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"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 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.

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.

They had electricity in the 70s. They were missing standards, but they had electricity.

Just tell them our pet rocks are now cameras and instead of a regular wall plug we have a tiny plug for charging tiny things.

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."

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?"

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...