When I was a child I thought houses would look drastically different in the future. They in fact do not.

Imagine the world as we know it is a work of speculative fiction: you’re reading a book about a world that has harnessed the power of electricity to achieve all kinds of incredible things. Electric power’s not just magic, though, right? This is hard sci-fi, there are technical limitations on how this fantastical technology works. There are ways to generate electricity enough for everyone to use but to actually use it they need the electricity to travel long distances from its source to their location and the route is required to be more or less contiguous.

Now electricity, according to this wild sci-fi premise, is a force that kind of wants to travel; it is possible for it to move, then it will. And I said “more or less contiguous” up there because it can actually cross small gaps as long as the rest of the route remains valid. And one thing it is possible for it to move through is a human body, which can be nightmarishly harmful to the human it travels through. Indeed, there is a history of intentionally placing humans into that route in order to execute them. And living creatures aren’t the only thing it can harm: electricity traveling through a flammable medium can start fires and, if misdirected in some way, can even destroy the very technology it’s being harnessed to power.

Even setting aside the destruction it can cause should it end up traveling where they don’t want it to travel, there is also the fact that if it fails to travel along the desired route then electrical technology that people have built their lives around will simply stop functioning. There are ways to generate one’s own limited supply of electricity as a stopgap until the main course is reestablished but most people in the setting don’t have that and it’s a temporary measure even if they do. And I don’t just mean stuff like their business failing to function, I mean that even the basic day to day operations of their lives will fail. They have stores of food kept safely cold by electrical technology that will spoil if the electricity stops, they have kitchens that run on electricity to cook that food even if the ingredients are still good, and most of them never learned how to do these kinds of basic things the old fashioned way and if they want to learn how then their primary source for information is itself a technology that requires electricity to function.

So you’re talking to a friend about this book you’ve been reading about this electrical world. And your friend asks you about these “routes” you told them the electricity travels along:

“How do they move this super dangerous yet super integral substance across such long distances that even people in the middle of nowhere have access to it?”

“For the millionth time, it’s not a substance.”

“Whatever it is, how do they get it from A to B?”

“Well… mostly they the put wires that conduct it on top of thirty foot tall wooden posts.”

“Wouldn’t those just fall down whenever there’s bad weather?”

“Yeah, ‘power outages’ as they call them are not entirely infrequent.”

“So these wooden posts that if they fall over could start fires or kill bystanders or, like, melt stuff. They keep all that away from where people are at least?”

“Well, okay, I was simplifying. There’s these bigger and sturdier metal constructions for carrying wire the longest distances and they build those in the middle of nowhere. These wooden posts that fall down easily are mostly situated around where people are, like roadsides. They were first on my mind because they’re more what’s present where the story takes place.”

“Didn’t you say earlier they’ve all got these individually operated vehicles on the roads that are measured in the strength of dozens of horses, thousands of pounds of metal that move faster than jungle cats? Wouldn’t they just hit the poles by accident and, like, demolish them?”

“Yeah that happens sometimes.”

“…I guess I’m being uncharitable. If I were in this scenario I’d probably be more excited and not thinking as clearly as I do from this distance. It makes sense that such a radical new technology would have some unforeseen negative consequences.”

“Actually it’s not new. Electrical power’s been commonplace for something like a century as of when the story takes place. The characters don’t remember a world without it.”

“And they’re still just… putting it on sticks?”

1. Vasectomies (+ birth control pills)
2. animal testing for human research.
3. I’m sure that anyone working in a hospital can cough up a few dozen more.

RISUG has been invented in 1978,
is reversable, cheaper, zero side effects,
and with so far 0% failure rate when implemented properly,
Vasalgel, an improvement on RISUG by having a longer shelf-life,
has been invented around 2015.

So this stuff has been invented in the same year as the first Star Wars movie,
had gone through all trials multiple times with flying colors,
and instead we use knives and pills with large side effects.

If any invention could be been ubiquitous in use at a much earlier stage,
then this would be it.
It could and should have been widely used by the 1980’s.

For animal testing we have 3D printed human tissue.
So why test on animals if your question is “Does this stuff work on human tissue?”
The answer you’ll be getting is whether or not it works on mice.
Mice are not human.

RSS. And very happy that it is!

Radio

Television

COBOL

Well, I was surprised at the time…

IPv4

Besides wind turbines and some solar power, all of our power plants are essentially fancy steam engines turning turbines. We’ve been generating power using water to spin wheels of increasing complexity for thousands of years. Wind as well, though it’s not as prevalent in the modern era.

It is time for the fax machine to die.

It has been time for the fax Machine to die for the last 18 years.

For the love of God somebody, please kill the fax machine.

Gas stoves. Yeah, real smart to use a source of pollution inside your home. Electric ranges have been available for decades. Recently available induction stoves are like magic. Yet people cling to cooking with fire.

Twitter

The car.

Non-portable gaming consoles