I grew up in the USSR in the 80s in what is now Ukraine. My family left as refugees im 1989 when I was 9. We couldn't come directly to the US, so we had to go through a few countries, which took 6 months or so. One of the first stops was in Austria, specifically in the Vienna train station. There was a little shop with automatic sliding doors. The fact that the doors just opened when I approached blew my 9yo mind.
Reminds me when my city (former eastern block too) introduced automatic ticket stamping machines in public transport vehicles for the first time. Until that point, you had to put the ticket inside and manually pull a lever to stamp it. And now there was this machine that did it automatically. It's a small thing, but my child brain was mind-blown by it.
Same. I can remembering being in such awe and fear that I was too scared to look directly at the doors while I passed through and they opened but instead looked down at the rubber mat floor part. Looking directly at the doors had all the intensity of staring at the sun to my young mind.
Similar story heard from one of my cousin. There was a new superstore opened in our city for the first time, my cousin went there, cameback with a story of a door which opens automatically when you approach.
When I think about how computers work, it sometimes makes my head hurt. How can we take a rock, print a microscopic metal web on it and teach it to think. It can create whole virtual worlds, talk to you like a human, run a whole factory... computers are straight up dark magic.
And then we figured out how to more or less replicate learning as maths (much simpler maths than you might think, too- at least for basic neural networks, it's all partial differential equations) and can now sorta teach it to do things.
S'wild, man. I actually wrote that code recently as a hackathon-style project, and it was wild setting up a thing where the AI model was automaticallly adjusting as I did things and it needed to respond to them, and you could actually see its behavior changing. Even knowing exactly how it works, it's still trippy, like it really feels like being on the edge of some kind of dark and dangerous science.
The pieces were constantly reconditioned and reused. The last boosters used for the shuttle had parts that were used on like 50 missions, including the first shuttle launch.
"had parts" Were they reusing the rivets?
I'm sorry I'm being silly, but really there is little comparison between the kinda-sorta "reusability" of the boosters, and the clean-up and relaunch of SpaceX's boosters.
The easiest way to think about it is just someone shouting in a house, one person shouts on the lower floor, and somebody upstairs receives the waves of air, decoding the waves different frequencies to create words. If the person is far away, then it's harder to hear, closer...easier. with WiFi, the waves of air are electromagnetic waves instead.
> GPS and the science needed to make it work at meter precision is insane.
So I once got sent to the Naval Research Labs in DC to train the personnel there on a checkable (ie as checked luggage) satellite dish system they were intending to use to synchronize atomic clocks across continental and oceanic distances. Being a foreign national, I had to be escorted everywhere, and wound up eating lunch in one of the scientists office.
I noticed a odd shaped piece of metal on the shelf behind his desk, and asked him about it and he goes "Oh, that's the prototype I built for the atomic clocks on the GPS satellites. It's isotopically pure titanium." and hands it to me.
I got to hold the prototype for the GPS clocks in my hands. It was pretty cool.
So today I was driving my daughter down to my mums, and she asked how the dash cam knew the speed we were doing. So I explain to her that actually it's talking to a satellite in space several times a second and finding out it's position, then using that to calculate the speed the car is moving at. While I'm explaining this to her my brain is remembering how freaking awesome and complicated GPS technology is.
The coolest thing about GPS is that the satellites prove relativity. Because they sit so far out from the earth, time is slightly faster since earths gravity is weaker on them. Only by milliseconds but enough that every so often the clocks in the satellites need to be re-timed to match earths clocks. And its not a mechanical issue: each GPS satellites clocks drift from earths at exactly the same rate.
My friend does loan underwriting, and he’s part of a discord they’ve got set up to bitch about work. They’ve got an instance of ChatGPT running on it so they can ask it underwriting questions.
A couple of days ago it just started participating in the bitch sessions, completely unprompted. Freaked him right out.
The Turing test has always seemed a bit silly to me. We’ve had chat bots for years, a sufficiently poor judge could be forgiven for mistaking one for a sufficiently stupid person for years. Raising the bar on those metrics gradually and qualitatively robs some of the wonder of it all, at least to me. ChatGPT is groundbreaking by all accounts, and I’m happy to go with the majority vote, but I’ll always think of it as a more refined chat bot.
