Back To The Future Is Here

In 1989, director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Bob Gale gave us their vision of the future with their sci-fi movie Back to the Future II.

In the movie, 2015 was the year Marty McFly travels to the future to keep his son from committing a regrettable act that could compromise his own future.

McFly, Doc, and Jennifer arrived into the future precisely on October 21, 2015, with the assistance of the DeLorean time machine.

We are now in the year 2015, where are the flying cars we’ve been promised?

Where are the self-lacing shoes and the futuristic Hoverboard? Will these things ever become a reality?

Hoverboard is now real, claim inventors Jill and Greg Henderson who came up with the Hendo Hoverboard.

Their invention relies on a magnetic field to support the rider and causes the Hendo to hover over a one inch cushion of air.

Not exactly what you imagine when you hear of a hoverboard, but we must at least give credit to Hendo for taking a step toward futuristic technology.

The Nike Company announced that the self-lacing ‘Back to the Future’ shoes should be available in 2015.

Brands like Terrafugia or Aeromobil attempted to create flying cars but they look more like aircrafts disguised as cars. We should not limit the future to the Back to the Future II gadgets, which are just the way Hollywood projected 2015 twenty five years ago.

Zemeckis and Gale imagined inventions that are still distant fantasy like pre-planned weather or time travel, but they also envisioned things that exist today like video communication, 3D printing, biometric technology, flat-screen wall-mounted TVs, video glasses, hands-free gaming and even the Miami baseball team.

According to writer Ryan Smith, the future is now and our present day is much more remarkable than filmmakers imagined it a quarter-century ago.

“We all carry tiny, powerful computers in our pockets that double as phones, cameras, TVs and gaming devices,” Smith said in a the column in www.redeyechicago.com. “News can reach us instantly from far-flung areas of the planet through social media.”

Zemeckis did not predict the Internet revolution and social media taking over our daily lives.

While cars cannot fly, there are some that can park themselves and to a certain extent drive themselves.

The future has been around for a while, but we have not paid attention to it because it’s not as flashy as it was portrayed in the movies.