The 7th episode of The GeekBits Podcast is here! In this episode we perform a thought experiment where we question how the world might be different if technology had stopped advancing in 1982.
What if Technology had Stalled in the 80s?
We asked ourselves “What if technology had stalled in the 80s?” “How would the world be different today?” Well we took this thought experiment and used it for the basis of The Geekbits Podcast episode 7!
That’s right David’s shower thought of the month is the idea that technology stalled in 1982 and wasn’t able to advance any further. This is some hypothetical issue where the processors couldn’t be made to go any faster. That’s right everyone in the 2020s would still be using 8 bit computers!
We asked ourselves a bunch of questions:
- Would we have the Internet?
- What about websites like eBay, and Amazon?
- What about online shopping in general?
- How would cars have advanced?
- Would we have MRIs and CAT scans?
- What about the space program?
- What about the smartphone?
It turns out the answer to some of these questions in shocking. For example, we asked if cars would have ever had touch screen systems like the cars of today? You might be shocked to learn that the 1980s had the Buick Reatta loaded with a touch screen CRT in the center console!
You might be surprised to learn that due to long certification lead times, NASA is using chips that are decades old. The Mars rover for example is run on a Power PC processor of eons ago!
Follow along in this podcast as we dive in to these fascinating topics!