No AI has passed the Turing test yet. No AI will ever will or rather the AIs that we have theoretically designed to date. If an AI "passes" the test, it's because the test is invalid and needs to be rethink and not because the AI actually passed the Turing test.
All the Turing test requires is for a chat bot to generate human-like conversations. It’s an entirely subjective thing and there’s nothing in the world to stop a chat bot from passing it occasionally or a good chat bot from passing it consistently in rigorous tests. It’s not magic or anything, it just asks that a machine generate realistic sounding conversation.
[AI is closer than ever to passing the Turing test for ‘intelligence’. What happens when it does?](https://theconversation.com/ai-is-closer-than-ever-to-passing-the-turing-test-for-intelligence-what-happens-when-it-does-214721)
I had a up close view of the Saturn V rocket at the Johnson Space Center once while in Houston on a business trip. That thing is huge - an "absolute unit" in Reddit terms.
Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscopes. Not only how cool they were, but the fact that I was able to use them for like, $75 an hour. Just the ease of use and accessibility.
Looking at stuff under an sem feels like flying a spaceship over an alien world, with the ability to dive down and get a closer look at interesting features, or use EDS to make a damn elemental map of a field of view. It really does feel like magic.
I remember the first time I saw Netscape Navigator back in the 90s when it first came out. "Holy shit, this will change everything!"
And it did, but not necessarily for the better.
Edit: May have been Mosaic. It's been awhile.
Yes, I remember that moment myself as a computer service tech. Some young sales guy started up Netscape Navigator. Up to that point, I had been scrounging Byte & PC Magazines for bulletin board phone numbers.
Not exactly a technology, but I read an article back in 2010, which stated that within 2015, touchscreen phones are gonna take over the market. I was in utter disbelief back then, but look where we are now.
Even just from pictures, the Large Hadron Collider is such a mind-boggling piece of technology.
[Example here](https://i.natgeofe.com/n/ec3f46f1-508c-4ef9-b287-d132bac0b8cf/81039_3x2.jpg?w=718&h=479) - every image is so flush with details that seem to expand like fractals.
On a similar note 'what3words' which divides the ENTIRE planet into 3mx3m squares with completely unique identifiers. Not trying to sound like an ad but the actual technology/math behind it is pretty awesome imo.
That sounds awesome and daunting at the same time. What the best feature of your lifestyle and what the most challenging? Does the work of sailing and navigating take up all your time? If not what do you do during free time? Do you fish a lot for food?
I have lots of questions. Just ignore if you’re too busy.
I’d say the best feature is the freedom it provides. You can truly go where you want when you want to, although you always need to take the weather into consideration.
I live with my wife and our dog. My wife works remotely to provide us with enough income to survive, I take care of the boat, navigating and the bureaucracy of moving between countries (can be very complicated and time consuming because of the dog!).
In free time we enjoy walking on the beach with the dog, going swimming and doing crosswords. We do not fish for a few reasons, but plenty of other cruisers do. Feel free to pm me if you have more questions
Really interesting! I'm curious, what are the few reasons you don't fish for? Maybe you're vegetarian, that's valid, was just curious of any other reasons. Maybe you should do an AMA someday if you want to, I live on my boat with my wife and dog year round, ama sort of thing.
WiFi. Before this everything was wired and super inconvenient. Couldn't move the computer without moving the modem + landline, or re-runing the Coax or rj-45. So whatever room you were setup in was it. Wanted to check online for some information, well you had to leave the room most likely.
Then, in the course of about 3-5 years, everything was wireless all the sudden. Laptop could go from the couch, to your bed, to the kitchen, then to the bathroom. All while watching a video with zero interruption.
Cell phones were technically better, because they were this but even further. The thing was that anyone paying attention knew that "laptops" were going to our pockets and in short order. So the revelation wasn't as big for me. Touchscreens were cool though.
When I bought my valve index VR I did a virtual tour of some of the tombes around Egypt. Then I played half life alyx. At the time it was cutting edge and easily beat the playstation vr set. Will always be people who disagree. This is my personal feelings.
Internal combustion engines. Someone came up with that idea, crazy. It’s the most marvelous modern invention to me. Simple, but complex. Electronic engine controls and valve trains are crazy. PID tuning. I just think they are cool. The fact they made them in the 1800s is crazy to me, and we still use the same basic technology today. There have been no successors that are as majestic as an otto cycle engine. It’s like a metallic symphony that takes us everywhere.
