February 23, 2026
When your fridge turns evil
How close are we to a vision for 2010?
Future predictions vs reality: phones, fridge wars and a missing payphone
TLDR: A 2000-era report imagined a smooth, magical future where gadgets quietly did everything for us, but today’s reality is messy phones, half-finished digital ID, and no payphones in sight. Commenters roast old predictions, worry about surveillance, and joke about dystopian smart fridges running wild online.
The blog post asks a simple question: did our early-2000s sci‑fi dreams about 2010 actually come true? But the real show is in the comments, where readers gleefully pick apart what we got right, what we totally missed, and what’s become downright creepy. One big theme: we did get the magic wrist computer… but it turned into a surveillance brick. Commenter techdmn even wonders about doing "no‑cell Tuesdays" just to escape being tracked, then immediately panics about family emergencies and broken-down cars. Everyone laughs at the idea that payphones would save the day — they’re now basically mythical creatures.
Others are obsessed with how wrong we were about public internet terminals in airports and malls. As xp84 notes, people in 2000 just couldn’t imagine doing everything on a tiny phone, so the old predictions are packed with shared screens instead of personal devices. Then xtiansimon drops the dystopian mic with a 90s vision of your fridge going to war in online grocery markets to buy milk for you — and, obviously, everything "goes awry." Meanwhile mister_mort turns the whole debate into a binge-watch recommendation list, linking YouTube compilations of past future-fails. The vibe: we accidentally built a future that’s less "magical ambient intelligence" and more "constant connection, fewer payphones, and a very stressed-out fridge."
Key Points
- •The article revisits the EU IST advisory group’s early-2000s report “Scenarios for ambient intelligence in 2010” to assess its accuracy from the vantage point of 2026.
- •The scenario’s vision of a single wrist-worn personal communications device replacing multiple computing devices is partly realised through modern smartphones and smartwatches.
- •Predicted frictionless border crossings handled automatically by a personal device have not materialised; instead, NFC-enabled passports allow faster but still manual automated checks.
- •Car technologies such as wireless entry, push-button start and app-based unlocking now exist widely, aligning with parts of the original scenario.
- •Traffic guidance today is delivered by satellite-based positioning and private services rather than city-run ambient-intelligence systems, and sophisticated personal software agents have not emerged as envisioned.