What do cell phones look like in the year 2144?

Obviously they won’t have a screen anymore. They’ll be pop-up displays. So if you’re sitting on a train and your romantic partner sends you a steamy selfie…guess who has an audience?

Has this annoyed anyone else?

If they’re tactical screens, that makes sense. But I still don’t think transparent displays on personal devices will be a thing in the future.

  • Pons_Aelius
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    1 year ago

    Obviously they won’t have a screen anymore. They’ll be pop-up displays. So if you’re sitting on a train and your romantic partner sends you a steamy selfie…guess who has an audience?

    What we expect a new tech to deliver and what it actually becomes are two very different things.

    Eg: Video calls.

    When 3G (first video call capable network) was rolled out in the early '00s every telco and tech pundit was talking about the coming age of the video phone where everyone would video call everyone else.

    What happened?

    Voice call traffic fell off a cliff (and video calls died for a decade) as everyone was texting rather than calling on their phones.

    • @[email protected]
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      131 year ago

      2023, and I HATE video calls. I mean, I don’t like audio either, but video is just… Please let me just do my work. At the very least don’t make me come on camera to talk to people who also don’t want to talk to me.

      • @[email protected]
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        41 year ago

        Same. It’s one thing if I’m calling my 7-year old niece that lives 100 miles away but I miss her and want to see her face. It’s something else entirely when I’m on a call I don’t want to be on in the first place, listening to people I don’t need to hear from who aren’t even talking to me.

        • SSTF
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          11 year ago

          My favorite part is where nobody is making eye contact because they are all looking at the screen instead f the camera.

          Well, that or the one person who is having some weird technical issue that keep blasting the whole meeting with strange noises.

  • FuglyDuck
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    271 year ago

    I suspect it’ll be neural implants. embedded on the optical nerve somewhere, injecting hologram-like images into our field of view. Maybe toss in some sort of marking system for our fingertips for the implant to track as an interface device.

    this could also conceivably provide tactile feed back through weak shocks to the fingertips, mimicking touching something, giving you the floaty keyboard and private conversations.

      • @[email protected]
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        31 year ago

        You can be sure that the day someone invents ads that get piped directly into your brain is the day before someone invents an adblocker for them.

      • FuglyDuck
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        11 year ago

        don’t worry, they’ll be so relevant, you’ll just think the real content is… just a really clever add. (Okay, so maybe all you’ll see is just advertising. but how is that different than YT already is is?)

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          The same reason I avoid YouTube like the plague 🤦‍♀️ I can barely open the app without watching an advert

          • FuglyDuck
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            21 year ago

            Hmmm… can you imagine if they figure out how to start pumping other sensations? Dr. Sasquatch soap… making you think you smell like a mangy dog. the not-as-itchy socks company… giving you the sensation of itchy socks.

            whatever iteration of as-seen-on-YT wonderbra they happen to be on… only to realize, your manboobs aren’t actually that large…awkward.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 year ago

      You can choose between a pair of nintendo power gloves or tattooing your fingertips and little qr-codes on the fingernails.

      • FuglyDuck
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        21 year ago

        I was thinking some sort of IR reflective ink. or UV reflective ink tattooes… on the pads and behind the fingernails (ouch)

  • Izzy
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    181 year ago

    So many movies and shows have phones being transparent rectangles that look like a piece of glass. It’s impractical for so many reasons from privacy to even being able to hold the thing.

    Honestly I don’t think cellphones will change that much going forward. They will get more powerful. Maybe they will continue to replace other computing devices for people such as laptops, desktops and gaming consoles, but the form factor is as practical as it gets.

    • @[email protected]
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      61 year ago

      Yeah, from an actual usability and privacy standpoint, that’s horrible design. It does make for good visuals with the actor and the display in frame at the same time. No more “closeup of a message on a phone display”

      I’m personally hoping for smart stuff to get a bit more distributed. A phone-like CPU unit in my pocket streaming display content to my watch and AR glasses or a full size screen on the seat in front of me on the subway. Simple visual and vibration notifications from a smart ring.

    • @whofearsthenight
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      31 year ago

      This is my bet as well. I think at some point, foldable screens will get good enough to get mass market, and then it will be about how thin/light they can make those so they get bigger screens but the device remains pocketable. Not to mention, screen tech matches/exceeds today. That’s the practical appeal of things like holos outside of just being aesthetically “future looking.”

      I’m also very interested in the idea of AR glasses that can be worn normally, but that’s pretty limited by physics right now (battery and camera tech especially.)

    • @[email protected]
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      141 year ago

      They just see you flexing your fingers, they won’t know that your squeezing tits on a post on milfgonewild.

    • @froh42
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      51 year ago

      Let me think about the future, how it will be. How people will… You know, while we’re at it, do you hate it when your thoughts get blocked by country barriers? Let me know introduce you NordVPN, it integrates nicely with your cerebral implant and you can access data sources from all over the world. NordVPN also contains a secret stash for all your very private thoughts. Subscribe now and get 20% off, or 40% if you bundle them with the new RayCons cerebral implants.

  • @PunnyName
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    161 year ago

    Don’t worry, everything will be owned by a few companies, and privacy won’t even be an understood concept.

      • LinkOpensChest.wav
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        131 year ago

        We’re kinda already there. I’ve noticed the generations that grew up after 9/11 when state surveillance and collecting and selling our personal data have been normalized, they think those of us who yearn for privacy are the weird ones.

        I realize that’s also true of people my age who have been immersed in the slowly boiling pot, but I try to imagine not remembering a time when we switched to Google because they promised not to sell us out to advertisers.

