tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83164712009-12-22T01:20:49.784-05:00Imagine how people in 2050 will look back at our lives today...Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1160483624684035822006-10-10T08:31:00.000-04:002006-10-10T08:33:44.710-04:00

A fun/interesting read:Miracles you'll see in the next 50 years (written in 1950)

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1140798887589198402006-09-01T01:34:00.000-04:002006-10-10T08:49:11.116-04:00

You open the newspaper and yet another apartment building has burned to the ground. The cause of the fire? A candle.Fire is one of man's earliest technologies. But today the idea of an open flame is sad. An open flame is an open invitation for problems, whether it is a candle, a burning cigarette or a log burning in the fireplace, it is a problem waiting to happen. Because the cat jumps up on the

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1138716726235494502006-01-31T05:55:00.000-05:002006-01-31T09:31:43.113-05:00

I was on a bike ride this weekend. I was sitting at an intersection waiting for the light to turn green. As I was waiting, a big fire truck turned into the road to my left and started heading toward the intersection with its siren wailing and all the lights flashing. As the fire truck approached it got louder and louder. It became so loud that I reached up to hold my ears. The amount of noise

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1136195162307605992006-01-02T04:39:00.000-05:002006-01-02T04:54:27.813-05:00

In the 21st century, the whole idea of "guns" and "gunpowder" seems incredibly sad. Let's ignore "hunting" because there just are not that many people who officially hunt any more. Today a gun is used to do one of two things:To stop someone when that someone does something that you do not like (aka murder)To stop a group of people when they do something that you do not like (aka war)You can make

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1124709178479028802005-08-22T06:06:00.000-04:002005-10-23T21:55:26.636-04:00

I found that there were a number of things that were difficult to discuss here on SadTech because, to discuss them, I needed to lay out the technological platform that would underpin them all. For example, what do I think will happen with transportation in the future? What will happen with porn? What happens with healthcare? At the core, all of these questions center on the nature of the human

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1123671975739672062005-08-10T05:02:00.000-04:002005-08-10T22:38:17.466-04:00

Think about how sad our current telephone system is:When you pick up the phone you get a dial tone. You dial in a totally arbitrary number. And which number do you dial? The person's home? Office? Cell? The phone at the other end rings. If it is plugged in, the phone will ring even if it is 3AM and you are sound asleep. Even if it is a wrong number, it rings. If the person is not there, you get a

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1122294354935835642005-07-25T06:25:00.000-04:002005-07-25T09:51:07.266-04:00

This weekend we bought Leigh a new laptop. It's your basic inexpensive laptop from HP. From a hardware perspective, it is pretty amazing what you can get in a laptop for $650 these days: a fast processor, lots of RAM, a big hard disk, high-speed wireless networking, a nice screen, a DVD-RW drive, etc. Plus it comes with a hardware warrantee, including 14-days "if anything goes wrong" protection

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1121562555072486662005-07-16T18:00:00.000-04:002005-07-17T06:32:03.233-04:00

This weekend is a typical weekend in the Brain household, and a good part of it is spent cleaning. "Cleaning" means sweeping and mopping the floors; scrubbing the bathrooms; vacuuming the carpets; helping the kids put away their puzzles, games, train sets, dinosaurs, dolls, cars, trucks, etc.; changing the linens; and generally straightening. Then you add to that the normal daily cleaning chores

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1120037693402047332005-06-29T01:23:00.000-04:002005-06-29T05:34:53.410-04:00

If there is one thing that people in 2050 will be laughing out loud at, it is internal combustion engines -- the kind of engines we find now in everything from automobiles to lawn mowers. The reason why they will laugh at them is because they are so very, very sad. Think about how sad they are:The most glaring problem is the waste. Something like 80% of the fuel that goes into an internal

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1119221908628342292005-06-19T18:47:00.000-04:002005-06-19T21:32:20.726-04:00

This weekend I got to see Revenge of the Sith in a theater. There were two scenes that struck me as particularly anachronistic -- the two that involved glass. In one scene, a group of Jedi knights come to the chancellor's office to arrest him. In the office there is a huge floor-to-ceiling panoramic window. It is made of glass. One touch with a light saber and the entire thing completely shatters

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1118654259793327382005-06-13T05:17:00.000-04:002005-06-13T07:18:35.650-04:00

Here is a letter that I received from Microsoft recently:Click for larger imageThink about how sad this is. We live in one of the most technologically advanced civilizations on earth. And the letter comes from what should be one of the most technologically advanced companies on earth. And yet...The letter is addressed to Kris Bram rather than Marshall Brain. What does that mean? It could mean

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1117684747686940672005-06-04T23:58:00.000-04:002005-06-05T06:25:14.636-04:00

Here is a description of the airbag system in my wife's car:The new Grand Caravan's structure is designed for maximum occupant protection, and safety is enhanced by standard front multistage advanced airbags, a driver-side knee blocker, the Occupant Classification System, which determines passenger-side airbag force depending on passenger weight, and available three-row side curtain airbags.There

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1117993167583643362005-06-04T01:23:00.000-04:002005-06-05T13:39:27.590-04:00

Today in the United States we consume crude oil as though it were water. Our most obvious use of crude oil comes when we pump gasoline into our cars, but we burn petroleum in a hundred other ways as well. For example, every product we buy is transported by truck, train, plane or ship -- all of which burn petroleum products. All of our food is farmed with tractors that burn petroleum. And so on.

