this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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I think lasers are pretty wack when you think about them through this lens. A small, wand-like object in your hand can make light appear from seemingly nowhere. If it's powerful enough it can set things on fire or blind people. Not to mention larger ones like laser cutters or the LLD, used to destroy missiles midflight. Thats sure to blow some feudal peasant minds

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[–] executive_chicken@lemmy.world 85 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I live in the here and now, and I’m still baffled by wireless internet. It’s modern sorcery

[–] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 64 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Little bots screaming 1s and 0s at each other really fast at a pitch you can't hear.

[–] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It’s not even sound, because it doesn’t vibrate air molecules. If that were the case, it wouldn’t work in space for communicating with things like GPS satellites.

They use light. Because wifi/radio/Bluetooth/etc are all just electromagnetic, which can be converted directly into light that is outside of the visible spectrum. The same way that a lightbulb works. And it only works because in higher bands most solid objects just sort of look like they’re made of glass. They don’t block those bandwidths, so the light is able to pass through them like a window. That includes things like your body. They’re just shining light directly through you.

It’s akin to your phone and router flashing Morse code at each other with invisible flashlights.

[–] dbaner@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago
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[–] ritswd@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

I remember finding out about wireless internet from an Intel TV ad. There was somebody with a laptop, browsing internet (probably an AOL page or something like that considering the era) sitting on a chair in the middle of a stadium, with no cable to be seen.

I thought “well that’s stupid, I know you can avoid the power cable for a while if there’s a battery, but if he’s browsing the internet, there has to be a network cable”. But the ad ran over and over on TV, clearly insisting there was no cable, so I was like “hm wait…”.

Eventually I read about wireless networks somewhere a couple of weeks later, and suddenly it all made sense.

[–] panja@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

I studied RF in college and it's still sorcery. You wanna see a cool of the dark arts? Read up on QAM...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulation

[–] exohuman@kbin.social 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Smart phones. Not even Star Trek could predict we would all be walking around with a slab of glass that is exponentially more powerful than computers that took up entire rooms, can communicate with others sub-second via voice, images, video, or text, can access the sum total of public human knowledge at the blink of an eye, and can guide you to any location with a map for everywhere you want to go. It’s really powerful stuff and it’s in everyone’s hands.

[–] T4V0@lemmy.pt 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] damnYouSun@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago

You know what I was thinking is weird about this the predicted tablet computers but somehow they didn't predict emailing the files to your superior.

Sir I have finished my report, here, have my entire table computer, I'll go get another. I can see you already have six others, but this one has my word document on it.

Although there are people where I work that actually think that's how computers work.

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[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would take a pic of a middle-ages person with my phone, show it to them and tell them I stole their soul. Then I'd be beaten, hanged, burned, and drowned for witchcraft. Still, it'd be hilarious.

[–] dnzm@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

You'd be screaming (with laughter, and pain) all the way to the pire!

[–] I_AnoN_I@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago

We have sigils carved into refined rocks that can simulate the universe

[–] PortableHotpocket@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago

The more time I've spent studying and researching new tech, the more I feel like, even to people today, our technology is magical.

I'm a medical diagnostic technologist. I understand how a CT and MRI machine work. They're still the stuff of magic imo. A lot of people take these technologies for granted because they're fairly prominent, but do you have any idea how a spinning magnet produces high quality, 3d images of the inside of your body? Very few people do. It's still freaking amazing and ingenious when you do understand it. Remodeling a CT scan into a 3d render is similarly impressive. The amount of calculations that take place within the space of seconds would take years for someone to do on paper, and we do 25-30 patients a day in our one machine at my location.

AI is making a big wave in my field too. Pretty soon we may only need radiologists to oversee AI rather than having to diagnose every exam themselves. AI on our consoles will be able to diagnose before we even send our images to a rad since they're so good at pattern recognition. Their readings have shown to be more accurate than a radiologist in some studies.

50 years ago we didn't even have consumer computers. Now our computers can diagnose and type a pneumothorax more accurately and faster than a doctor who has spent his whole life diagnosing xrays.

[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Well we'd all be burned as witches, so hopefully you are bringing people forward in time, not tossing them backwards. I'd expect my time traveler to be stunned by nearly everything:

Flush toilet

Electrical anything

Telephone, speakers, TV

I took a networking course in college and loved it but you still can't convince me that radio isn't magic. Even knowing the mechanics of it doesn't help - it's so freaking crazy. Fiber optic data transmission is such an awesome technology but even that doesn't confuse me like radio, or broadcast tv.

[–] Getawombatupya@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm srill convinced Electrons are just a massive conspiracy...

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[–] Rexelpitlum@discuss.tchncs.de 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

l can think of one magic-technology that appeared during my lifetime:

E-Ink-Readers.

I mean, script suddenly appearing out of thin air on flat, solid surfaces? WTF?

I even studied enginering in the early 90's and would not have been able to come up with a technological explaination if I had encountered one of those back then...

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean sure, but…from an uninformed perspective an LCD or even a CRT monitor are going to appear just as magical, if not more so.

[–] Rexelpitlum@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

But that's exactly the point.

