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Humans will never go past Mars (ghostofcarnot.substack.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/futurology@futurology.today
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Space is really spread out, and we will forever lack the means to get around it fast. Space also happens to be highly inhospitable to human life. For these reasons, I submit that no human will ever go farther than Mars.

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[–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

I mean, there's people who did, going back pretty far.

People imagined all kinds of portable computers but none resembled a smartphone, as far as I'm aware. If I'm wrong, I'll be happy to learn about examples.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    I'm actually not sure about the "one big touchscreen" idea - it's seems likely some designer considered it, but even Star Trek TNG PADDs had more than one touch display segment.

    Portable radio-type devices have been all over, portable computers as well, and networking radios autonomously together made appearances. Ditto for adding a camera to standard communications devices. I'm not really sure how much of it you need going at once to consider it a smartphone.

    Like the guy in the link mentions, what people would choose to do with them and just how often was the hard thing to predict. When someone pops open a version of the internet in Heinlein it's always to do research. It's never cat pictures or porn or to post a random picture of themselves and what they're doing. Usually the computer is part of your spaceship or whatever, not in your pocket, just for that reason.

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