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1116963603495523892005-05-25T04:40:00.000-04:002005-05-26T03:20:21.583-04:00

This is a very funny article, and it also points out a number of holes in current video games: A Gamers' Manifesto. Basically you can see that it is a long SadTech rant about video games. The lack of real AI is sad, and it does not sound like it is going to get much better in the future. The under-use of the hard drive and the long load times are sad. And so on.But he leaves out one essential

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1116663198608999802005-05-21T04:01:00.000-04:002005-05-21T21:05:08.790-04:00

If you look at SadTech posts like the ones on farming or cash or locks and keys, you can easily see why these technologies are about to be replaced by something new. The problem is that these technologies each have a huge list of disadvantages. For example, farming as we know it today has big problems with the weather, seasonality of crops, insects, weeds, pollination and so on. As soon as we can

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1116310405650971922005-05-17T02:13:00.000-04:002005-05-17T04:28:42.516-04:00

We all know that, especially as kids, the whole idea of going to the doctor to get stuck with a needle is uncomfortable. One of my kids has to get a shot every day, and it is a problem every day. People simply do not like pain. So why do we have to get shots? Why can't we take everything as a pill? It is because certain medicines cannot survive the acid in the stomach. Insulin is one of those

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1116167247350759312005-05-15T10:26:00.000-04:002005-05-15T12:18:09.460-04:00

With Episode 3 about to come out, I decided to re-watch the existing library of Star Wars films to get myself "Mentally Prepared." I was absolutely amazed at the number of anachronisms in the original Star Wars movie, and wrote them up in Watching Star Wars 28 years later.I am not talking about the obvious things like "space ships make no noise in a vacuum." People have been talking about stuff

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1115947691088220972005-05-12T21:17:00.000-04:002005-05-14T04:47:52.153-04:00

So... My wife has a new car, and it has three buttons on the center console that you can program to open and close the garage door. These buttons are called "HomeLink". I would like to program them. So I dig around in the glove compartment and find the owner's manual [note to self -- paper owner's manuals are sad]. Here are the steps that you take to program one of these buttons, according to the

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1115778790312094552005-05-10T22:19:00.000-04:002005-05-10T22:33:10.393-04:00

A fascinating 8-minute movie:EPIC

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1114769681013108952005-04-29T05:54:00.000-04:002005-04-29T06:57:19.243-04:00

I had big computer hardware problems this week (unreliability is working overtime), so I had to pull my desktop machine out from under the desk to repair it. Here is the scene that greeted me after I removed it: You can't help but notice the wires - the huge jumble of wires leading to and from the computer. Why are there so many wires? Here's an inventory of the wires and cables hooking to my

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1114400184651727242005-04-24T23:21:00.000-04:002005-04-26T05:29:28.900-04:00

I gave a presentation on robots this weekend, and in the presentation I used one of my favorite slides. The point of the slide is to say, "look at how much can change in just 25 years."The slide has on it two images. Here is image #1:Here is image #2:The first image is from the game Pacman, released in 1980. At the time it was considered to be an innovative video game.The second image is

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1114378051215133662005-04-23T15:33:00.000-04:002005-04-24T17:36:05.900-04:00

As part of a remodeling project, I had the opportunity to help tear out the interior walls in a hundred-year-old house. You take a hammer and start by whacking through the plaster. There's about a dozen layers of paint, and then the plaster has hair and all kinds of other stuff mixed in. The plaster was slathered on wooden lath strips. So you strip out all the paint, plaster and lath and throw it

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1113647591005296982005-04-16T06:27:00.000-04:002005-04-18T11:07:32.873-04:00

For millions of years humans and our evolutionary ancestors have relied on plants and meat for our sustenance. At first we did the hunter/gather thing, and then we invented farming. Farming has been with us for thousands of years as one of mankind's earliest innovations. It is safe to say that, within 50 years or so, farming as we know it today will be completely eliminated. Just think about how

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1113615318844853372005-04-15T21:35:00.000-04:002005-04-16T11:11:50.726-04:00

Since today is tax day, it is only appropriate to mention how Byzantine, archaic and sad the system of tax preparation is in the United States. This article says it all:Americans Spend 6.6 Billion Hours on TaxesFrom the article:People scurrying to meet tonight's tax deadline might consider this: It's taking you and your fellow Americans 6.6 billion hours to do all that paperwork. The basic tax

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1113643726852116822005-04-14T05:27:00.000-04:002005-04-16T05:28:46.853-04:00

Receipts are like cash -- very anachronistic and very sad in a modern society. Just look at a receipt and you can see how ridiculous it is:A receipt is a little scrap of completely non-standardized paper. Even worse -- I paid for these two chocolate sundaes with a credit card. Why in the world did the record of this transaction not get transferred electronically to the credit card company, which

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com0