By Marbeya Garcia-Bermudez
After watching “Back to the Future II” for the first time in years, I wondered what society has predicted correctly for the future. As we are now “in the future” the variety of success has been vast, ranging from smart phones, iPods, and the internet to digital cameras and wireless video games. However, we have yet to achieve many of the predictions made in the 1900s. Flying cars, hover boards, weather control, and the Cubs winning the World Series are a few of many predictions “Back to the Future II” made that never came true. Although it’s crazy that I put these predictions in context within our times, we actually have gone the distance technology-wise.
As humans, we spend a lot of time talking about the past, but we never discuss the future or right now, this hour, this minute. But now that we’re in 2011, we can judge how we’ve done and I think that we’ve made up for all of the failed predictions.
Apple is one of the largest companies in the world, advancing further than Microsoft. The founder, Steve Jobs, once said. “We do not say anything about future products. We work on them in secret, then we announce them.” The secrecy associated with new technology is unsurprising as we’re in a race against China to advance. However, in 2009, with 72.9% of Chinese exports to the USA being electronics, we’re falling behind. Not only are we behind, but China is moving up, and will eventually surpass the United States of America.
Some of the biggest failed futuristic visions from earlier decades are flying cars and smell-o-vision. While it would be great to smell Rachel Ray’s or Guy Fieri’s meals when watching their shows, this invention has shown no progress. Maybe we should just rely on scratch and sniff stickers when watching cooking shows. Flying cars have also been a failure. As much as we’ve anticipated flying cars for the last few decades, this now seems impossible. In order to even consider this invention we would need air roads or some type of direction system above us. Additionally, it’s frightening to think of a flying car low on fuel and the impact it could have on nearby pedestrians and buildings. There’s nothing worse than getting hit by a flying car while eating your peanut butter and jelly sandwich at lunch.
Jaws 19 and the double tie look is something that will hopefully never happen. While we have achieved 3-D, we luckily haven’t made a fifth Jaws movie. However, there have been rumors of a possible 3-D remake with no confirmations. As for the double ties? Well, I hope to never see that look in the near future.
