The 20th century saw some of the most groundbreaking inventions that changed the world as we know it. From the airplane to the creation of the Internet, these inventions have transformed the way we live, work, and communicate. One of the top inventions of the 20th century is artificial intelligence (AI), which has revolutionized the fields of medicine, finance, and transportation, among others. AI is a form of technology that can learn, reason, and even make predictions, bringing us closer to a world where machines can perform complex tasks without human intervention.
If you think this isn’t a big deal, consider the fact that AI wrote what you just read!
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The 20th century saw some of the most groundbreaking inventions that changed the world as we know it. From the airplane to the creation of the Internet, these inventions have transformed the way we live, work, and communicate. One of the top inventions of the 20th century is artificial intelligence (AI), which has revolutionized the fields of medicine, finance, and transportation, among others. AI is a form of technology that can learn, reason, and even make predictions, bringing us closer to a world where machines can perform complex tasks without human intervention.
If you think this isn’t a big deal, consider the fact that AI wrote what you just read!
1. Topics
2. Additional Resources
3. Merchandise/Support the Show
4. Contact Us/Follow Us/Rate/Subscribe
New episodes every week!
Listen, rate, follow, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!
Follow us:
5. Credits
This week that was invented when? Overestimating technology, 20th century inventions, and yes, AI really did that. Welcome to Subpar Talks. Hey everybody. Welcome to Subpar Talks where we have conversations about everything. I'm Jeff.
Chris:And I'm Chris.
Jeff:Thank you so much for joining us and you know what's coming before we get going with this week's topic. We have our standard disclaimer, listener discretion advised. There will be profanity in this podcast, perhaps a lot of it. And we will sometimes touch on some mature subject matter. So if that's not your thing, then I guess we are not your thing and that's OK. But for everybody else, sit back, turn the volume up, because here we go with this week's topic. This week we are talking about technology. Chris, I know you're big on tech and uh, you've got more knowledge in this area than I do, but we have talked about this in the past, not on our show, but how we have these technologies out there that we assume are not that old. But then when you look at when they were actually invented, it sometimes blows our minds about how far back that goes. But that technology doesn't actually become commonplace until many years, decades later. We have also talked about how in movies and shows that are set in the future, they always overestimate what technologies are gonna be available. And I think of The Jetsons. I never watched the Jetsons, but you know, flying cars. And I know that's a cartoon, but you know what I mean? Like it's just, uh...
Chris:Well, and that was in Back To The Future when they went to 2015. And here we are past that, still driving around like an idiot.
Jeff:Right, we're still doing the same thing they were doing in 1955, essentially, just sit behind a wheel driving a car. So anyway, we'll get into that and, and I'm sure that will take us in a few different directions at least. But what do you got for us?
Chris:There's so many different directions we can go with this, and I find, first of all, having grown up in the late 20th century
Jeff:In the late 1900s.
Chris:Yeah, it's always been amazing to me how much happened during the 1900s technologically. And further, what's amazing to me is, prior to the 1900s, people had to have thought that they were advancing well. They were always having inventions and it's inventions of these various things that had to have eased their life, and, oh look at what we have that we didn't have before, and so on. But it's like we hit the 20th century and there was just an explosion of things that have so, that did, so change lifestyles, the, the literally the way people live in so many ways.
Jeff:Yeah.
Chris:Plus, how many of those things have led to the things that we have now? They were just the building blocks and stepping stones to that. So I have a list. Um, some of these we'll just run through really quickly, but it's from Time Magazine. Time Magazine's 20 Most Influential Inventions of the 20th Century. I don't know that these are in any particular order. If they are, then I would disagree with the order, but I'll just run through them anyway. One, the automobile. Obviously, massive, massive invention that changed, I mean, people could go across the country where they'd do well to go across the state before that.
Jeff:Right. And in way less time.
Chris:Um, absolutely. Um, radio and television, those are two separate ones, but clearly. The transistor. Now the transistor actually led to both of those.
Jeff:OK. Can you explain what a transistor is, and explain it to me like I'm five
Chris:Well, we might have to edit this part out, because, no, not really. I mean, I know that transistors are on the circuit board, and I know that they took the pl, I know that they took the place of vacuum tubes. So back when, like when you had very early, let's say very early computers and I guess radios, I guess there were radios that had that as well. Vacuum tubes, you know, did whatever vacuum tubes do but they were big. That was the point, you know? Yeah. There are these massive things and that's why. Part of the reason that so many of those things were so big is the, the internal workings with vacuum tubes and everything were just massive. Well, OK. I know that TVs used to have tubes because I would hear, well, I remember my parents talking about turning on the TV when they were young and you had to wait. For it to come on. Yeah, and And my dad said that's because of the tubes. I didn't even know what that meant. I'm still not sure what it means. Well, and I don't know. OK. And I don't know if that's the same. I don't know if that's the same tube or a difference because you did have vacuum tubes in there, but then was it something that lit up the picture? I don't know. I have no clue, but I don't understand. So a transistor radio, like I remember my dad showed me a transistor radio he got in the 1960s and mm-hmm. Well, what was like, what was the big deal about that? It was a portable radio, right? It was so small.