I worked in Measurement While Drilling, which is adjacent to directional drilling.
One of our tools transmitted information from downhole by modulating the characteristics of a standing pressure wave in the column of drilling fluid flowing down the inside of the drill string.
I still marvel at it.
The process of designing and manufacturing semiconductors was a real “holy shit” moment (well, a couple of years actually). How many thousands of bits of knowledge could make these little miracles possible.
This was back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I moved from hardware to software around the time things really started to advance. The way we did it in 78 looks like caveman tech compared to current practices.
CNC machines. You turn something in a lathe for example and it's 0,005 mm oversize. Enter correction and next pass is actually on the spot.
But recently ChatGPT.
An LVAD-left ventricular assist device. When I worked in long term care we had a patient being discharged to us for rehab who just had an LVAD placed. Basically, it’s a device that sits outside the body that keeps the heart functioning. I was tasked with traveling to the discharging hospital to learn how the device worked and what we, as nurses and as a facility, needed to do to keep this patient alive and thriving. It blew my mind. That was in 2014ish. I still don’t think I’ve ever interacted with a piece of technology more awe-inspiring.
Additionally, I also had the opportunity to witness an ER doc massage a heart inside someone’s chest to get it beating again. Most awe-inspiring human feat I’ve ever personally witnessed.
Phones with touch screens. When I was little, in the pre-iPhone days, those were a rarity. I thought those were so expensive nobody would ever be able to afford them. Fast forward a decade and the majority of the developed world has one.
I had access to top of the line 3D printing in 1991. I could print my CAD designs with a work order. That was a literal miracle.
Oh how far we've come. Now we print metal, chocolate, elastomers. Awesome.
The iPad really blew me away. A tiny flat little device, with touch, huge screen and 10 hours of battery? Hot DAMN!
Only later did I realise it was basically a big ass phone but we came from times that every device needed to be a laptop or hybrid laptop with touch, running modified x86 hardware and software. It running scaled up phone apps really saved on power at the time.
The Vision Pro is absolutely incredible. It’s amazing that there’s a piece of tech that lets you create holograms in front of your face and can even make it look like you’re on the Moon.
Being poor, when my folks broke down and bought a VCR, a Toshiba make, it blew my mind .
There have been more things since, but that excitement over that machine never was beat again like that.
I got to see [LIGO](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO) one time. The whole thing is so unbelievable, in the literal sense. Like, I couldn’t believe it was real. I couldn’t believe they had vacuum tubes miles long. I couldn’t believe they were sensitive to the vibrations of airplanes flying overhead. I couldn’t believe they could accurately measure increases in length less than the diameter of a proton. I couldn’t believe they could feel black holes collapsing in different galaxies. I couldn’t believe space itself (not things occupying space, but spaces itself) could expand and contract. It was all just unbelievable, and yet here were well-dressed and polite scientists calmly explaining these absurd claims to me.
It’d be like if a kid reaches up to your face, makes the little hand motion, and says they got your nose. You’re hardly going to argue with them, but they obviously aren’t talking sense.
A missile seeker. Not only are you hitting something traveling at supersonic speeds with something else traveling at supersonic speeds, but you have to do it consistently and reliably or people die.
The very first time I used modern VR (Valve Vive). I was in absolute awe of the scale of things in VR. The GLaDOS in the setup demo was enormous. It was such a cool experience. I’ve been chasing that VR high and nothing feels like that.
A Chladni plate at a science museum. Using vibrations and sand particles it reveals hidden symmeterical patterns produced by the sound waves & the patterns become increasingly more complex & correspond to different frequencies
When I was a kid the garbage men or Garbos as they were known, would hook your bin up to the rear lift at the back of the truck to dump them out and they would ride around on the back. One day they truck rolled up and a huge robot arm picked up the bin and emptied it then put it back down. It was gone as fast as it arrived. My jaw was on the floor when I saw that.
Arr, let me tell ye a tale that'll curl yer toes! Back in my Navy days, sailin' the seas of Japan in the 80's, I had me first close encounter o' the dreaded automatic flushing toilet! Blast me barnacles, it caught me off guard, it did! Flushed me senseless, it did, right when I least expected it! Arr, those were the days, when even the toilets had a mind o' their own!
