Do not write fanfiction. One second you’re normal and the next you’re downloading a calendar from 2004 and tearing your hair out over what specific date every event in your fic happens
I swear I become so paranoid like “what if they look up the day and figure out it only had light rain instead of a storm?”
me back when i was in Star Trek fandom: haha this doesn’t apply to me because the story happens on a starship in outer space 300 years in the future
me now that i’m in TRON fandom: haha this doesn’t apply to me because the story happens inside a computer in the 1980’s in an entirely different universe where computers in the 1980’s were nothing like how they have ever been in real life and neither was the outside world probably
I still research all the damn dates, mostly because I want Actual Computer Stuff in my stories about silly computer dudes lol
Although actually, Aster? You’re a little wrong on the computer thing. Sure, the laser isn’t real, but Dillinger’s touchscreen desk absolutely nearly was a thing in the mid-80’s. A side project done between a hardware developer and an analyst systems programmer in the UK was a prototype touchscreen, working via a pressure grid made up of thin wires under a glass screen. It was futuristic, and a little mindblowing, and most crucially worked.
So what did the company these two entrepreneurs worked at do, when presented with the finished prototype? Did they coo over the fancy new technology? Did they discuss all its wondrous applications? Did they dream of the possibilities it opened up to them - new produts, a new market, the frontrunner of this new tech with everyone else scrambling to catch up?
No. They axed it. Said it would go nowhere, a flight of fancy and flash in a pan.
As I type this on my touchscrern mobile, with my eyes on a touchscreen laptop, surrounded by people with touchscreen tablets and phones and computers? Bet they’re feeling pretty foolish now.
Source for this? I’m related to the programmer, who to this day wishes they’d gone independent and patented it with their colleague themselves, instead of scrapping it. What a world that would have been.
ooooh fascinating lore drop!
And VERY true– there has always been technology that never became widespread at the time it was first created, just because of little things like that. Our society being the way it is, is ….random, in so many ways.
And yes, with Encom there’s a lot of wiggle room for technology being ahead of its time. Because it’s clear that they were working on Secret Projects Beyond Anything Publicly Known At The Time…. which we know included the laser and the MCP, but really could include anything we wanna imagine.
So yeah. Research when you want, and be free and have fun when you want.