Jeff:OK. Like radio's the size of it. OK.
Chris:Yeah. Cuz radios used to have to be big, like,
Jeff:Table talk like you're listening to a fireside chat,
Chris:right? Yeah, exactly that. That's why, yeah, that's why everybody would gather around the radio. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I'm sure people only had one, right? Cuz they were probably a fortune and they were massive. They probably weren't moving them around. It's like everybody has to kind of like what you used to have for tv. You had a TV in, in a room, it was like a piece of furniture by itself, right? Yeah. And you're gonna watch tv. Everybody goes to that one tv. Yeah. But anyway, I mean, transistors changed all of that so that they could take the place of the vacuum tube and now you've got something that you could hold between your fingers. Literally, that used to be, you know, might. Two hands to hold, and you multiply that by the number of those things in a whole unit and it just, you know, extremely decreased that scale. Right.
Jeff:OK. I like this list so far, it's making me think what else.
Chris:All right. Laser
Jeff:lasers, so, OK.
Chris:Yeah. Well
Jeff:I remember being very disappointed. Watching Star Wars movies as a kid, and then learning that laser guns were not a real thing.
Chris:Oh yeah. That is disappointing. Yeah. Well, and light sabers that too. Yes, I've
Jeff:needed one of those many, many times. Wouldn't you love to have one of those strapped on your hip on a daily basis?
Chris:Yeah, just, well, big mistake, Yep. You know, just, you don't have to kill'em. You can just take off their hand. Just turn it on. Sky Locker. Yeah. Oh yeah. Just turn it on. That's all you need to do. All right. What else? Um, electric refrigeration. OK. Now that's something. Electric refrigeration. Yeah. So what was before that? Refrigeration. I don't know. How
Jeff:did they keep ice back A long time ago. I know they had ice houses, like mm-hmm. like late 18 hundreds, I guess. But how, how did it survive that, like why? I mean of obviously up north in the winter,
Chris:but did they know how to insulate? Well, I
Jeff:maybe, I don't know. I
Chris:don't know. Well, and how did they get, how did they freeze? To begin with. To
Jeff:begin with. I don't know. Yeah. Where
Chris:did the cold come from? because, OK, because think about that. We didn't have air conditioning, so they hadn't come up with the idea of how you're going to air condition an area. So how do you sit? How do you take a thing of water and go, I wanna make ice out of this unnaturally.
Jeff:I have no clue. I have no clue. I don't. I've always said, if it were up to me to come up with all this stuff, we like, I don't even know what we'd be doing. I don't, I'm not even sure we'd be riding horses at this point. We'd just be walking everywhere we go and we would all just, yeah, just definitely we would just be shitting in a hole.
Chris:How would we dig the hole? We would've had to invent some, I mean, unless we're down there on our hands, just, I don't know if I had to come up with the shovel
Jeff:That's true. That reminds me of the Seinfeld bit with chopsticks. There's not a farmer out there with two pool cues, you know, trying to do farming shit. Plow, plow field. They use a shovel
Chris:and a pitchfork, right?
Jeff:Well, yeah, so I
Chris:don't know. Well on the, I, you know, just thinking about a wheel, if I could have even come up with, you know, a block that's just gonna turn over and you're just jerking along, I'd say, yep, that's pretty good. We didn't have that before, so just be done with it. Yeah. Um, alright. Personal computer. Now, personal com personal computer required the transistor because prior to that you had massive mainframes, but they were taking up whole rooms and whole floors because of, uh, the vacuum tubes and everything. Mm-hmm. so, all right. Wireless technology. Yeah. Clearly. Mm-hmm. manned space flight. And then airplane.
Jeff:You know what blows my mind is from the time that they first flew an airplane to the time that they landed somebody on the moon is 66 years. Yeah. That just, that's amazing. Well, as I said, it blows my mind. It's crazy.
Chris:So I don't understand, and this, this goes back to kind of where I started. How much time there was before the 20th century and while they had to think that we were advancing, look at the fact that prior to the early 19 hundreds, we hadn't even flown. Mm-hmm. So how have you gone through all of these hundreds and thousands of years and haven't figured out how to fly? but then you figure out how to fly and in 60 plus years you take that from barely getting off the ground to going to the moon. Yeah. How does that work?