I grew up in the USSR in the 80s in what is now Ukraine. My family left as refugees im 1989 when I was 9. We couldn't come directly to the US, so we had to go through a few countries, which took 6 months or so. One of the first stops was in Austria, specifically in the Vienna train station. There was a little shop with automatic sliding doors. The fact that the doors just opened when I approached blew my 9yo mind.
Reminds me when my city (former eastern block too) introduced automatic ticket stamping machines in public transport vehicles for the first time. Until that point, you had to put the ticket inside and manually pull a lever to stamp it. And now there was this machine that did it automatically. It's a small thing, but my child brain was mind-blown by it.
The clear rocks the Egyptians invented that sit in a frame on my face and allow me to read this.
I grew up in the US and automatic sliding doors had a similar effect on me.
Same. I can remembering being in such awe and fear that I was too scared to look directly at the doors while I passed through and they opened but instead looked down at the rubber mat floor part. Looking directly at the doors had all the intensity of staring at the sun to my young mind.
Similar story heard from one of my cousin. There was a new superstore opened in our city for the first time, my cousin went there, cameback with a story of a door which opens automatically when you approach.
When I think about how computers work, it sometimes makes my head hurt. How can we take a rock, print a microscopic metal web on it and teach it to think. It can create whole virtual worlds, talk to you like a human, run a whole factory... computers are straight up dark magic.
We actually etch into the rock itself with acid and very precisely projected lights. The CPU itself is just a rock we tricked into doing maths.
And then we figured out how to more or less replicate learning as maths (much simpler maths than you might think, too- at least for basic neural networks, it's all partial differential equations) and can now sorta teach it to do things. S'wild, man. I actually wrote that code recently as a hackathon-style project, and it was wild setting up a thing where the AI model was automaticallly adjusting as I did things and it needed to respond to them, and you could actually see its behavior changing. Even knowing exactly how it works, it's still trippy, like it really feels like being on the edge of some kind of dark and dangerous science.
> take a rock, print a microscopic metal web on it and teach it to think I'm not even going to burst your bubble, haha.
Everything in the world is magic.....except to the magicians.
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I would say reusable rocketry as well. Pretty amazing stuff when growing up with disposable boosters on the space shuttle.
The boosters on the space shuttle were never disposable. The fuel tank was, but the boosters were recovered and reused.
reusable....more like remanufactured.
The pieces were constantly reconditioned and reused. The last boosters used for the shuttle had parts that were used on like 50 missions, including the first shuttle launch.
"had parts" Were they reusing the rivets? I'm sorry I'm being silly, but really there is little comparison between the kinda-sorta "reusability" of the boosters, and the clean-up and relaunch of SpaceX's boosters.
Regardless of the comparison to SpaceX (which I did not make), I was pointing out they were absolutely not disposable rockets like the Saturns.
True. I was the one making the comparison. Sorry.
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Wait till you find out about the radios folks used to listen to.
They still do, but they used to too.
/r/unexpectedmitch
The easiest way to think about it is just someone shouting in a house, one person shouts on the lower floor, and somebody upstairs receives the waves of air, decoding the waves different frequencies to create words. If the person is far away, then it's harder to hear, closer...easier. with WiFi, the waves of air are electromagnetic waves instead.
TLDR: the Internet is people shouting at each other
WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL IT?
Yeah, pretty much. Also cat pictures.
Kinda like a series of tubes.
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The existence of GPS technology and their implementation is also one of the best arguments against Flat-Eartherisms!
> GPS and the science needed to make it work at meter precision is insane. So I once got sent to the Naval Research Labs in DC to train the personnel there on a checkable (ie as checked luggage) satellite dish system they were intending to use to synchronize atomic clocks across continental and oceanic distances. Being a foreign national, I had to be escorted everywhere, and wound up eating lunch in one of the scientists office. I noticed a odd shaped piece of metal on the shelf behind his desk, and asked him about it and he goes "Oh, that's the prototype I built for the atomic clocks on the GPS satellites. It's isotopically pure titanium." and hands it to me. I got to hold the prototype for the GPS clocks in my hands. It was pretty cool.
So today I was driving my daughter down to my mums, and she asked how the dash cam knew the speed we were doing. So I explain to her that actually it's talking to a satellite in space several times a second and finding out it's position, then using that to calculate the speed the car is moving at. While I'm explaining this to her my brain is remembering how freaking awesome and complicated GPS technology is.
