Skype.

Seriously. I know it's mundane, but sitting at your table in a restaurant, having someone bring a little handheld computer gizmo over, you pay cashlessly, job done? I always feel like I'm in "Minority Report".

I mean, fire and the wheel were good - but this?

...smartphones. FUCKING HELL. I'm an iPhone owner, and sometimes I just catch myself using an app in the street (like yesterday - wanted to find my nearest Pret and used the Yell app, which not only found it for me but showed me a bloody photo) and I think: shit. I'm living in the future. Maaan.

Who would have thought you could walk into your local and play any top fifty from the last forty years.
It costs me a fortune while everyone else lets me get on with it.

TV's & Hi-Fi - don't laugh it wasn't that long ago.

That The Terminator would become Governor of California.

That Doctor Who would make a massively successful comeback.

That Michael Jackson would die suddenly, a near bankrupt, with a tarnished reputation.

That Madonna would still be making records at 50.

That Prince would be rubbish one day.

That space exploration would fizzle out.

That hair would grow out of my ears and nose for no good reason.

That I could watch TV on demand at any time of day or night.

That I could download music, films, books and TV shows onto my personal laptop computer.

That record shops, book shops and newspapers would become endangered.

That humans would be stupid enough to wipe themselves out... Oh, no, hang on. I knew that in the 80s anyway.

So, you buy this little box. In fact, you don't even need a little box. Just buy a particular brand of mobile phone.

Tell it where you want to go. You don't have to tell it where you are, it already knows.

It will now direct you, turn by turn, to your destination. Whether you are in your car, or just walking down the street. If there's a problem on the way, it will tell you and give you an alternative route.

Oh, and it will tell you when you'll arrive as well.

Bloody hell.

It's the future. Have I got this the right way 'round?

That the most revered and most coveted position in the highest league of English football would be fourth, and that the FA Cup would be treated no more seriously by said Bore Four than the Charity Shield.

See that grave over there....the one that's spinning....that's Bill Shankly.

Where you can post all sorts of nonsense about music and people from all over the world reply ....

...but the width of a torso.

I've just bought a photoframe for my relatives in the UK - I can email pictures to it and they will appear on it to suprise and delight. (...must not get drunk and send porn...must not get drunk and send porn)

Arcade Games! You can play them at home! All of them! MAME!!!

And on a more personal note...I've got a Gibson Guitar!!! And the art to the first page of "The New Mutants #18" on my wall...I can stay up until whenever I want!!! I've got my own house!!! I can turn water and grain into beer!!! etc etc

I would be debating the merits of Abba with a bunch of mostly middle-aged blokes on a computer.

That the Stones would still all be alive, together and touring.

linked to here http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/so-ive-got-a-netbook#comment-31641...

not least becuase a laptop's "primary function" becomes more arguable by the year---and smartphones exemplfy thie even more. Archie's "Judith Hann" essayette was excellent on this.

Silver clothes!
Food in pill form!
C W Stoneking!

Plying their trade in the top tier of the English game...

That the Scottish domestic game would fall to the level of Ireland or Iceland (it was never THAT great, but come on...)

That said numpties would be arguing about 100 years if supposed refereeing "bias", on the basis of religion, against one of the most consistently successful teams in European club history. Really? Seriously?

You can almost hear the sound of sponsors chequebooks closing.....

Once upon a time, email was the future. Now, it seems that it's on its way out, to be replaced by a combination of instant messaging and social networks.

The possibility that, in the future future, we may look back on email as a kind of early form of whatever it is that is coming next, kind of freaks me out. Technological change is so rapid that what we once saw as science fiction will quickly become yesterday's news.

commercial supersonic flight and cross-Channel hovercraft service.

And that commercial space flight for fee paying passengers has never really got off the ground.

The fact that you can access millions of tracks from a cloud and share playlists and it doesn't break up well sometimes

Pure genius

See that bloke who presents one of your favourite TV programmes? The one with the assault course, flight simulators and the Art of Noise?

You're going to work with him. You'll write down what's going on in the North West and he'll read it out on telly.

makes me think of all the dead geniuses who could only dream of the stuff that an idiot like me takes for granted.
Which, in turn, reminds me of this:

All it needed was the breakdown of apartheid ... who'd've thunkit?

while I'm out and being able to Sky+ it using my phone! While I'm out! With a phone! And don't get me started on the joys of Sky+. Pausing and rewinding live TV? How does that even work? (please don't explain, I like to think it involves fairies and moonbeams thanks).

However, I still find the concept of electricity quite astonishing.

would be a common sight on a Friday or Saturday night in towns as diverse as Mullion Cove and Manchester. And that they'd be full of something called 'chavs'.

that astounded us on Tomorrow's World (you can wipe them with sandpaper and they will still be able to play Dire Straits!) and cost a week's wages back in the early 1980's?

Free now with newspapers and magazines. Honest.

Cask ale brewed in a Wigan garage, instead of a huge industrial brewery complex, would win multiple awards for the quality of the beer. In the meantime brewery complex taken over and shut down.