Jeff:I don't know. It's just, it's unfathomable to me that that even happened for one, but in such a short amount of time from when they first, like, and when I say unfathomable, like I, I wouldn't even know the first thing. about how, how do you even go about that? Getting something off the ground, number one, and then sending it into space? Are you kidding me? Like
Chris:Yeah. And look at all the failures they had of rockets. Yeah. That would, you know, they'd go up and turn over, come right back down. Right. I don't even know. I mean, if I could make enough power to come out of a rocket. It's a whole other thing to have it go straight up. Yes. Yeah. I don't know how that works,
Jeff:And you know what? Even if somebody really smart, like a NASA person explained it to me, I still wouldn't get it. Like I, they're operating on a whole other level.
Chris:Oh yeah.
Jeff:Absolutely. All right. What else is on the list?
Chris:Um,
Jeff:radar. Hmm. OK.
Chris:So that's fairly important in various areas. Yeah. Um, I don't really care for as to the way it affects my life on a daily basis, but you know, just driving down the road.
Jeff:When was radar invented? Do you know? Does it say,
Chris:so according to this, it was actually invented in 1904. Oh my God. By Christian Halsey. I believe he was German. Yeah. Figures the Germans
Jeff:would do it,
Chris:right. And then it says, the first practical radar system was produced in 1935 by a British physicist, and by 1939 England had established a chain of radar stations. Along its south and east coast to detect aggressions in the air and on the sea. Now that's amazing. 1939 was when they were the first ones to have radar, but by 1941, we then had the radar that detected the Japanese coming into Pearl Harbor, but they didn't trust it. Oh,
Jeff:wow. Probably should have trusted it.
Chris:Yeah, they should have. Yeah. They saw them. Saw them coming, and they didn't think that it was a real thing. Seems like when the whole other side of the world is at war and you see shit on your radar, maybe you should think I would think so. Oh yeah. Somebody might
Jeff:be coming for us and let's at least prepare for it. And what's the worst that could happen? It's a false. Exactly. Do you remember anybody ever calling microwaves radar ranges? No, I don't. I know that's what they used to call'em.
Chris:I didn't know that. I've never heard that. Yeah,
Jeff:they're, they used to call'em radar ranges. Yeah. I don't know why. Interesting. Yeah. Did they have vacuum tubes
Chris:too? Uh, maybe so. I mean, probably back then, I guess. Alright. Um, magnetic tape. Magnetic tape. Well, like, like a cassette, cassette tape or cassette. Oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah. Well that would be, or like data tapes for computers, mainframes, you know. OK. Everything used to be, so everything was on magnetic tape before we ever developed discs. Which are also magnetic. OK. So yeah, anything like that prior to disks being developed? Mm-hmm. plastics.
Jeff:Oh, OK. Yeah. You know what that makes me think of? Yeah, Yeah. The Graduate. Graduate, yeah. So when did that come about? Plastics,
Chris:Dammit.
Jeff:you were about to take a drink and now I've sent you on a research project. All
Chris:right. Let's see. What have we got? 1907.
Jeff:Oh my God. Well, why was that a big thing in The Graduate?
Chris:Well, clearly like this. That's just the thing. This stuff was. Invented, found out about, put out long before, and then people figure out what to do with it. Well,
Jeff:they had, uh, they had Tupperware parties in the 1950s, right in that, when that came about, that was a big thing. So that's plastic. But I don't know how widespread
Chris:I would've thought. Sixties. Oh man. Well, here's, here's something. So yeah, it says 1907 was a Belgian chemist. He combined two chemicals under heat and pressure, but this says plastic began to be mass produced after the second World War. and then again during the sixties and seventies when consumers craved plastic to replace traditional materials. Hmm, OK. Because they're cheap, versatile, sanitary, and easy to manufacture into a variety of forms. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. OK. All right. Um, air conditioning.
Jeff:Oh, just thank God.
Chris:Thank God right there. No kidding. Oh, it's beautiful. I mean, I can think of so many things that I wouldn't be doing if it weren't for air conditioning. Now that's given that, I know it exists cuz it's horrible if you don't have it when you have had it, but you. There's our parents grew up without it.
Jeff:Yeah. If you don't know, then it's not like you're not missing anything. You don't know what you don't know, but once you felt it and then you don't have it, well then you're just miserable.
Chris:It's terrible. Yeah. It's the thing of, you can recognize that something is very wrong. even if you don't know what the solution is. Yeah, that's true. Like it is not OK that I am fucking hot but Well, you just live with it because there's no
Jeff:solution. I always think, when I think about people not having an air conditioner a long time ago, things must have just generally stunk. People stunk you know, like they're sweating all the time.
