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Old 03-26-2008, 07:57 PM   #3
Alex
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 13,354
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Some fair hits in there among the wild misses

press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation

Not quite so automated as in the article but similar systems for route selection are starting to appear in cars.

Suddenly your TV phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case. The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate’s office, 200 mi. away.

Not bad on the phone, and actually under predicted on what you'd be able to do with it but smart phones and wireless broadband laptops certainly allow for this vision of the future to be true.

Electrostatic precipitators clean the air and climatizers maintain the temperature and humidity at optimum levels. Robots are available to do housework and other simple chores. New materials for siding and interiors are self-cleaning and never peel, chip or crack.

Not quite to universal as predicted but many of these things exist to some degree.


then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use.

Well the automated timing of cooking isn't there. But having spent several months in the past on NutriSystem I have certainly lived the rest of it.

The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance...Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities...Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees’ accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card’s number is fed into the store’s computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance. Computers not only keep track of money, they make spending it easier. TV-telephone shopping is common.

A clean hit!
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