We Are Living in The World of Tomorrow

I was thinking back to where my earliest memories start and how the technology of today would have seemed like an unimaginable tomorrow in 1965.

In the morning, I often use a microwave oven to reheat leftovers or cook breakfast.  Microwave ovens existed in 1965 but they were expensive.   Few ordinary people had one at home, much less two of them.

If I want something not incredibly exotic, I can pick up my phone and have it delivered usually next day.

Oh yes, that phone.  I can call anywhere in America as part of ordinary monthly phone service.  My first local phone service bill in the 1970s was i think about $30/month (inflation-adjusted about the same or less than my unlimited cell phone for the phones my wife and I carry).  I do not need to hunt for a phone booth anywhere.  

There are almost no places without cell service.  I have T-Mobile, so Stsrlink handles those. 

By the 1970s, almost everyone had answering machines.  On my phone I can check my email and receive text messages and check voicemail. Does anyone miss those clumsy beasts?

Oh yes, my wife is putting finishing touches on a novel that she has put together entirely at home and will soon be available for purchase worldwide.

Computers.  Internet.   I can search 16 million pages of newspapers covering several centuries and I have no idea how many pages of books from my home.  Even as late as the 1990s, the closest equivalent would involve going to a couple dozen university libraries and laboriously reading microfilm.

My first car was a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu station wagon.  I seldom saw better than 13 mpg.  0-60 was about 12 seconds.  If it pulled. .65g lateral acceleration, I would be surprised.  I have no idea what its top speed was but likely no more than 120 (assuming the bias ply tires did not fail before I got there).  It had an AM radio.

I now drive a car that regularly exceeds 20 mpg.  It does 0-60 in 5.1 seconds, corners at 1g lateral acceleration.   It has sensors and cameras that render most of that Malibu's high risk accidents unlikely.  Most of the features that were controlled by buttons on the Malibu are under voice control on my car.  I have more choices of vastly higher sound quality than any 1965 car anywhere.

Medical care?  Procedures that woukd have been high risk and often not even possible back then are almost routine (angioplasty, double bypass).

In 1965, I was a kid growing up in a barely middle class family.   My mother's goal was for all her kids to go to college (first generation)   i have an MA, my daughter has a doctorate and is a university professor.  My son has a BA.

I lived in a two bedroom apartment of perhaps 800 square feet with my mother and two sisters.  Now I own a 3100 square foot house on a forested acre.

I have not even touched travel.

We are living in 1965's Tomorrowland.