also, for entertainment, will a child of 2050 want to play such a limited 2d game when they can enter into immersive AI driven "interactive movie" type games that we can as yet only imagine? perhaps not.

it may be more subtle. Some things will stand the test of time, even if comparatively simplistic. People still listen to music and read books several 100 years old simply because it was and is good. Likewise certain video games (and their original systems) will enter the cultural memory. I think people will still play pacman in 100 years. As for those highly imersive "interactive movies" I found many of those have aged rather not that well. If you had to choose between the original Zelda game, Myst and Mass effect 3 which game has the most potential for a "timeless classic" ?

Aui wrote on 2024-12-09, 18:20:

it may be more subtle. Some things will stand the test of time, even if comparatively simplistic. People still listen to music and read books several 100 years old simply because it was and is good. Likewise certain video games (and their original systems) will enter the cultural memory. I think people will still play pacman in 100 years. As for those highly imersive "interactive movies" I found many of those have aged rather not that well. If you had to choose between the original Zelda game, Myst and Mass effect 3 which game has the most potential for a "timeless classic" ?

Yes for recent games I agree, I was imagining some kind of immersive vr experience in the future I suppose.

On books as example though, the sophistication of the writing then is about the same as now, computer games changed in sophistication enormously

I hope people will play classic games like pac man though, but I wonder. How many of us play mechanical games from 1920s now?

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-09, 01:24:

as public telephones are now free in Australia.

Ha! Our payphones are, where they still exist*, the last vestiges of tick-based billing (ie not exact call time), ISDN, and truly anonymous communications 😀 🙁

* I found 50 cents in the change slot of one in Milan barely 6 months ago - some habits never die 😁
The one in my city's main hospital, removed last year, was instead literally overflowing with coins so I dutifully removed with a paperclip the 2 topmost ones in the coin slot...

The C64 - nobody in the family had one, can't say I've ever seen one in person before 2011 or so (at a charity flea market, and it was 80 € or so), but I learnt about it around 2005, when a relative then in his last years gave me a C64-centric Basic programming book, I think I found out about VICE within a week 😀 - so it probably qualifies for the near-timeless award!
Somewhere in the garage we have a genuine "Sinclair ZX power supply" for no obvious reason though!

gerry wrote on 2024-12-09, 12:45:

while a c64 does "computing" in essentially the same way, what it can do is almost nothing compared to computers of today even

«In 1969, with a combined processing power comparable to two C64s, the USA put two men on the moon, largely to brag about the achievements of Capitalism; in 2019, fifty years later, capitalism resulted in no more flights to the moon» 😀 🙁

gerry wrote on 2024-12-09, 12:45:

also, for entertainment, will a child of 2050 want to play such a limited 2d game when they can enter into immersive AI driven "interactive movie" type games that we can as yet only imagine? perhaps not.

OTOH we, the PS1 and GBC/GBA/DS kids, also lived the Famiclone and MAME boom and found them "weird" but enjoyable, so maybe?
I agree with Aui above, on that console - I think it was a PolyStation 2 - we mainly played SMB1, because "huh, isn't this Mario Deluxe but you can actually see what's around you?" 😀

gerry wrote on 2024-12-09, 12:45:

evs introduce a radical change and being innovation cycle again

Cheap (potentially free with solar) and convenient charging at home, but also obscene prices for lower driving ranges, very expensive not so fast charging that wears out the battery faster, and non-free heating - well, I agree on the radical change 😜
But the basic idea of an electric motor, a VFD inverter, no transmission and no oil are not that new as innovations, and even most other cons of electric cars (huge prices for non-battery reasons, pushing huge/premium cars to boost ePenis and profit margin, force feeding cloud shit and DRM and huge tablets) are really problems with all new cars nowadays 🙁