't even get me started on computers and phones. A phone was a household appliance, not a mobile thing, not an internet thing! Computers were bulky things that cost a lot and you could not order them from the internet - there was no internet! No amazon, no nothing. You had to go to a physical store, see the merchandise, talk with the seller, do the whole nine yards.

sigh

This only leads me to think, if we progressed from there to here in 20 years (and it is a short time) where will we be in 20 years from now on? I see ar goggles like xreal/nreal, consoles like Steam deck and it just makes me think. What wonders will we see and what things we deem as wondrous will become a normal/boring thing?