一些回答提到了量子计算机，好像它们还在遥远的未来，但我不敢苟同。

There were vague mentions of possibility of quantum computers in 1970s and 1980s (see timeline on Wikipedia), however the first "working" 3-qubit NMR quantum computer was built in 1998. The field is still in infancy, and almost all progress is still theoretical and confined to academia, but in 2007 company called D-Wave Systems presented a prototype of a working 16-qubit, and later during the year 28-qubit adiabatic quantum computer. Their effort is notable since they claim that their technology is commercially viable and scalable. As of 2010, they have 7 rigs, current generation of their chips has 128 qubits. They seem to have partnered with Google to find interesting problems to test their hardware on.

我推荐这段简短的24分钟视频和维基百科上关于D-Wave的文章作为快速概述，在这个由D-Wave创始人和首席财务官撰写的博客上有更多的资源。

上世纪八十年代初，施乐帕洛阿尔托研究中心对计算机蠕虫进行了研究。

摘自John Shoch和Jon Hupp的“蠕虫”程序——分布式计算的早期经验”(ACM通讯，1982年3月，第25卷第3期，172-180页，1982年3月):

In The Shockwave Rider, J. Brunner developed the notion of an omnipotent "tapeworm" program running loose through a network of computers - an idea which may seem rather disturbing, but which is also quite beyond our current capabilities. The basic model, however, remains a very provocative one: a program or a computation that can move from machine to machine, harnessing resources as needed, and replicating itself when necessary. In a similar vein, we once described a computational model based upon the classic science-fiction film, The Blob: a program that started out running in one machine, but as its appetite for computing cycles grew, it could reach out, find unused machines, and grow to encompass those resources. In the middle of the night, such a program could mobilize hundreds of machines in one building; in the morning, as users reclaimed their machines, the "blob" would have to retreat in an orderly manner, gathering up the intermediate results of its computation. Holed up in one or two machines during the day, the program could emerge again later as resources became available, again expanding the computation. (This affinity for nighttime exploration led one researcher to describe these as "vampire programs.")

引用艾伦·凯的话:“预测未来最好的方法就是创造未来。”

数码相机呢?

根据维基百科，第一个真正的数码相机出现在1988年，大众市场的数码相机在20世纪90年代末变得负担得起。

企业服务总线似乎是一个相当新的“发明”，尽管它当然是基于更古老的技术。

当然，1980年以前是施乐PARC的辉煌时期。在图形用户界面、鼠标、激光打印机、互联网和个人电脑刚刚诞生的时候。(鉴于我太年轻了，不可能活在那个年代，而你几乎在努力发明所有这些东西，关于1980年的事情，我不能告诉你任何你不知道的事情，所以我们继续吧。)

The thing is, though, that the pre-1980 days were a lot more vibrant in terms of truly disruptive new technologies. That's the way it is with any new field -- hwo many game-changing technology advances have you seen in railroads in the past 100 years? How many have you seen in lightbulbs? In the printing press? Once something ignites a hype in the right circles, there is an explosive period of invention, followed by a long period of maturing. After that, you're not going to see the same kind of completely radical changes again UNLESS the basic circumstances change.

幸运的是，这可能会发生在一些领域，而且已经发生在其他一些领域:

Mobility - smart phones bring computing to a truly portable platform, which will soon include location-based services and proximity-based ad-hoc networks. It's a completely new paradigm that's potentially as game-changing as the GUI has been The WWW (HTTP, HTML and DNS) has already been mentioned and is an obvious addition to the list, since it is enabling global, inexpensive, mainstream rich communication across the globe - all thanks to a computing platform On the interface side, both touch, multitouch (Jeff Han comes to mind) and the Wiimote need mentioning. Currently, they are basically curiosities, but so were the early GUIs. OOP design patterns -- higher level solutions as best practices to hard problems. Depending on your definition of 'computing', it may or may not belong on the list, but if you count OOP as a significant advance pre-1980 (I certainly do), I think design patterns and the GoF deserve a mention too Google's PageRank and MapReduce algorithms - I am pleased to notice I wasn't the first to mention them, and seriously --- where would the world be without the principles of both of them? I vividly remember what the world looked like before them, and suffice it to say Google really IS my friend. Non-volatile memory -- it's on the hardware side, but it is going to play a significant role in the future of computing - making bootup times a thing of the past, for example, and enabling us to use computers in entirely new ways Semantic (natural language) search / analysis / classification / translation... We're not quite there yet, but companies like Powerset give the impression that we're on the brink. On that note, intelligent HTMs should be on this list as well. I am yet another believer in Jeff Hawkins' model and approach, and if it works, it will mean a complete redefinition of what computers can do, what it means to be human, and where the world can go from here. Creating a real intelligence in that way (synthetically) would be bigger than anything the human race has accomplished before. GNU + Linux 3D printing / rapid prototyping (and, in time, manufacturing) P2P (which also lead to VoIP etc.) E-ink, once the technologies mature a bit more RFID might belong on the list, but the verdict is still out on that one Quantum Computing is the most obvious element on the list, except we still haven't been able to get enough qubits to play along. However, my friends in the field tell me there's incredible progress going on even as we speak, so I'm holding my breath for that one. And finally, I want to mention a personal favourite: distributed intelligence, or its other name: artificial artificial intelligence. The idea of connecting a huge number of people in a network and allowing them access to the combined minds of everyone else through some form of question answering interface. It's been done a number of times recently, with Yahoo Answers, Askville, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and so on, but in my mind, those are all missing the mark by a LOT... much like the many implementations of distributed hypertext that came before Tim Berners-Lee's HTML, or the many web crawlers before Google. Seriously -- someone needs to build an search interface into 'the hive mind' to blow everyone else out of the water. IMHO - it is only a matter of time.

基础设施的改变使家庭和办公室都能接入互联网。

记录并接受了从W3C到api的标准

除此之外，我们所认为的大多数新事物都比你想象的要久远得多(例如GUI, OOP)。