Chris:Yeah, you would stink after about an hour.
Jeff:Did people even take showers every day? I don't think so.
Chris:Well, nope. That's the other thing I was about to say is you're not just smelling one day's worth of stink you're, you're smelling compounded, stink,
Jeff:It's stacked up. And did they put on deodorants?
Chris:Well, I hope so. I mean, in this country, I don't know. I don't either. And, and was, how effective was it? You know, now you've got deodorants that make a big deal that, oh, this can last 48 and 72 hours. Yeah. Well, hopefully you're not going 48 and 72 hours now without a bath. But that at least is nice. That OK, it's strong enough, you know, to get you through one day because it's made to go through two or three. But Oh my gosh. If people were taking baths like once or twice a week and they're dealing with less effective deodorants, gross, sitting in a
Jeff:TD pool of their own
Chris:filth, Yes, exactly. OK, we're gonna have to move on.
Jeff:All right. What.
Chris:Global networks. Well now we're really getting somewhere. Yeah. Because that just encompasses so much. Yeah. Um, and I'm gonna go on in the list because all of this just starts to link together. Atomic bomb. Now that doesn't really have anything to do with the global network that can take out a global network.
Jeff:Sure can. But I
Chris:would say that was a fairly, um, significant important, yeah. Yeah. Significant. Artificial intelligence. Mm. OK. Now that's one I kind of wanted to zero in on because clearly it existed in the 20th century, but that is something even now. So it's not an invention of the 21st century, but it is certainly something that we are taking and running with. Yeah. Uh, we are seeing so much happen with artificial intelligence that we couldn't have even conceived of before. And while it's not an invention now, it is, I, I think the 21st century, clearly we have a long way to go in it, but I think it's going to be really marked by the intelligent things that come out of it.
Jeff:So help me out here because, uh, what qualifies as artificial intelligence, ai, because I'm thinking about video games. like any, you can even go back to the 1980s. I mean, somebody's program like, like let's say you're playing a baseball game on whatever, Atari, You're playing a baseball game on Atari and, and you're playing the computer. That's what we always said. You're just playing the computer. You're not playing another person. But somebody has programmed all that stuff to do that. Is that artificial intelligence, does that qualify or are we talking about
Chris:something else? I don't think that would've qualified, or at least certainly maybe they would've called it that, then I would say it's definitely not what we're talking about now. I don't think what, what we'd be talking about now in terms of artificial intelligence is a system that can change based on conditions by learning from those conditions. So, OK, it's gotta be. Something is happening and it is adjusting itself over time to learn from itself. So this was an artificial intelligence was you think about War Games, the movie War Games. Mm-hmm. yes. First of all, there was the simulation in there of. thermonuclear war, but it was also that the computer was playing chess against itself and so that was an artificial intelligence because it could play against a real person, but it could also, you know, they ultimately got it to play against itself, and the whole goal of it was for it to learn strategic moves to. To gain an advantage. Yeah. And so, you know, now you've got things like, arguably you could say that smart thermostats. Have some artificial intelligence built in, maybe not so much from learning? Well, in some ways they do. Yeah. They, they learn habits, you know, cuz they pay attention to presence or lack of presence and what's the weather outside in conjunction with your presence and things like that. So it's taking all of this data into consideration to go, oh, I should bump the temperature down or up, whatever. And. The idea is that then you don't have to go program the thermostat for what you want. It does what you want based on factors that have come into play. And I think that's the whole idea then like of, you know, self-driving cars is if the computer can observe what a driver is doing and collecting. You know, hundreds of thousands and millions of data points about, well, the driver slowed down because of, you know, and it's got sensors all over the car because of this. Because of that, they sped up because of this. They changed lanes, all of that. Then that's how the self-driving cars have come about.
Jeff:Would you feel comfortable getting in a self-driving. you're just sitting there like you're on a subway, but you're going down the freeway at this
Chris:point. No, I would, I would want to know, you know, that me or somebody could take it over. Yeah, I, I would be nervous about it right now.
Jeff:Yeah, I would too. I would, yeah, I wanna be able to take it over, but I would not want to get out on a freeway with one, like take me on some residential streets maybe, but yeah. Yeah. I still wanna be able to assume control if I need to.
