I remember attending a lecture on why electric cars could never be pragmatic, due to the incredible energy density of gasoline, compared to the pathetic energy density of even SOTA batteries. Even if batteries improved their energy density by orders of magnitude, they could never even come close to matching fossil fuels!
And there's a lot of recentish developments that were considered impossible or hadn't even been conceived of.
In medicine we've made HIV prevention/treatment with a pretty much 100% success rate, Hepatitis C antivirals, MS treatments with hopeful prognoses, a huge swathe of cancer treatments that make cancer overall more survivable than not, and mRNA vaccines are incredibly promising. Just personally, Vyvanse is an indescribably more effective and pleasant experience than Ritalin. MRIs are also pretty much magic. They're more or less the holy grail of imaging. Only issue is that they're still expensive, but we're working hard on ~room temperature superconductors.
In clean power, heat pumps have become obscenely efficient, and solar panels are both very effective and very cheap, pairing well with batteries. Induction stoves are also getting quite good.
Drones have benefited immensely from more efficient computing and better imaging, which isn't necessarily all for the best but is something that could absolutely not have been done in 1970.
What else, what's cool but also improves day to day life? Well, modern elevators are dramatically faster. I, personally, enjoy having wheels on my suitcase, and the modern omni-directional ones are a hugely better experience than the first versions. Oh, E-bikes! Those are really really cool. I guess that's just batteries again?
I'm sure there's a ton of stuff that didn't even occur to me because I'm blind to it, and to be entirely honest, didn't experience the year 1970.
And there's a lot of recentish developments that were considered impossible or hadn't even been conceived of. In medicine we've made HIV prevention/treatment with a pretty much 100% success rate, Hepatitis C antivirals, MS treatments with hopeful prognoses, a huge swathe of cancer treatments that make cancer overall more survivable than not, and mRNA vaccines are incredibly promising. Just personally, Vyvanse is an indescribably more effective and pleasant experience than Ritalin. MRIs are also pretty much magic. They're more or less the holy grail of imaging. Only issue is that they're still expensive, but we're working hard on ~room temperature superconductors.
In clean power, heat pumps have become obscenely efficient, and solar panels are both very effective and very cheap, pairing well with batteries. Induction stoves are also getting quite good.
Drones have benefited immensely from more efficient computing and better imaging, which isn't necessarily all for the best but is something that could absolutely not have been done in 1970.
What else, what's cool but also improves day to day life? Well, modern elevators are dramatically faster. I, personally, enjoy having wheels on my suitcase, and the modern omni-directional ones are a hugely better experience than the first versions. Oh, E-bikes! Those are really really cool. I guess that's just batteries again?
I'm sure there's a ton of stuff that didn't even occur to me because I'm blind to it, and to be entirely honest, didn't experience the year 1970.