According to Back to the Future II, the hit of 1989, it’s past time for our flying cars, self-tying shoes and, of course, hoverboards. Or is it?
Emma Daley of the UK’s always entertaining Radio Times web site put together a definitive list of what we can expect (and what we should be wearing) this year, but we look at it a bit differently. Among the past-future hits:
Mr Fusion not only looks like something off the ST:TNG set, it seems like a much better use of banana peels than, say, using them in practical jokes or to feed your pet fruit flies (how do you get rid of those things, anyway?)
Flying cars. We commonly blame The Jetsons or Luke Skywalker bombing around Tattooine in Star Wars for this persistent vision, but clearly it was BTTF2 that supplied the key image of the totally cool 90’s car floating in our driveway.
Self-tying shoes. Of all the future tech that BTTF gave us, this always seemed the most useless. We already have velcome and slip-ons. Anything more means we’re simply accelerating our evolutionary downslide to the inevitable Future Man who has paddles instead of fingers. Beware!
Rejuvenation centers. This, at least, we already have. Unfortunately, they’re not really that great. They don’t actually make you look younger, so much as like a hairless chimp made of silly putty. But many unpleasant people swear by them, so they must be… good?
Weather service. No, not controlling the weather. Don’t be ridiculous; that’s fantasy. But an absolutely reliable minute-to-minute forecast? How cool! Great to see how much it’s helped over the years for the folks in Louisiana with Katrina. Or New York with Sandy. Or across the west for the devastating drought. So… yay?
Self-drying jacket. We kind of hate to mention it, but basically all jackets are self-drying. You just have to wait a while. The cooler part is that the size self-adjusts. Perfect for the Christmas sweaters you only wear once a year. After year. After year
Gas station robots. This is one of the examples where we’ve gone right past the prediction. ‘Cause at gas stations now we don’t only not have robots, we don’t have anybody. That that, Marty McFly!
Hoverboard. Yes, without a doubt, the coolest invention in the BTTF universe. If we could pull any one thing into the Real World this would be it. But then they blow the whole thing by doing their very own rip-offs of their own invention, like hovering cameras (which we believe Apple can already do, but it only lasts 32 seconds and it takes five hours to recharge) or hoverbelt. Yeah, hoverbelt that hang you upside down because … back? Who thought this was a good idea?
Then there were a couple of things that we’re actually already doing… or don’t’ need to. There was a scene with tech where you could pick the scenery outside your window. Yeah, we do that. Who hasn’t enjoyed a roaring fire on their flatscreen? And remember the huge innovation of moving trashbins? Yeah! We did that too. We put wheels on them.
And finally, a quick wave to the predictions that really, seriously, nobody cares about twenty years later, like Jaws 19, Food Hydrators (yeah, we call them “microwave ovens.” Look it up.) and a high-tech, futurized indoor carden center that looks remarkably like… well, you know… an indoor garden.
Man, that’s crazy!
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