Chris:But then, you know, one of the things that we've talked about too, is how you have some of this technology and, and clearly we've already talked about two or three examples where it was invented long before. Mm-hmm. it's really being. Figured out how to be used, I guess. Like, OK, it's it, it exists, but now what? And then, but then it's like once you get to the point of we know what to do with it, it can just explode. It can go from minor to almost non-existence into it. It's everywhere. And I'm wondering, I mean, we have been hearing about. Seeing, witnessing, you know, self-driving cars for some time through various testing stuff, but it's not like there's anything widespread going on with it yet. I'm just wondering. And you know, in the whole scheme of things, 10, 15, 20 years is a long time technologically now. And so. Are we gonna be 15, 20 years down the road? And self-driving cars are, maybe the norm is a, a stretch, but at least acceptable. And even in more, even more in commercial use than personal use. You know, freight deliveries and courier services.
Jeff:And, and we've talked about this aspect of it, how. Well, I, I, I started out where I mentioned this when we started all this about technology, but overestimating what technology's gonna be. And I remember hearing at least 10 years ago, probably before that, about self-driving vehicles and how that was gonna put truck drivers out of business delivery drivers out of business. Because why would you wanna hire somebody and have to, you know, pay an employee when you can just have a self-driving car. Right. Achieve the same purpose, but we don't see that now. Every once in a while I'll see something, uh, that some company has experimented with in that regard, but it's definitely not a widespread thing at all. Yeah. We've also heard, heard about drone delivery. I don't know how common that is either.
Chris:I don't think it's very common, but it's, it's out there I know. Yeah. Amazon's done some of it and yeah, that's another thing that I, I think could absolutely explode. And you know, when you think about that, then there's how many Amazon delivery drivers that you're not gonna need anymore. Yeah. Would self-driving cars, if it's not immediately for the general public, is that going to be one of the first things that eliminates Uber drivers and Uber Eats drivers and, you know, people like that? I don't know. OK.
Jeff:Uh, I'm gonna read you something here. So yeah, we'll call this reading time. It's uh, it's not very long, but let me, Technology is constantly evolving and advancing, and we as a society are often quick to overestimate what technology will be available in the near future. This phenomenon known as the technology hype cycle is a well-documented pattern in which new technologies are initially over-hyped before eventually reaching a more realistic and sustainable level of adoption. One of the most notable examples of this is the rise of virtual reality. In the 1990s, virtual reality was touted as the next big thing with many experts claiming that it would revolutionize the way we interact with technology. However, the technology failed to live up to these lofty expectations, and it wasn't until the 2010s that virtual reality began to gain traction as a viable technology for gaming and other applications. Another example is the Internet of Things, iot. Iot is a network of devices that are connected to the internet and can communicate with each other. The idea of having all our devices connected and communicating with each other is exciting, but the reality is that the technology is still far from being able to reach this level of integration. There are still major challenges with security, privacy, and interoperability that need to be addressed before IOT can reach its full. In general, new technologies often take longer to develop and become mainstream than we expect. We tend to overestimate the short-term impact of technology and underestimate its long-term potential. Additionally, when a new technology is first introduced, it usually lacks the features and capabilities that would make it very truly useful. But as the technology matures, it gains more capabilities and becomes more practic. In conclusion, the technology hype cycle is a well-documented phenomenon in which new technologies are initially over-hyped before eventually reaching a more realistic unsustainable level of adoption. This is due to our tendency to overestimate the short-term impact of technology and underestimate its long-term potential. As we continue to advance in the field of technology, it is important to maintain a realistic perspective and not get caught up in the height. Would you care to guess who wrote that? Uh, Bill
Chris:Gates,
Jeff:This was written by ai, artificial intelligence. Really? That whole thing. Yeah. OK. Well, there you go. Yeah. So it's here. um, this is through, it's something called chat, G p t. Have you heard of this?
Chris:I have heard of it, and I really don't know much of anything about it except that, that it's doing a lot
Jeff:of those things. Yeah. So it is a, um, it's artificial intelligence. It's a website. Uh, as of now it's free. It is chat g p t, but you can. you can have it write anything. You can tell the program what you want, uh, in your story, essay, whatever, and it's gonna give it to you. So I just typed in, I need a paper on technology and how we always overestimate what technology will be available. And that's what it gave me. That's unbelievable. It really is. And
Chris:the reason I. Wait a minute, it produced that right now.
I
Jeff:did it
Chris:earlier today. OK, so you typed that in? You typed in the question and it produced that for you? Yeah. It wasn't already out there. No. Wow,
Jeff:that's
Chris:wild, isn't it? Yeah. That is wild.
Jeff:And the reason I knew about it is because when. When this first became a thing, and I, it was just in the last month I guess that I heard about it, is, uh, me too for papers in school, right? Mm-hmm. like, what's to stop a student from saying, I need a paper on this? And then it spits this out. And now a student at Yale has developed an app that can detect whether something was generated by human or ai. So, Really, I think that's gonna continue to be a a war. It's gonna be like radar, guns and radar detectors. It's just gonna be a back and forth thing. Yeah. But I was amazed when I first looked into this. It's, it's crazy.