E-Ink Displays would have been unable to explain for me from my thoroughly * informed * perspective as an HF and digital communications student.

Active displays in one form or another had been around for 50 years or so at that time. So have been practially all base technology concepts of the much mentioned smartphones. Nothing magical about an optimized version, just extrapolation.

But E-Ink? A * brand new * technology * without prior art * rapidly emerging from obscure theoretical concept to widespread use within just 15 years or so...

I am actually still a little bit awed each time I switch on one of those...

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Try explaining titanium bone implants or the process of getting metallic aluminum to a Sumerian coppersmith

[–] WFH@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Especially if he's just been sold the wrong grade of copper.

[–] BloodSlut@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Brb leaving a 1 star yelp review for Ea Nasir

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[–] arymandias@feddit.de 22 points 1 year ago (6 children)

High speed rail, they would probably not believe their eyes if they saw a train going by with 300 kmh.

[–] Tedesche@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

LOL, can you imagine the pantaloons after an F-22 Raptor does a low altitude flyby?

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[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This sphere has an evil magical aura that really wants to tear your body apart. Now watch what happens when I remove the screwdriver!

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[–] FarFarAway@startrek.website 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I read somewhere that we are going to set up solar panels in space convert the electcity to radio radios, beam it to earth, then convert it back to electricty.

To anyone that wasn't Nikola tesla, that just sounds insane.

[–] thepianistfroggollum@lemmynsfw.com 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Nah, that's not an actual plan that's being implemented. It's basically a thought experiment at this point. The problem with wireless energy transfer at that scale is that it takes a fuck ton of output power to generate a little bit of input power at a distance (inverse square law)

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[–] julianh@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, any lcd screen. It's a magical flat surface that can display any image. Add a battery and now it's completely untethered and silent.

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[–] CitizenKong@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wireless telephone and internet would baffle even someone from the sixties.

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[–] Tischkante@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I mean we gather these black rocks called silicone and refine them, then we cut them to plates and inscribe them with microscopic runes using light and very secret mixtures. Next we use lighting on it to make it think for us.

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 year ago

Look at what you did. You took perfectly good sand and gave it anxiety

[–] BaroqueInMind@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Even more simplistic: we take rocks and etch runes onto them, shoot them with electricity to make them think.

Also, I think you meant silicon. Silicone is what flashlights are made of... Which would also blow the minds of less advanced cultures: "You craft soft holes from rocks mixed with glues and you fuck it?"

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[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 16 points 1 year ago

An LED flashlight.

You have a device you can fit in your pocket that can shine a light so bright that it looks like day.

[–] theIdeaOfNorth@szmer.info 14 points 1 year ago

The entire advanced mathematics. Go sufficiently far and mundane matrix multiplication will look like daemonic sigils. Write out a moderately complex math proof and you're essentially commanding inhuman tongue. Then when you convince them that it's really not devil summon spell you can tell the old era folks, that all these symbols is why the sun rises as fast as it does and moon has phases.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Smart phones. The caveat being you couldn't take one back in time and impress them because the internet and cellular network wouldn't be there.

I remember a great answer to this somewhere and they said a solar powered 4 function calculator is the simplest thing we have today that would blow people's minds. You really don't even need a scientific one to achieve the effect. Apart from the obvious (quick math, LCD display, and solar power) it also uses plastic.

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

I’m 46 years old. In my lifetime, we’ve gone from being able to put half an hour on one side of an LP or cassette to being able to put a full album on a CD to being able to put a few hundred songs on an early MP3 player to being able to stream unlimited music almost anywhere in the world. That feels like magic to me.

[–] BitSound@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

ChatGPT is magic to me now. It's great living in the future.

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[–] bandario@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can't believe 3D Printing hasn't been mentioned. Summoning figures from the ether would almost certainly get you tried as a witch.

[–] damnYouSun@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

I can create anything your heart desires, as long as your heart desires simple plastic objects and it's prepared to wait five hours.

I think 3D printers will really become mainstream when they're a bit more capable.

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[–] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

People in the past had a lot of weird technologies, trickery and magician stage plays. I don't think a laser pointer would be out of the ordinary, unless you'd try to explain what it actually is. I can imagine people would just assume it's a trick.

Now, a cutting laser... That could be interesting.

But I wonder how people in the past would react to stuff like audio and video recording and immediate playback. I always thought that is something that screams "impossible" unless you're already familiar with it.

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[–] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just about anything to do with a smart home. I can control lights and appliances in my home from anywhere in the world using my phone (magical) or just my voice.

Also appliances of most any type. A refrigerator magically contains winter all year 'round, a heater, oven and electric cooktop provide heat without the fire, and a microwave heats things without heat.

[–] ProfessorGumby@midwest.social 8 points 1 year ago

Remote controlled garage doors.

[–] casio77@reddthat.com 7 points 1 year ago

The internet. Near instantaneous communication with anyone on earth who has access to it.

[–] Lemjukes@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

The Saturn V Rocket, The reusable Falcon rockets spacex uses(my jaw still drops watching those things land), The US NAVY's Rail Gun(until they canceled the project in 2021), That new globe screen doohicky in Vegas.

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