[extropy-chat] anticipointed?

[Spike]

> Damien Broderick
...
> 
> `"Talk?" We have our machines to do that!'
> 
> Damien Broderick


We should coin a term which means the nearly universal
experience of anticipating some really great future
technology, but then finding when it arrives that it
isn't nearly as wicked cool as we thought it would be.

Anticipointment?

You can probably think of several examples, but Damien's
comment reminded me of seeing Lost In Space as a child,
where young Will Robinson had a robot which could carry
on a conversation (of sorts).  I thought that would be
soooooo coool to talk to a machine.

Well, I can do that now.  And it isn't nearly as cool
as I thought it would be.  I did so just yesterday.

My television reception suddenly went out, the missus
called my attention to it, I didn't care, but then
I noticed... DEAR EVOLUTION!  MY INTERNET CONNECTION
IS DEAD!  Quick, emergency, get on the phone to the
cable company.

A machine-generated voice gave me a list of choices, asked 
me to enter or say a number, then another list of choices, 
and so on.  I had a conversation (limited of course) with
a machine.  Eventually a human came on the line, who
already knew all the details of the predicament by seeing
my answers.  Fortunately he was a young human, who
fully understood the nature of the emergency of being
without an information pipe.

So, the future is here, and in some ways I have
anticipointment.  On the other hand, I did not
anticipate the internet, or anything very analogous
to it.  It just showed up one day about 11 years ago.
I was cheerfully blown away, not at all anticipointed,
but rather the pleasant opposite, like an unexpected 
genuine orgasm.  

Surprimaxed?

spike