Chris:That's just amazing. and something I was thinking about as you were reading that is so you've got the technologies that come out, but it's a while before they catch on mainstream. Then there are the others that might become mainstream and then fall off, or they never become mainstream at all. We think they're going to be, yeah, and I just saw this yesterday. Microsoft has fired all of. Uh, virtual reality employees. Whoa. Yeah. And I think they got rid of their whole halo lens thing, which was supposed to be like a competitor. Do you remember a Google Glass? Google Glasses? Yeah. That's whatever. That's been canceled. Well, it got canceled by Google. So you've got things like that that we thought were gonna come out and be something. And now, They've already gone away before they became anything. But then my question is, what is going to happen to that stuff that's going to morph into a thing that we don't even know yet? And that's where it's gonna take off. True. Yeah. You think about fax machines. Now this blew my mind when. First heard this, uh, it still blows my mind. The first fax machine was invented in 1964 by Xerox. Wow. Now, one of the things that I hadn't named on this list yet was Xerography, which that is actually, that is actually the technical name of making copies. The ability to make copies by a zero graphic and it's X E R O. Yeah. A X graphic mechanism, I guess if you want to call it that process. That makes copies. Well, Xerox, I understand it. Yeah. Xerox was the, the company to invent. But I remember watching Mad Men, and it was one of the early episodes when they were in 1960 or 61, and they got a Xerox machine. It was massive. Yeah, it was massive. But the thing was, they were not gonna have to use carbon paper anymore. Well, right, they did because the Xerox was extremely expensive to produce the copies. Mm-hmm. but I'm just saying. So we went from that to Xerox. Then in 1964, Inventing a fax machine. The first time I heard about a fax machine was in the early to mid eighties. I'm gonna say it was like 83, 84, and I didn't even know what it was. I was just hearing this name, what is that? And it was probably a year or two later before I really even knew what that was about. Yeah, so my point here is we went from then until early to mid. Two thousands and faxes have just all but fallen away. Right.
Jeff:It's, it's basically obsolete.
Chris:Yeah. So it had a, a good, you know, 25 year run or so. And, and this amazing technology is almost gone. I know medical practices use it a lot because it's a, it's seen as a secure way of transmitting information that it's, which is interesting, but being transmitter over the phone line from machine to machine as opposed to like sending email, which can hop all over the place before it ends. At the destination. But I think that is, I mean, there are other ways around that now that we're finding that, that we're using, like sending secure email where it's got, you know, a certificate in it, like a website and things like that.
Jeff:So I just thought about this. ATMs. Mm-hmm. when were ATMs, like when was the first atm? I don't remember ATMs being a thing until the 1980s. Just like with faxes. That's when I first heard about a fax machine. Yeah, but I'm, I'm thinking, are we on a similar path with ATMs? Because how often do people use cash? Exactly.
Chris:I remember. I was never a frequent user of them, but I remember having to go to an ATM and, and you were in line, you know, there could be two, three people anyway ahead of you times I've gone anytime recently, nobody, and all the times I drive by nobody, even if I'm not going. So here, 1969 was the first WOW ATM to customers at chemical. And Rockville Center, New York. That's where Nana Banks. Yep. Where she pissed off the wrong people.
Jeff:Wow. 1969. Imagine the person who used it. I bet they were walking off like a king.
Chris:I, it's like, They just put men on the moon and here I go, getting cash outta nowhere.
Jeff:Wow. 1969. That's amazing. But
Chris:you're right, talking about ATM period is when, I mean, personally, I can't remember the last time I went to the bank. I have no need to go to the bank. It's, I just, it's very rare. I just opened a new account and I did it online, and they sent me the documents to sign through DocuSign. I DocuSign them online and then I go and look at my bank account through my phone app and my money's deposited well in the new account,
Jeff:you've got institutions now, they're not even brick and mortar. You've got banks that are not even brick and mortar like you just, it is exclusively online,
Chris:and I bet you'll see more and more of those branches disappearing. we sound
Jeff:like Kramer with the mail trying to stop the mail. nobody needs the mail, right? What all did he mention? Faxes, holograms. Telegrams,
Chris:Yeah.