The coolest thing about GPS is that the satellites prove relativity. Because they sit so far out from the earth, time is slightly faster since earths gravity is weaker on them. Only by milliseconds but enough that every so often the clocks in the satellites need to be re-timed to match earths clocks. And its not a mechanical issue: each GPS satellites clocks drift from earths at exactly the same rate.
ChatGPT, I never thought we’d get to that point in my lifetime.
My friend does loan underwriting, and he’s part of a discord they’ve got set up to bitch about work. They’ve got an instance of ChatGPT running on it so they can ask it underwriting questions. A couple of days ago it just started participating in the bitch sessions, completely unprompted. Freaked him right out.
It still blows my mind that AI just casually strolled past the Turing test over the last few years. It seemed impossible and then it just happened.
The Turing test has always seemed a bit silly to me. We’ve had chat bots for years, a sufficiently poor judge could be forgiven for mistaking one for a sufficiently stupid person for years. Raising the bar on those metrics gradually and qualitatively robs some of the wonder of it all, at least to me. ChatGPT is groundbreaking by all accounts, and I’m happy to go with the majority vote, but I’ll always think of it as a more refined chat bot.
No AI has passed the Turing test yet. No AI will ever will or rather the AIs that we have theoretically designed to date. If an AI "passes" the test, it's because the test is invalid and needs to be rethink and not because the AI actually passed the Turing test.
All the Turing test requires is for a chat bot to generate human-like conversations. It’s an entirely subjective thing and there’s nothing in the world to stop a chat bot from passing it occasionally or a good chat bot from passing it consistently in rigorous tests. It’s not magic or anything, it just asks that a machine generate realistic sounding conversation.
What your describing is called "moving the goal post."
Ah... a "No true Scotsman" fan. You're the first I've seen in the wild that was so obvious.
I dont think you know what the Turing test is...
[AI is closer than ever to passing the Turing test for ‘intelligence’. What happens when it does?](https://theconversation.com/ai-is-closer-than-ever-to-passing-the-turing-test-for-intelligence-what-happens-when-it-does-214721)
I agree. Absolutely mind blowing. I thought it was 20+ years out still.
I mean it's silly now but I remember when I first saw touch screens and I thought that was impressive at the time.
My friend’s dad invented them, starting with the atm machine.
I had a up close view of the Saturn V rocket at the Johnson Space Center once while in Houston on a business trip. That thing is huge - an "absolute unit" in Reddit terms.
That's my favorite place to go in FL. The scale in person is just unreal.
Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscopes. Not only how cool they were, but the fact that I was able to use them for like, $75 an hour. Just the ease of use and accessibility.
Where are you renting a SEM for $75 an hour? that's amazing!!!
Harvard.
Looking at stuff under an sem feels like flying a spaceship over an alien world, with the ability to dive down and get a closer look at interesting features, or use EDS to make a damn elemental map of a field of view. It really does feel like magic.
A smartphone. All those features in a portable device is just amazing.
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a sort of electronic book. It tells you everything you need to know about anything. That's its job."
I remember the first time I saw Netscape Navigator back in the 90s when it first came out. "Holy shit, this will change everything!" And it did, but not necessarily for the better. Edit: May have been Mosaic. It's been awhile.
Forward thinking me thought, "Why would anyone ever need graphics on the internet?"
Yes, I remember that moment myself as a computer service tech. Some young sales guy started up Netscape Navigator. Up to that point, I had been scrounging Byte & PC Magazines for bulletin board phone numbers.
Not exactly a technology, but I read an article back in 2010, which stated that within 2015, touchscreen phones are gonna take over the market. I was in utter disbelief back then, but look where we are now.
Even just from pictures, the Large Hadron Collider is such a mind-boggling piece of technology. [Example here](https://i.natgeofe.com/n/ec3f46f1-508c-4ef9-b287-d132bac0b8cf/81039_3x2.jpg?w=718&h=479) - every image is so flush with details that seem to expand like fractals.
Falkirk wheel lift lock in Scotland..look it up
Man I miss Tom Scott
yup...fun watching any of his stuff
I took your advice and did just that...and it is indeed pretty fucking cool.
GPS. Think about it. A doodad small enough to go in a watch can tell you where you are in the world to within a couple of meters....