As a socially acceptable place for hipsters to congregate.

I used to wonder what Cliff, the Shads, Adam Faith, Tommy Steele and Britains rebellious 50's youth saw in the "2i's". Now i know (I think)

Amazing thing this - even though it did make me feel like a Bad Person at the time.

Anyway, the way this thing works is as follows.

You go into HMV, or other high street retailer of your choice.

You pick up your potential purchase, clocking the price as you do.

You scan the barcode on said item, using your phone.

The Amazon app then tells you how much the thing costs on Amazon.

It then allows you to order the item directly from themselves. Which of course you do, it invariably being the cheaper option.

You then put the physical item back on the shelf, and exit the store, feeling slightly dirty.

NB: This could also sit on the 'why HMV are going under' thread.

still amazes me after 20 years.

Mind you, electricity still weirds me out when I think about it - I plug stuff into the wall and it works, using a mysterious force that can't be stored (much) but has to come straight into my house from a socking great power station hundreds of miles away. Think about it for a minute.

Although it still gives me the willies to be honest. I can't put that scene in Logan's Run out of my mind.

clubs would mainly be owned by foreigners and that average players would earn £200,000 per week.

That newspapers would become so worthless they are given away in the capital city.

That coffee shops sell about 50 different 'coffees' that don't taste like coffee and charge you more than the cost of a pint of beer for the privilege of drinking them.

That Christmas crackers are not sold to minors because of the risk to health and safety.

...would continue to thrive in the face of so many competing sources of entertainment.

That I can plug my smartphone into my amplifier and listen to radio from all over the world just staggers me.

The humble/mighty Crewe Alexandra would one day play at Wembley and win a trophy. Say what you like about the playoffs and the autofreightpaintpot but they've given many of us smaller teams a nice day out. And live on TV too.

Quite honestly am getting sick of the Premier league - bloated, full of prima donnas and only ever going to be 4 potential winners for foreseeable future. Give me a rainy tuesday night in Runcorn any time. Well, perhaps not Runcorn but you know what I mean.

Amazing stuff.

My nana and my mum had their gall bladders out - they have huge huge scars.

I had my gall bladder out - I have three little scars about a centimetre wide, and a fouth hidden in my belly button.

Who could have imagined, in the days when hamburgers meant Wimpy and fast food meant fish and chips or Chinese takeaway, the vast array of outlets we have today? Pizza? Thai food! What's that? Fried Chicken from Kentucky! Why would anyone want to eat that?
That you can walk into a burger joint or other fast food outlet and walk out a couple of minutes later with your food.
That one day this country would produce dozens of chefs reckoned to be among the best in the world and that they would run Michelin starred establishments. Not that most of us would have known what Michelin stars meant - do they come in puncture repair kits?
Not forgetting the vast array of fruit and vegetables we take for granted, all year round. I once got into trouble at primary school, when we had to write down a list of as many fruits as we could name, for insisting, when it was suggested I'd made it up, that there was a fruit called a mango. Bell peppers used to be regarded as exotic. I'm pretty sure in all my years at home my mother never bought an aubergine. They along with guavas, jerusalem artichokes, tamarinds and sweet potatoes were never seen in any greemgrocer we knew of. The only melon that existed was the honeydew.
Looking back eating seems so boring.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Lauughable. And then get this, two years later they get to the final again! Twice! in my lifetime.

All the stuff about going bankrupt, nearly going out of business in the high courts, still having a crappy stadium and no training facilities - now that stuff was very predictable...

Oh and Peter Andre's "career".

Tongues no longer wag at

women sports commentators/ firefighters/ Home Secretaries etc etc
black and asian sportsmen/ women representing England/ Team GB
same sex couples holding hands in the street

who i used to watch on Saturday nights when i was 10 years old guessing what was on the conveyor belt would end up entertaining *my* 10 year olds on BBC TV on Saturday night with the same catchphrases.

At least the mainstream ones, would be blimmin' gardeners, interior designers, chefs and dancers.

Whatever happened to the strong silent type (to quote Tony Soprano)?

Today I ordered a 32gb memory card for my camera.

It only seems like yesterday we were using those blue 1mb (non-floppy) floppy disks.

32gb equates to 32,768 of 'em. That'd be a pile of floppy disks just over 98 metres tall. On a thing the size of a postage stamp.

Blimey.

So, laying half-awake in bed, I grabbed my phone and checked my email.

I had an email from Gap, advertising a 50% sale.

So, I clicked through to their website, browsed around til I found a new winter coat for my elder daughter, paid for it, then rolled over and went back to sleep.

Shopping in bed, in the middle of the night? Magic. What amazing times we live in.

That one day there would be 21 breweries within 20 miles of my house.

There would be a market for local food producers that would be so popular that the GLW and I are planning to get there 8.30am tomorow to get in early to snap up some Water Buffalo steaks.

at Vandenberg

put it on YouTube, and that pretty much no notice would be taken (though I did see Russia Today taking some ;-))

...had told you 25 years ago you'd be paying good money for water in a bottle, you've have thought they were mad.