Jeff:All the different ways to get things to
Chris:people. Um, three other, we, we went down a quite a road with artificial intelligence and everything that led to, not surprisingly at all. Three more on this list. Fiber optic. Huge. I mean that's, we ha I don't think we've come close to seeing the potential of fiber optics. I mean OK. For
Jeff:those of us who are five in the audience, explain what fiber optics do So
Chris:fiber optics are very, very thin strands of glass. and they're like, they can be thinner than hairs, but they will transmit light and that light is red as sent and received as data. And so you know, now that's how you're able to send and receive information now over the internet so much faster is because it's not bound by. The, like when you're sending those signals over copper lines, then you're more bound by the physical nature of magnetic impulses and interference and things like that. Well, with fiber optics being light, you don't have those kinds of limitations. Hmm. OK. I mentioned xerography and then the last thing on this list, and this is, this is one of the reasons that I said I don't agree with the order, if the order mattered, was the internet. The internet, yeah. Has to be one of the most absolute life changing things of the 20th century because all of these other things, Arguably, I mean, air travel and lasers and television, radio, all of that. But look at what the internet has now led to. We now have smartphones, which are tiny computers. We're not even talking personal computers in your house, which, right. You know, even 30 years ago was something that we still saw as a little bit futuristic. that everybody would have a computer in their house. Nevermind. Yeah, multiple ones. And now we're carrying around cell phones in our pockets with that internet access that can do more than those computers could.
Jeff:When did you get your first computer?
Chris:I got my first computer in 1993. which was also the time I got my first cell phone, which was way advanced timing at the time, and that was because I was working while I was in college for a cell phone company. And so as the cell phone company, number one, they were obviously embracing cell phone technology. Wanted me to have a cell phone that they paid for at the time. Get this for$45 a month. I had 45 minutes of talk time.
Jeff:during
Chris:the day. Jesus Christ. Yeah. During the day. Now nights and weekends were free, so that was right. Pretty huge. Yeah. But yeah, 45 minutes for a month of talk time. And after that it was just extraordinary. I mean, it was, it had to have been like 15 or 20 cents a minute. Wow. That's
Jeff:crazy.
Chris:but they also needed me to have a computer for the work that I was doing. And the funny thing is, this was pre-internet, so any work that I did, we FedExed floppy disks back and forth.
Jeff:It was like floppy
Chris:disks. Do your work, store it all on the disk, FedEx exit, they have it tomorrow. Were,
Jeff:were they the, uh, the truly floppy disc, or were they those smaller? Are they
Chris:three by fives? Is that what they were? But it was, no, it was the, the hard floppy disc. OK. Yeah. Yeah. The three and a half
Jeff:inch. Yeah. And the ones before that were the, I don't know the measurements, but they were actually floppy. Like you could, you know Yeah. Shake'em like a piece of paper. Yeah. But I do know this, I've seen Noel commercial, and this was from 19. Seven January of 1979 and it was an IMDb commercial, and this woman is sticking this massive disc into a computer, but it was like the size of a folder. It was hilarious. Really? But that was, yeah. Yeah. But that was, I'm sure, amazing technology.
Chris:Wow. I've never seen one of those. Now, I will say this, I told my daughter this recently, I can't remember why it came up, but the very first computer that I learned on in school, so this was, uh, late elementary and through mid junior high, they did not have hard drives. You had to put a floppy disc in to boot the computer. There was nothing stored in. Yeah. So you had to put in a floppy disc boot the computer so that it would boot into memory whatever was on that disc. Then you could take the disc out and put another disc in of a different software that you wanted to run.
Jeff:Right? I don't think I even used a computer until probably junior. and even then we were fucking around with dos and I didn't know what
Chris:the hell I was doing. Right. Yeah. And then I
Jeff:remember in, uh, this would've been 93, I was taking a computer class and right at the end of that class, they got a couple of computers in there that had windows on it, windows. Really, what was it? 3.1. 3.1 I guess is what it would've been. And I remember using that and thinking, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. I don't have to know the commands to type in shit. I just point at something and click it. It's like, where have you been my whole life? Here we go.
Chris:That's hilarious. It's amazing. So, OK, here's another thing that always shocked me was Windows 3.1. Was the, you know, the big windows that, that everybody, I say everybody. Oh, that a lot of people first knew. Yeah. There was a Windows 3.0 that existed for at least a couple of years prior to that. So the whole idea was 3.1 was a huge deal because of some things. enhanced, corrected, all of this stuff. But I remember being in college and hearing commercials on the radio of, oh, we've got, you know, the new Windows 3.1, and I was like, what is that What is that like? I didn't even know what Windows 3.1 was. Then I went and worked in someone's office where they had Windows 3.0. I didn't even know I was, you couldn't even drag and drop a file on it. You could in Windows 3.1. Yeah. Well, it looked similar, but there are just things like that that like right click. If it did anything, it didn't do as much and you couldn't drag and drop things. You would have to still like highlight it and then go up to a menu to choose to copy or move or something. Oh, OK. You couldn't just drag it. Yeah, and there were things I was already used to in 3.1 that now you couldn't do here. And I thought, holy shit. If Windows has been out since version one, what did that look like? Yeah.
