Talks to Watch

Tomorrow's World: Mobile Phone 13 September 1979 - BBC

2M views · Jan 7, 2010 · 6:37 · 0 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2019–2022

A 1979 BBC Tomorrow's World segment where Michael Rodd tries an experimental British cordless mobile phone prototype.

Why Hacker News points people here: Shared as a period piece showing how past TV predicted technologies that later became common.

“Here they are explaining the cutting edge of mobile phones in the day”HN comment, 2019

What Hacker News said 3

Cites ittim333Jun 2019

“Here they are explaining the cutting edge of mobile phones in the day”

Old TV segment on early mobile phones.

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It's debatable if this is AI but basically it looks at all the moves you can make then all the responses an opponent can make and then what you can do back etc. and attaches scores based on pieces taken and the positions. And then goes with the best score. Conventional chess programs use a similar algorithm and ones like AlphaZero are similar except they use machine learning and neural nets to judge how good positions are rather than a simple point score system. I remember trying to write a similar one after seeing the algorithm explained on the TV show Tomorrow's World, around 1980. (Here they are explaining the cutting edge of mobile phones in the day this video )

in “Sunfish: A simple but strong chess engine written in Python” · view on HN
Cites it123pie123Apr 2021

“They kind of predicted a few things right-ish”

Past TV predictions of the future that came partly true.

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Anyone from the UK who remembers the TV program "Tomorrows World", is wise to predicting the future! They kind of predicted a few things right-ish this video Although I think the technology that exists now is much better than what I thought it would be like as a kid. Except for flying cars, I still want one

in “Technologies I thought my son would never use” · view on HN
Cites itO__________OOct 2022

“Mobile Phone (1979)”

Example episode from the UK show.

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Some of the predictions show got right: link _______________ Example episodes from UK show Tomorrow’s World: - Mobile Phone (1979) this video - Office of the Future (1969) link - Home Computer (1967) link _______________ Related Wikipedia page: link

in “Edward Stone retires after 50 years as NASA Voyager’s project scientist” · view on HN