Comment by eesmith

4 days ago

The future is unevenly distributed.

> Video streaming services

We watched a stream of the 1994 World Cup. There was a machine at MIT which forwarded the incoming video to an X display window

    xhost +machine.mit.edu

and we could watch it from several states away. (The internet was so trusting in those days.)

To be sure, it was only a couple of frames per second, but it was video, and an audience collected to watch it.

> EV Cars (that anyone wanted to buy)

People wanted to buy the General Motors EV1 in the 1990s. Quoting Wikipedia, "Despite favorable customer reception, GM believed that electric cars occupied an unprofitable niche of the automobile market. The company ultimately crushed most of the cars, and in 2001 GM terminated the EV1 program, disregarding protests from customers."

I know someone who managed to buy one. It was one of the few which had been sold rather than leased.