        How times have changed…

  • @Chickenstalker
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    151 year ago

    In the futuuuuuuure, the concept of privacy has become obsolete. You share everything with everyone and the thing is, no one cares. Everyone has seen everything. Nothing is embarrassing any more. Until one day, the Cringelord is reborn…

    • Pablo
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      31 year ago

      I’m hooked, when’s this book coming out?

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      In fact, the only way that you could pray to make impression,
      On the era ahead is that instead of being notable,
      You make the data describing you undecodable.

      MC Frontalot, “Secrets From the Future”

    • SSTF
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      11 year ago

      This is just Unimatrix Zero from Star Trek Voyager, isn’t it?

  • wrath-sedan
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    131 year ago

    Honestly, probably Star Wars’ fault for the popularization of the blue kind of glitchy hologram specifically. Would be interested to hear if anyone can name any pre-SW hologram effects.

    • FuglyDuck
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      61 year ago

      In film, sure.

      Holograms we’re around in one way or another. What’s her name in the Naked Sun (Asimov, the victims “husband”…) produced holographic art. That was first published in book form in ‘57.

      Star Wars may have been the first largely because they were special effects pioneers.

  • @scarabic
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    1 year ago

    What seems most off to me is that they’re holograms but aside from that basic fact, they look like shit. Monochrome line drawings… really? A hologram of that is better than a high res, full color picture? Why can’t the holograms be full color and high quality?

    Take Star Wars communication holograms, for example. They’re fucking freestanding 3D entities that walk around your room and sit in chairs and shit. But they’re grainy, with washed out colors and static distorting them constantly. Why???

    The Expanse actually made immersive 3D holographic interfaces that looked great and seemed useful. They filled the room - you could walk into them, grab them, zoom them around, pan, etc. This is really the only compelling depiction I’ve seen.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 year ago

      I think the Star Trek holodeck went much too far with this - holograms indistinguishable from reality? How is this meant to work with the characters constantly interacting with their surroundings?

      • @scarabic
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        11 year ago

        Yeah eating drinking and fucking holograms… really?

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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    111 year ago

    I always saw holograms as a cinematic device rather than something we’d actually used, much like the superbright monitors that would project what was on the screen onto the the actors, which allowed the fourth wall audience more information about what’s going on.

    It’s much like the Star Trek transporter, less a plausible technology, and more an instrument of the medium.

    • @PlanetOfOrdOP
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      21 year ago

      OK; that’s starting to make sense. Thanks.

  • Ser Salty
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    111 year ago

    Holograms are my gripe as well. Three dimensional holograms have at least some use, but those 2D holograms are always worse than just having a regular screen. They’re washed out, sometimes not even full colour just greyscale (or blue, yellow, whatever). You’d need hard light holograms that can produce solid objects like in Star Trek for them to be useful. Like, in that case you could hide displays while not in use, easily carry the small holo emitter around and adjust the size to your liking.

    Another non-favorite of mine is the sci-fi bend. Where everything just has a 125 degree bend in it for some reason. Screens? Just cut out a bit at the corner with a 125 degree bend. Door? Seam down the middle will have a 125 degree bend in it. Wall panels? Random 125 degree bend in the line.

  • @daf
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    101 year ago

    Shown in what? Movies and series? In those holograms and transparent screens are used because it allows the audience to see what’s happening, trading realism for improved visual story telling.

    As for realistic where mobile tech is going, my guess it will be pretty much what we have now, just more compact and foldable.

    Eventually advances in AR and brain interfaces might make the “rectangular slabs” be replaced by something more discrete which no longer requires physical inputs. Doubt they’d be called a mobile phone though.

      • @[email protected]
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        31 year ago

        The expanse remains my favourite portrayal of future technology, it looks actually nice to use and seems very realistic if we assume we can become able to make those things.

        Like the fact that the main device is a dirt cheap mass-produced plexiglass phone that are just terminals and rely on servers, that some people have larger ones in a tablet format at home, the way it takes advantage of holograms to expand content outside of the device itself when useful, and my favourite part is how most of the interaction is entirely gesture-based, because who the fuck wants to go around shouting at their phone???

        Interfacing is such a pet peeve of mine in scifi, i don’t want to tell the room to turn on the lights, i want to make motion of turning a dimmer in the direction of a lamp and have it act like i’m actually turning a physical dimmer!
        Similarily i don’t want devices talking to me, i want them making intuitive noises and if they ever do have to speak to convey complex information i want it to be in a clearly artificial voice because otherwise it’s creepy.

        Voice interaction has a time and place, it’s useful for communicating very complex stuff quickly and without needing a free limb (that scene), but good god it just becomes annoying if you use that as the primary way of interacting…

        • Luke
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          41 year ago

          Similarily i don’t want devices talking to me, i want them making intuitive noises and if they ever do have to speak to convey complex information i want it to be in a clearly artificial voice because otherwise it’s creepy.

          I would love to find some interesting voices of this type for my phone TTS. Everything is “natural” now, but what if I want a voice like SHODAN or something?

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        You mean the transparent rectangle screens? I love The Expanse but did not like those. In order to view things on the screen the background needs to be opaque! I did like how the file transfer worked between devices though, with the swiping and all.

  • 👁️👄👁️
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    91 year ago

    That far ahead it’ll definitely be neural implants. Beam it straight into your eye or brain.

  • @[email protected]
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    71 year ago

    Yup, see through screens too. Like in the future people would rather show off than have privacy. Actually with the ubiquitousness of apple and Samsung products it’s probably true.

  • @Aceticon
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    1 year ago

    It’s far more likely it’s displayed directly into your brain.

    I mean, we’re talking about 121 years from now - enough time to go from the telegraph to VR multiplayer games played by people from 5 continents over a worldwide network: it kinda seems logical that some kind of direct brain interface tech (for which there are already some very early stage things) will have been developed by them.