Science Fiction

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.

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.

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.

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Have you ever been in a takeaway place or a waiting room where someone is listening to music or watching videos on speaker? What about a lunatic who is walking through Target yelling into their speaker phone? Or, my favorite, some dumbass who decided he needed to have a video call with his girlfriend in a locker room.

People would have zero issues looking at risque pics or having loud conversations into their phone.

That said: Many sci-fi lore books will explain that those are usually representations of what the person is seeing. They aren't holding up a hologram. They are holding up a device that beams that directly into their eyes so only they can see it... that they are still holding at a weird angle so that the camera doesn't get a weird shot.

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.

100 years from now? All technology will be wearable or implanted, screens won't exist anymore for personal devices but data will be either projected or beamed directly. Woeln't be at all surprised if by then it's largely organic and implanted at birth.

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.

Maybe the content of the display can be encrypted and is only accessible by the wearer in a certain mode

Can't remember the title or author. Co-ed space crews working in heavy environmental armor. Each person can set their armor to allow different levels of transparency. You can set it so only your prefered partners can see your face, or see more if you're so inclined.

Nah, the hologram is just the TV representation of what's playing in the user's brain via neural implant. They don't show the part with the direct-to-brain 5 minute unskippable ad though...

Worse than that, when they are talking on a hologram phone the speaker is always looking down at the hologram and the hologram is looking up at the speaker. On both ends. If it was a hologram of the speaker they would be looking down.

That’s always annoyed me too. Same with holographic computer screens that allow people on the other side to see what you’re doing. Only way it’d work is if there was a way to limit the view to the person using the device.

And holographic keyboards that appear on an otherwise blank desk. They’d better have really strong tactile feedback or not only would you be poking the hard desk all day, you have to stare at the keyboard the entire time.

In movies and shows they've become popular because its easy to shoot, it doesn't block anything or anyone in the scene or need a specific angle. Regular screens are always facing the opposite direction of the person looking at them in the scene.