It’s Back to the Future Day – the date Marty and Doc crashed the future in the second of the three time-hopping sci-fi adventure films.
The sequel was released in November 1989.
GETTING AROUND
“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads…” – well, that’s one promise that didn’t work out.
Flying cars have always seemed to be just over the horizon. Boston-based Terrafugia, for example, promised to start selling a model in 2012, but is still trying to get its business off the ground.
But while BTTF was overly optimistic about vertical take-offs becoming the norm, it did nail one detail.
Listen to the sound effects used for its automobiles as they pass, and you hear the near-silent hum that’s become associated with Toyota’s Prius and other electric-powered four-wheelers.
Throwing your rubbish into a car’s Mr Fusion energy converter to provide it with power remains fanciful.
Bristol and Bath recently started running buses powered by treated thrown-away food and sewage, and there are efforts elsewhere to convert agricultural waste into a petrol supplement.
Lexus showed off a working hoverboard of its own in August, albeit one that relied on a hidden metal track being buried into the ground. More recently, skateboarder Tony Hawk was filmed trying out a rival version, called Hendo, based on similar magnet-based technology.
(The less said about non-hovering hoverboards the better.)
Looking good
And while today’s clothes can’t yet blow-dry us when we get wet, some fashion pioneers are experimenting with weaving electronics into their fabrics.
Rise of the robots
Media organisations, including the BBC, have started deploying camera-enabled aircraft to get new perspectives on the news – even if they might not be comfortable sending them into the kind of crowded situation USA Today’s model films in the movie.
The Netherlands has already tested such a device a few years back, with the TankPitstop project, and Tesla is developing something similar for its electric vehicles.
Entertainment
But the film industry hasn’t given up on the idea of 3D technologies – its latest pitch is a laser-projection system said to deliver “brighter, crisper and clearer” images.
Rather neatly, the innovation premiered in London earlier this month with Robert Zemeckis’ latest film The Walk – he is, of course, also the director of the BTTF trilogy.
A roll-up flatscreen shown in the McFlys’ home is reminiscent of the flexible panels LG recently showed off at trade shows, which are rumoured to be featuring in commercial products soon.
Smartglasses but no smartphones…
But several of today’s bigger names are betting on various forms of the tech, whether it’s Microsoft’s Hololens, Facebook’s Oculus Rift virtual reality headsetor version two of Google Glass.
Marty Jr is even seen using an AT&T payphone at one point – all the more ironic since the company was first to offer the iPhone.
It’s not that BTTF’s filmmakers didn’t envision a data-connected world – a Skype-like video chat program features at one point showing off not only the caller but also private details about them – but repeatedly communication occurs via a TV rather than a handheld display.
An offline future
That might explain why CD-Roms and their larger counterparts Laser Discs feature so prominently in piles of rubbish.
Other hits and misses
source: WTOP.com