How to keep from becoming dated.

[Ursa major]

Exactly. And why is that? Because Ghost in the Shell isn't ever really explicit or specific about the tech used. It's planted there in a used world, not "Gee-Whiz'ed" by the characters (as was the PC in the Harrison you mentioned, which is likely why it's so glaring of a problem now), but rather it's simply used. Not commented on unless it's new to them. It just is. No mention of the costs as I recall, and the story doesn't center around whether these things work, or how exactly they work, but rather how people interact with them working.

Yes and no.

Yes, because our PoV characters (are meant to) inhabit the world they're (occasionally) describing. As most if not all of it is commonplace to them, they'd really only mention it when it's important to them at that moment (something that'll be quite rare, if not entirely absent).

No, because society itself changes (or in the case of these characters, has changed) with the introduction of technology that used to be new to them, and is unknown to us. And those changes are not necessarily in line with what the technology's inventors imagined they might be. This is where things become difficult for the author, because these changes have become integrated into everyday life. Fine, you might say: it's everyday stuff, so we can again skip the detail of what's happening. And I would agree, except that even without the detail, the changes - like the way we now interact differently since the widespread use of social media - is there and probably needs to be mentioned (unless the story takes the characters out of their society before we've had a chance to see it in operation). This sort of thing therefore provides us with plenty of opportunities to look dated quickly, even if we never mention how anything works.

 

[Dave]

No offense meant to the recently deceased, but Harry Harrison is not the first author I would turn to if I wanted something approaching an accurate prediction of the future world.

What? Even Make Room, Make Room?

Ghost in the Shell isn't ever really explicit or specific about the tech used. It's planted there in a used world, not "Gee-Whiz'ed" by the characters...

...Not commented on unless it's new to them. It just is. No mention of the costs as I recall, and the story doesn't center around whether these things work, or how exactly they work, but rather how people interact with them working...

I fully and completely agree with this. Fahrenheit 451 has wall-to-wall TV screens and "seashells" that people place in their ears to hear music. It has no explanation at all of how these might be possible, but you can see that people would aspire to having them if they were possible even 50 years ago. And whenever I see teenagers stepping in front of cars because they are too busy listening to their I-pods I see how this book hasn't dated at all.

I agree that Videophones are a weird one. I remember watching Thunderbirds as a kid and fully expected to have a videophone when I grew up. We do have Skype and that is very popular, but it isn't ubiquitous - mobile smart phones do almost everything except make tea but they don't do video-conferencing as standard.

But then Weather Control and Flying Cars haven't taken off either, and those are staples of future predictions.

So, just describe what the technology does and how it affects society. You don't need to produce a users manual for it or "Gee Whiz it" as Fishbowl Helmet described. An HDTV is now already just a very large screen with hidden or separate speakers, and a computer will be the same with small screen pocket versions. Touch screens even make keyboards redundant (remember the Star Trek: The Voyage Home scene with Scotty and the Mouse he tries to talk into.) Everything becomes either more miniaturised or more ergonomically shaped as time progresses. I'm personally more interested in how it affects our future society, but that is probably just me.