Extra bits

The future couldn't do much. Well, not quite true. It couldn't create a lot of mass, but selective application of that mass could do a lot. Changing ones and zeros could write a program, and an efficient program could do many things. A little voltage on a existing sensor, a 'glitch' that records an extra few seconds – with a little extra data a lot can be reconstructed. Mirror data sent on the internet to one of the few data devices that survived and you could tap into anything.