Gadgetory

it's 2015 and folks we're living in the future but how does the glittering era we currently inhabit to compare to our long-held benchmark for technological progress back to the future part to the Year 2015 as visited by Marty McFly it got a lot of things right about today's tech but in other ways our modern contraptions are way beyond anything we could have imagined back in the 80s here are the tech predictions but back to the future got right and bought it missed let's start with something the movie got right the rise of the smart home Marty's future house is absolutely packed with gadgets from flat-screen tvs used for video calls to fingerprint scanning door locks and voice control just about everywhere it's dangerous to enter without lights on right yes in our own 2015 meanwhile one of the year's biggest trends has been giving our own home appliances a similar high-tech makeover our door locks sense our presence our thermostats can be controlled from anywhere our lights change color our homes can be viewed remotely while bizarre robots roam our carpets hydrate level-4 please admittedly modern smart homes still can't cook a pizza in seconds but there is one more similarity both McFly's and today's tech enabled household to struggle to make voice control work yes Siri where's the fruit let me think about that here's what I found on the web Phil yes Siri where's the fruit there is one thing missing from marty smart home and it's the biggest problem with the film's vision of the future where's the internet the internet has been without a doubt the greatest tech revolution of the last 25 years offering instant digital communication between devices and putting the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips but in Marty's 2015 there's no sign that various gadgets are talking to each other indeed there's not even a hint of email with fax machines still the primary method of communication fax is one thing but when it comes to a technology that's been steadily evolving over the last half a century back to the future proves remarkably prescient modern television has come a long way since the medium started gaining traction in the middle of the last century and back to the future source several changes coming for one thing our TVs our flat panels and their multifunctional handling all manner of apps including video chat and while we don't tend to watch six channels at once the modern phenomenon of second screen viewing does divide our attention with IMDB or reactions on Twitter never far from our field of vision speaking of those second screens one thing nobody in the 80s could have anticipated was the role that mobile gadgets would play in our lives the McFly kids of 2015 might have something resembling Google glass but it's not as personal or powerful as a modern smartphone these goggles are hooked up to a shared telephone line for goodness sake it is for you and speaking of personal tech where are all the social networks if Marty jr. had really wanted to avoid Griff and his gang he could have just checked his Instagram let's talk about entertainment an area in which Back to the Future made some very solid predictions indeed take young Elijah woods discussed that 80's gaming involved using your hands and then consider motion based advances such as Microsoft's Kinect all the oculus rift and while we're not watching jaws 19 in hallo max the modern cinema landscape is dominated by sequels and franchises man and the DeLorean is cool and indeed Back to the Future did make some great predictions about innovation in the automotive industry it just didn't quite guess where that innovation was happening our future lacks commercially available flying vehicles but we've got self-driving cars looming on the horizon and fully electric cars are rapidly gaining traction which is pretty darn cool don't forget that while the DeLoreans time circuits are powered by the trash consuming mr. fusion the car itself still ran on gasoline chalk one up for the non-fictional time line so all things considered how accurate was back to the future well bearing in mind the makers of the movie were probably more concerned with making an entertaining film and playing Nostradamus a lot of it is pretty spot-on I mean apart from the hoverboard of course which let's be honest is the only thing that any of us ever really wanted of course it's always possible that not to defect the facts the future did predict exists precisely because it was in the film offering humanity a glittering vision of what to aim for in fact it's almost as if the film itself was a message sent back from the future to our past selves creating multiple technological timelines this is Harry you what do you fancy doing now attend a rhythmic ceremonial ritual you