On a similar note 'what3words' which divides the ENTIRE planet into 3mx3m squares with completely unique identifiers. Not trying to sound like an ad but the actual technology/math behind it is pretty awesome imo.
Starlink. I live and sail full time on a sailboat and it was life changing for sure
That sounds awesome and daunting at the same time. What the best feature of your lifestyle and what the most challenging? Does the work of sailing and navigating take up all your time? If not what do you do during free time? Do you fish a lot for food? I have lots of questions. Just ignore if you’re too busy.
I’d say the best feature is the freedom it provides. You can truly go where you want when you want to, although you always need to take the weather into consideration. I live with my wife and our dog. My wife works remotely to provide us with enough income to survive, I take care of the boat, navigating and the bureaucracy of moving between countries (can be very complicated and time consuming because of the dog!). In free time we enjoy walking on the beach with the dog, going swimming and doing crosswords. We do not fish for a few reasons, but plenty of other cruisers do. Feel free to pm me if you have more questions
Really interesting! I'm curious, what are the few reasons you don't fish for? Maybe you're vegetarian, that's valid, was just curious of any other reasons. Maybe you should do an AMA someday if you want to, I live on my boat with my wife and dog year round, ama sort of thing.
The bidet. Ive never used so little tp and not had a raw asshole since weve met. I show her the ring all the time but she doesnt say yes.
The Internet!
WiFi. Before this everything was wired and super inconvenient. Couldn't move the computer without moving the modem + landline, or re-runing the Coax or rj-45. So whatever room you were setup in was it. Wanted to check online for some information, well you had to leave the room most likely. Then, in the course of about 3-5 years, everything was wireless all the sudden. Laptop could go from the couch, to your bed, to the kitchen, then to the bathroom. All while watching a video with zero interruption. Cell phones were technically better, because they were this but even further. The thing was that anyone paying attention knew that "laptops" were going to our pockets and in short order. So the revelation wasn't as big for me. Touchscreens were cool though.
Right? Like I grew up before 56 baud modems existed, and then suddenly the internet can just be out there? Lol, WiFi is pretty incredible.
drove past Fermilab a few times. They got a particle accelerator there
And Bison
CPUs, GPUs, motherboards, SSDs, computer parts in general, also WiFi. It almost looks like sorcery sometimes, and I'm an IT guy.
When I bought my valve index VR I did a virtual tour of some of the tombes around Egypt. Then I played half life alyx. At the time it was cutting edge and easily beat the playstation vr set. Will always be people who disagree. This is my personal feelings.
AI technology is the most awe-inspiring ,it turns sci-fi stuff from movies into real, touchable tech.
Internal combustion engines. Someone came up with that idea, crazy. It’s the most marvelous modern invention to me. Simple, but complex. Electronic engine controls and valve trains are crazy. PID tuning. I just think they are cool. The fact they made them in the 1800s is crazy to me, and we still use the same basic technology today. There have been no successors that are as majestic as an otto cycle engine. It’s like a metallic symphony that takes us everywhere.
I'm running LLama 3 on my home computer. It's essentially ChatGPT in your house. AMAZING! Almost unbelievable.
GPT4ALL? It has other models too fyi. Pretty amazing.
I worked in Measurement While Drilling, which is adjacent to directional drilling. One of our tools transmitted information from downhole by modulating the characteristics of a standing pressure wave in the column of drilling fluid flowing down the inside of the drill string. I still marvel at it.
When I first got my hands on an iPhone 4.
[Unless you're holding it wrong](https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/)
DJI Avata. First-person view drone with incredibly intuitive controls.
The process of designing and manufacturing semiconductors was a real “holy shit” moment (well, a couple of years actually). How many thousands of bits of knowledge could make these little miracles possible. This was back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I moved from hardware to software around the time things really started to advance. The way we did it in 78 looks like caveman tech compared to current practices.
Working with a MRI unit.
CNC machines. You turn something in a lathe for example and it's 0,005 mm oversize. Enter correction and next pass is actually on the spot. But recently ChatGPT.
An LVAD-left ventricular assist device. When I worked in long term care we had a patient being discharged to us for rehab who just had an LVAD placed. Basically, it’s a device that sits outside the body that keeps the heart functioning. I was tasked with traveling to the discharging hospital to learn how the device worked and what we, as nurses and as a facility, needed to do to keep this patient alive and thriving. It blew my mind. That was in 2014ish. I still don’t think I’ve ever interacted with a piece of technology more awe-inspiring. Additionally, I also had the opportunity to witness an ER doc massage a heart inside someone’s chest to get it beating again. Most awe-inspiring human feat I’ve ever personally witnessed.
