John F. Kerry

gps, tablets, all the other stuff, damn..

these ads reminded me of the way some telecom and other companies did ads in the old days of the 90s - it was all about what was comming on the horizon and how awesome the future was gonna be...

now we have like 90% of the cool stuff they predicted we would have but people are far less upbeat....i think its partially because in the 90s when we saw these things on the horizon we also thought that amazing advances in the human condition would accompany the new tech- now today we have all the cool tech that makes science fiction possible but we still use it to live in essentially the same human condition we've always had so its like well things are better today but basically we just have cooler toys to keep us busy until we get sick and die .... i dunno if this deserves a or but the preditions were pretty amazing....

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Nasa under Obama

kamikazi89

in the nineties i could afford more groceries, and there twernt two US wars going on simulataneously....

coincidence? not likely

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katie west is the best

Mikey

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RIP Gov

OldMan&TheWeed

I was optimistic in the 90s. By nature I still am, but circumstances have changed.

If I were in the business of predictions, I'd have some dark visions of the future.

I feel strongly that our digital present (on which our global civilization depends) is a tenuous, fragile reality that will be wiped away in milliseconds by an electromagnetic pulse—either by nuclear detonation or a geomagnetic storm caused by a very severe solar flare.

Very few things will work afterwards. No cellphones, no radio or TV, no computers, even our cars and trucks (except those made before the 1980s) will run.

How much time will it take for people to begin to starve?

That's what I see.

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Nintey-three percent of what I say is brilliant, factual information and seven percent is complete bullshit. Have fun deciding which is which.

kamikazi89

china has you by the short hairs

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katie west is the best

Mafoo

i think that humanity has progressed, look at how much discussion marijuana got this year, and then look at civil rights for LBGT people. ya there are still alot of major problems, but we gotta give ourselves some credit for even those small advances.

also, @oldman, most vital technology is shieded from EMP nowadays

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PLUR
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return

kamikazi89

that's true, in 1993 no one would have predicted that homosexuals would have the same rights as heterosexuals by now, or that the U.S. would have elected a racial minority as prseident...

somebody(not AT&T) probably even predicted the US would be in a perpetual state of war, but they would have been crazy

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katie west is the best

The Rev

I think that when things are getting better fundamentally, they appear to be getting worse on the surface. The world is in the midst of an historically significant powershift, from the powerful banking interests that have ruled our world for over a century, to a new model where information will be the key commodity of power. Since the Internet appeared in the average person's world 10-15 years ago, knowledge has been multiplying. With that upheaval has come all kinds of radical thinking, as people compare and share ideas with others, all over the globe, as interconnected individuals, and not just through a few powerful media outlets controlled by a few powerful monied individuals. LGBT rights, marijuana prohibition, peak oil, global warming, etc. were all ideas that existed before the net, but because of the communication potential available to individuals now, these discussions are forced onto the world stage in true democratic fashion.

The upheaval will go on, of course, even after the economy has entered it's next inflation cycle and people forget that shit can go bad again. In fact, I think this time, 100 years from now, will be thought of as the event that the 60's were just an opening act for.



The Rev

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kamikazi89

93 was about the time the predator drone came into being, another 17 years and you can probably kill poor people from the comfort of your living room (:for a monthly fee

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katie west is the best

farmergiles

kami just once I dare you to show some personality

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Cultivate a stoic calmness

John F. Kerry

in a kami voice - "the baby in the videophone shot is now old enough to be dying in iraq or afghanistan "

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Nasa under Obama

Waves

No we dont?

How do you define "human condition?"

Being alive? The pain all humans share?

We've gone from a tribal nomadic barbaric species to a (somewhat) civilized advanced species capable of traveling through space. Weve seen economic and governmental systems rise and collapse and rise and collapse. weve gone from worshiping the sun to advanced scientific theory. The pain of todays human is NOTHING compared to the trials people in the past had to go through, hunting for food, disease, etc.

The world is always changing. Whether you recognize it depends on how wide open your eyes are.

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On this life that we call home
The years go fast and the days go so slow

osirus2020

Well clearly we have changed from the days of living in caves and eating brontosaurus ribs, but ultimately humans are still the same as we always have been. We just do it differently.

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

The Rev

The human game is alot more abstract now, but essentially the same. Bread and circuses have simply been replaced with government paternalism and war. As for day to day life, I think Tyler Durden summed it up best:

"We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives.”

or, more succinctly...

“The things you own end up owning you.”



The Rev

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OldMan&TheWeed

I wish you were right.

In 2010, a technical report written for a United States government laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, included a brief section addressing some common EMP myths. One of the main misconceptions is that that there are many ways to protect against nuclear EMP (or to quickly begin repairs where protection is not practical); but the United States EMP Commission determined that such protections are almost completely absent in the civilian infrastructure of the United States, and that even large sectors of the United States military services were no longer protected against EMP to the level that they were during the Cold War.

Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack

I don't think that this is a manufactured problem like the Y2K bug. I really see this one as a real wrench in the works of our digital civilization.

It is only a matter of time.

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Nintey-three percent of what I say is brilliant, factual information and seven percent is complete bullshit. Have fun deciding which is which.

kamikazi89

that's a pretty weak dare right there..shirley you can do better?

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katie west is the best

Roach

att basically produced a video of it's 20 year design plan.

the future will not change much for humanity unless some major changes take place.

I see few people willing to give up what little they do have, in the direction of a global social structure that would be necessary to alter a pretty much dead end coarse.(course thanks nun )

I expect Japan or China (after achieving global monetary leader status) (Japan nearly had it before the recent crash) will have to impress some sense of global awareness on the world where the US has failed.

Since England and America have given their manufacturing jobs to China, they carry the large world leader in manufacturing stick, which also has alot of global power.

Then there's going to be this global realization that American's don't really study law...they study loopholes and America's entire monetary system is a failed system.

In 2011 The world will discover that somewhere around 20 % of American's are now living under America's own poverty level ,as a direct result of a failed/corrupt banking system.

In 2011 wikileaks will leak the leak to end all leaks...the mother of all leaks.

In 2011 I will personally consume about 3 to 4 pounds of cannabis.

Religion, fearing failure will begin to try to "reach out and touch someone" in an attempt to regroup from mass awareness that religion is bullshit , that has left many of them short of money. (Not unlike the liars from the 700 club)

politically it's a grab bag...corporations run America, and I haven't been following business.

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לזיין את הקופים

Roach

only for those making a profit from those great gadgets.

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לזיין את הקופים

FourtySecondRip

what is this leak to end all leaks u speak of. and how will it change peoples minds. nothing wikileaks does is going to make some global change in humanity. thats just some fairytale bullshit wishful thinking. not even fighting a common enemy in hitler WW2 could create a worldwide change in people. how will a leaked document get everyone on the same boat if directly fighting mass genocide and world domination couldnt?

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..,,,O,,,..
<\FSR/>
.,._/\_.,

al-Mu'akhkhir

lol you guys were splitting melons in the gulf like 2 years earlier it wouldn't have been THAT far fetched. in fact you guys HAVE been perpetually at war since the 40s but, hey, who's keeping score.

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