The folks in this thread are misinterpreting the comment. It's not that someone from 1970 wouldn't understand the concept; it's that they would rightfully think that it's stupid and judge you for putting up with it.

Even in the early 00s it was already hard to grasp for some folks. I had friends who called me a liar for claiming that I could charge my mp3 music player by slotting it in the USB port of my tower as opposed to swapping out AAA batteries

Well, I realize that 1970s sounds like an age of dinosaurs to some people... But, people back then weren't cavemen. They had electricity, batteries, video cameras, telephones.

The concept of an electric outlet in a couch is easy - not sure, but they might even had such things back then. Like to feed a lamp or something. USB is just low voltage and different connector, from the power transmission perspective.

The concept of a speakerphone with video signal is also easy. The only thing to grasp is that the devices and batteries became that miniature and efficient. Oh, and wireless.

Explaining that all video and voice recordings from all these neat devices are actually stored by a gigantic corporation, processed with voice and face recognition algorithms, and used to enrich personal profiles collected on all parties of the conversation to boost profits of said corporations, and many people even pay for this - THAT I would find complicated to explain.

Wait, you have to charge those Spyware doorbells?

"In the future we have a standardized cable called a Universal Serial Bus, and it's used for connecting to computers for things like information and/or power transfer. They're super versatile, you know those personal computers you saw in the news last year? Well a USB could be added to connect a future computer without a keyboard and mouse to a keyboard and mouse with the same port and never worrying about brand differences or multiple types of wires or any of that, which makes them easily replaceable parts.

They're so common that you find USB ports on devices, walls, and even people's furniture. The reason you might want it in your furniture is to connect your handheld mobile phone which will run off a grid of towers transmitting low energy high frequency radiowaves, but their batteries drain pretty fast during regular use and need to be recharged frequently. People spend a lot of time on their phones in the future."

"So can you like order a pizza from anywhere?"

"Yes but people in the future don't call anymore. They use a tiny screen on the face of the phone to access a digitally transmitted form to fill out that has all the food options, payment info, and recieving address. You can even get financing for it, the payment split up in smaller regular payments automatically transmitted from your bank balance."

"That's rad!"

"It is not. We hate the future."

A couch with a power outlet baffles me

When I was last shopping for furniture, one of the immediate disqualifications was anything that required a power cord. I don't need or want anything motorized, built-in chargers, bluetooth speakers, and I especially don't want LED lighting in my chairs. All that crap is designed to fail / break. Not to mention that standards change quicker than furniture gets updated in my household. Most of those USB ports were old 5V USB-A crap that can't keep up or crappy old bluetooth standards & antennas with poor quality speakers that I would never use anyway because my receiver is far, far better. And fuck LED lights in everything. Fuck that to Hell along with the people that make/invent that bullshit.

A few years back I remember reading a headline along the lines of:

"Google Android Ice Cream Cream Sandwich for Galaxy 2 available on Sprint"

And I thought that someone from just 5 years earlier would have been really confused.

1970s is easy: the doorbell has a real small battery like in your car that can be recharged. It then has a built in radio to transmit a TV signal to a handle held computer/mainframe.

Couches have built in power for convenience.

I once charged my portable blender using a power bank daisy chained to one of my laptops which was also powering a desk fan, the future is strange man.

I swear this is getting stupid. One day someone is going to shove a battery pack up the butt with USB port sticking out "omg tech dude, I can charge with my butt"

Okay but the most important question: where do I get a couch like that?

My cord is always the wrong length lol

Charged a weed vape using the Xbox once. Times have changed

I once recharged my vegetable chipper at my desktop computers which honestly was weird enough.

JD's pager.

My digital thermostats have Alexa built in. When I first installed them I went around telling people "I know I live in the future because my thermostat can play the Beatles".

Also, I have a heated coffee mug. I have legitimately used the sentence "My coffee mug is doing a firmware update."

My 50 year old "dumb" doorbell doesn't need to be recharged. More proof that "smart" technology isn't actually smarter and isn't actually making our lives easier.

Yeah but why would you want to need to?

You can just say the 70s, people.

There is zero percent chance someone is gonna confuse it with 1870 and 2070 is 65 years away.

Edit: lol math sheesh 45 years I might be high

Imagine explaining in-vehicle-mounted devices which play sound recordings on giant vinyl discs to people from the 2030s.

https://www.hagerty.com/...

I mean.. yeah, having all the electronic gadgets that spy on you and let you read the post of the worlds united village yokels is great, but, just as a thought... why do i need to recharge my phone at least once a day when the Atari Portfolio (which was / is a nearly full IBM PC compatible computer) that was build in '89 did last about A MONTH on 3 AA batteries that i could buy nearly everywhere in the world?

Imagine a world where not every consumer electronic is controled by layers upon layers upon layers of cruft running on an operating system that in its core still thinks it is powering an PDP11 and talking to a bunch of teletypes...

They'd probably be confused as to why it needs charging. "I don't charge my doorbell, so why the manual process? Is running copper wire prohibitively expensive in the future?"

Wait, does this mean that if you have a smart doorbell, someone could just walk up to it, grab it, and walk away with it?

A couch that has an outlet integrated into it ain't as mind-blowing as you seem to think. In particular considering it is a low power outlet.

Batteries got good enough and electronics efficient enough that for a doorbell it makes more sense to use a battery than to run a dedicated 12v wire.

My dumb doorbell has a little coin battery.

Imaging explaining that to someone in 2025 would work too. Didn't know that either of these existed.