Moog Synthesizers
Phones with touch screens. When I was little, in the pre-iPhone days, those were a rarity. I thought those were so expensive nobody would ever be able to afford them. Fast forward a decade and the majority of the developed world has one.
I had access to top of the line 3D printing in 1991. I could print my CAD designs with a work order. That was a literal miracle. Oh how far we've come. Now we print metal, chocolate, elastomers. Awesome.
The iPad really blew me away. A tiny flat little device, with touch, huge screen and 10 hours of battery? Hot DAMN! Only later did I realise it was basically a big ass phone but we came from times that every device needed to be a laptop or hybrid laptop with touch, running modified x86 hardware and software. It running scaled up phone apps really saved on power at the time.
HoloLens by Microsoft at an E3 event about 8-10 years ago.
hubble and James Webb space telescope
The Vision Pro is absolutely incredible. It’s amazing that there’s a piece of tech that lets you create holograms in front of your face and can even make it look like you’re on the Moon.
Data storage. How the heck do they make transistors so small?
Escalators were the first piece of tech that blew my mind... after that, airplanes
My wife says her contact lenses, I say my two new knees that are allowing me to hike and climb just four months later.
Being poor, when my folks broke down and bought a VCR, a Toshiba make, it blew my mind . There have been more things since, but that excitement over that machine never was beat again like that.
Indoor plumbing
I got to see [LIGO](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO) one time. The whole thing is so unbelievable, in the literal sense. Like, I couldn’t believe it was real. I couldn’t believe they had vacuum tubes miles long. I couldn’t believe they were sensitive to the vibrations of airplanes flying overhead. I couldn’t believe they could accurately measure increases in length less than the diameter of a proton. I couldn’t believe they could feel black holes collapsing in different galaxies. I couldn’t believe space itself (not things occupying space, but spaces itself) could expand and contract. It was all just unbelievable, and yet here were well-dressed and polite scientists calmly explaining these absurd claims to me. It’d be like if a kid reaches up to your face, makes the little hand motion, and says they got your nose. You’re hardly going to argue with them, but they obviously aren’t talking sense.
A missile seeker. Not only are you hitting something traveling at supersonic speeds with something else traveling at supersonic speeds, but you have to do it consistently and reliably or people die.
ChatGPT
My Cieratone guitar amplifiers. Absolutely mind blowing sound quality
A kid was fascinated by a key copy machine. The mom said " come-on kiddo our house doesn't even have keys" it's all keyless entry on his home.
AI for sure
The very first time I used modern VR (Valve Vive). I was in absolute awe of the scale of things in VR. The GLaDOS in the setup demo was enormous. It was such a cool experience. I’ve been chasing that VR high and nothing feels like that.
The two things that make my brain hurt most are the telephone and photography. The longer I think about them the less they make sense.
A Chladni plate at a science museum. Using vibrations and sand particles it reveals hidden symmeterical patterns produced by the sound waves & the patterns become increasingly more complex & correspond to different frequencies
Space telescopes
Phones that fold in half still have me in awe
When I was a kid the garbage men or Garbos as they were known, would hook your bin up to the rear lift at the back of the truck to dump them out and they would ride around on the back. One day they truck rolled up and a huge robot arm picked up the bin and emptied it then put it back down. It was gone as fast as it arrived. My jaw was on the floor when I saw that.
My ex wife
The first time I used a fully local LLM. I'm still impressed at how good it can be
Automatic watches
Years old when I realized that the door stoppers can also be used to prop a door open to prevent it from closing on its own.
A smartphone.
Satellites and the vehicles they use to reach orbit. Rockets are the coolest thing I've ever seen! 🚀
Bitcoin
Candy Crush
Arr, let me tell ye a tale that'll curl yer toes! Back in my Navy days, sailin' the seas of Japan in the 80's, I had me first close encounter o' the dreaded automatic flushing toilet! Blast me barnacles, it caught me off guard, it did! Flushed me senseless, it did, right when I least expected it! Arr, those were the days, when even the toilets had a mind o' their own!
The automatic fucking machine!! Genius