h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Maybe the Internet will bring back the local milk woman. And with her a lot of other goods. It would be most welcome. In particular by those sitting home alone in remote villages without any means of transport due to old age and frailty.

Even the teenager with the most modern, advanced high-tech gadgets still sleeps in a bed, brushes his/her teeth, and breathes air. Technology has a long way to go before any of that changes.

The transporters seen on Star Trek may or may not ever become reality. I think we will have a better chance of seeing improved mobility of the elderly and handicapped due to mind-reading androids and intelligent moving devices. Medical science keeps looking for the fountain of youth, or anything even remotely comparable.

Has anyone here seen "Her," a movie set ten years from now, in which a man gets a computer companion voiced by Scarlet Johanson? That's the direction we're going in. Give the computer personality a body, and you might have a good companion for an elderly person who would rather remain at home than move into a nursing home. The nursing home that my mother was in was full of patients who grumbled constantly about being ignored by everyone.

the most modern, advanced high-tech gadgets still need the humble batterytake those away from kids and they're lost

I thought battery of kids was illegal these days.

If only they were battery operated, kids that is. You'd be able to turn their volume down, or even switch them off when they'd exhausted you.

That's one of those things you'd make millions if you invented it - a remote control for kids. Simply point it at them and press the 'volume down' button.

Until then just hand them a smartphone with internet connection

Even the toddlers?

"a remote control for kids. Simply point it at them and" OR! press repeatcleaning bedroom or washing pots etc

My mother just chucked the lot of us outside after breakfast if it wasn't school day.

My own, who are now thirty-somethings used to be told 'if you want to make that much noise, go and play in the garden. Preferably in your friend's garden!'

when young, my 2 believed in except that! they looked like hoovers, because if I mentioned THAT word they ran screaming

Is that why the castles in Transylvania are so clean?

Well, if there's still a part of the world where kids can go out and play, I'm glad to hear it. Abduction psychosis runs deep here.

Well they tag cats and other pets how long will it be before you can have your kida tagged with a locator chip

A very long time. I don't have any kids.

They don't need to be kids, though. I wouldn't be surprised if people on house arrest eventually get embedded chips so the justice system can track their whereabouts at all times.

Some have tags already, although the sort that can be taken off by the authorities in the end. Mostly to make sure they are in their houses during curfew or aren't somewhere they are forbidden to go.

Six mince pies, and whaddaya get?
Another day older, and deeper in debt.

shift that bail and tote that barge
must stop drinking from that still behind the shed