Thank you for revealing the name to me of the last piece in a multi-decade puzzle!

From the book I recall a flying ‘arena camera’ that hovered over the players. Was that in there? Guess we got that too ;)

Alx Klive – The WorldTV Blog
worldtv.com/blog

http://www.alexvaranese.com/work/alt1977

It’s dawned on me. That part you didn’t recognise:

“…an outside telephone caller can use push-button codes to leave a message on a [] screen which is part of the telephone system.”

We have this. It’s everywhere. And it’s not in a Cheshire footballer’s mansion. It’s in your pocket.

It’s text messaging.

Funny that your book’s author predicted so much but missed out on arguably the biggest one of all – the mobile phone.

And the self-lacing Nikes! – http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/06/auto-lacing-sneaker-laces-itself-is-looking-for-a-friend/

Proof that:
a) I spend too much time on Engadget
b) films/books/songs give geeks valuable inspiration. Art + tech = win.

It’s amazing how bang on this is .. including ( cc @ Paul Hutchings) futuristic JUMPSUITS being in fashion :-)

http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2008/09/suit_up.html

The highlight for me is a fairly subtle one. In number 2, there is a suggestion that the large screen could be used to show “all sorts of instant information”.

All sorts of instant information.

There it is. The internet.

It’ll never catch on…

I love the flatscreen TV with the almost throw-away afterthought “…displaying all sorts of instant information.”

We laugh at how much smaller the iPhone is than the lumbering collection of kit that the lad carts off to the carnival, just like the iPhone will be laughed at in the future when all the technology sits invisibly in a contact lense.

http://www.gizmag.com/electronic-contact-lens-promises-bionic-capabilities-for-everyone/8689/

What’s next, eh? Cor, progress, innit.

The big enabler has obviously been the fattening of bandwidth and satellite distribution and positioning – none of these things would have got to this stage without that – and in terms of the future, surely most of that has just got to be driven by these things improving further – which might lull us all into the false sense of security of thinking future predictions are easier to make. Of course it isn’t though – other drivers will impact it, some of which aren’t as easy to predict as others.

You only really have to watch something like an Inspector Morse from the mid-90′s to see how quickly the fabric of everything we do in the UK has changed so completely by IP enabled technologies and other advances. I sometimes wonder if, in this big seismic shift, we haven’t somehow got caught in a wave. If things carry on like they are now, what in 30 years time will we miss about the lives we have today – or that we had 10-15 years ago which technology took from us. Don’t get me wrong. I love this all, it’s great and it makes me a living. Is it all good though? Nice post anyway – takes me back…