Jeff:Windows one point.
Chris:Yeah, so get this Windows 1.0 was released in 1985. Whoa. OK. So it was 1985 to 1992 to go from 1.0 to 3.1, and 3.1 was when it really took off. Yeah.
Jeff:And I remember people made a really big deal. and of course Microsoft's marketing, but Windows 95, like that was supposed to be revolutionary. Mm-hmm. that was a big deal.
Chris:Yeah, it was. Yeah. It was a huge deal. It also had tons of issues, but,
Jeff:um, and of course the, the arrogant Mac people saying, oh, we were doing all this way before Windows 3.1,
Chris:right? Yeah. But. I remember my neighbor got, uh, a Mac. Um, so I had, I had used a computer a handful of times, written a couple of papers, things like that. And, and it was a, so this was another operating system. It was called Televideo. And it was, oh my God, DOS was out, but this was like, Doss hadn't totally caught on yet. I'll just say that Yeah. And then we can stop talking about that Cause I don't want to I don't want to go there. Anyway, this kid that lived behind me got an Apple McIntosh. Yeah. And showed it to me and this was the first time I saw a mouse cuz their Sure as Hall wasn't a mouse on any computer I had seen before that. And he's using a program, I don't remember what it was called, like paint, whatever, where you could draw stuff. I just thought, this is a toy. Like, why, why are you so excited about this? I just thought it seemed like a joke for a computer. Yeah. It's funny. I I just never took them serious.
Jeff:Reminds me of Ferris Bueller drawing the naked woman on his computer, and then he hacked into the school. That changes his absences. Yeah, that was way ahead of its time. That movie is 1986. No kidding. And when is War Games? War games is
Chris:83, right? 83. And he did the same thing then. Yeah. he hacked into the school to change grades. Yeah. That's. So, yeah, he had a modem, so there again, there was no internet, so he had the modem and he actually took his phone receiver, remember, and had to stick it down on the thing so it could hear all the tones. I thought that was the coolest thing. I was like, oh, I need one of those
Jeff:I don't know when I first saw that movie, I wouldn't have seen it in the theater, but it wouldn't have been too long after that. But I didn't even know that that. I didn't even know that was a possibility. Like that was an actual thing. Uh, that, that you could dial in to something like thought you were seeing science fiction. Yeah, exactly. Science fiction. Yeah.
Chris:Yeah. Cool stuff. All of it's just, uh, I'm just amazed all the time. I mean, we could make this show so much longer by talking about other technologies and I mean, one thing we haven't touched on, well, you br you brought it up in the, the article that you read, that not even a real person wrote but the internet of things, you know, is, is home automation. Yeah. I mean that, that is still in its infancy. Mm-hmm. so. Undeveloped still. Uh, I think, you know, we're gonna get to the point that so many things can just, it'll be a Jetson's world at home.
Jeff:OK, there you go. That is another episode of Subpar Talks. If you like this kind of stuff, then you should subscribe, follow our show on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on. We would absolutely love it if you do. And while you're there, go ahead and rate and review us. We would be ever so grateful if you'd give us five stars. And while you're there, go ahead and write something. Speaking of technology, this is the way it works though. If you write something there, then it makes it easier for people to discover this show. Go. So go ahead and write something. Doesn't matter what you write. Have chat. G p t generate something for you to write. There you go. And we'll read. And you can pretend that you came up with it and we wouldn't know the difference. You can visit our website. That is Subpar Talks dot com. You can email us, leave us a voicemail. We always read and listen to what our listeners have to say. If you wanna make suggestions for topics we should cover in the future, go ahead and do that. We are on social media. You can follow us on Twitter. Is at Subpar Talks. And on Facebook we are Subpar Talks. If you wanna follow our personal Twitter accounts on there. I am at@independentjeff
Chris:and I am at Chris Bradford, tx. And
Jeff:last but not least, share Subpar. Talks with your friends, families, colleagues, anybody you encount. Share this on social media because the more people we have listening to this podcast, the easier it is for us to get this content to you every single week. And that is a little bit about technology. Chris, final thoughts? Are robots gonna take over the world someday?
Chris:I don't think they'll take over, but they're gonna play a huge role that we haven't even seen yet. Yep.
Jeff:That's something we didn't get into is technology and, and uh, like factories, assembly lines, all that. Like Yeah, that's put
Chris:a lot of people, a lot of work. We'll have to do
Jeff:more on this. Yeah, we will definitely. All right. There you go. That is another episode. Thank you for joining us, and we will be back next week. Until then, so long.