Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Kwahn t1_j0um0pe wrote

My dad, who was a huge fan of Atari, NES and arcade games in the 70's to 90's, saw Angry Birds and was like, "oh my god, it responds to your touch with physics? It's so smoothly animated! How did they get such high quality images to be so small? It has HOW MANY LEVELS? On a phone, where you can take it with you anywhere?"

It's amazing what we take for granted every day that someone used to other standards spots!

60

hawkinsst7 t1_j0uqi7s wrote

Years ago, I had what would probably be a shower thought, but really I was just coming from dental surgery :

We can do arcane gestures on a slab of metal and glass, and magically know more, communicate with other, or even affect the real world.

Really puts into context Arthur c. Clarke's quote.

>“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”

40

aircooledJenkins t1_j0v23j6 wrote

"I think every world is magic, we just get used to it."

From Stephen King's new book "Fairy Tale."

20

ablackcloudupahead t1_j0veyzh wrote

Damn I loved that book. Crazy that King can make giant departures from his norm at this place in his career

5

MARCVS-PORCIVS-CATO t1_j0xxajy wrote

This is something that I unironically believe in wholeheartedly. I saw a comment a year or two ago on I think /r/programmerhumor? Haven’t been able to find it since, wish I could. Anyway, basically it was about this exactly, explaining how computers are magic, chemistry is magic, engineering is magic, and all sorts of other fields. So, yeah, as far as I’m concerned, magic is real

4

Matuno t1_j0xbnl3 wrote

Reminds me of a quote that is now over a decade old already: Your cell phone has more computing power than all of NASA in 1969. NASA launched a man to the moon. We launched a bird into pigs

3