Today is Back to the Future Day. It is 26 years since the cult classic Back to the Future movie II movie was released in 1989. Marty and Doc used their time travelling car to go into the future, a second time, into 21 October 2015.
It is amazing that a film released 26 years ago could have predicted so many things, and at the same time have so many things go wrong.
The two biggest ones might be the hoverboard and sky cars, both of which would have a dramatic effect on one of Malta’s enduring and escalating problems – traffic.
Back in 1989, each and every child (and possibly male adults) wanted a hoverboard. This year, two prototypes have been unveiled, and although they work through magnetic strips underground and expensive frozen gas, companies have shown that they will be viable at some point. The government has mooted the idea of people movers, similar to the ones in airports, where moving walkways might move a mass of people from one town to another. Is it too far-fetched to imagine that one day we might be all travelling to work on magnetic pre-programmed hoverboards? Is it too far-fetched to even think about looking into such solutions?
The movie got it wrong in terms of there being no need for roads where “they were going”. In the film’s version of the present, we all travel by flying car. All that being said, they were not far off. Terrafugia is a company that has built a semi-flying car and drone technology is lifting people off the ground in multi-rotor machines.
The vast array of similarities to today is quite disturbing. Hybrid cars today hum along in just the same way as the vehicles in the film do, and while you can simply load rubbish into a car and turn it into fuel in the film, we do have vehicles that are powered on poo or gas that is created from the by-products of decomposition.
Google glass is very similar to the glasses Marty wears in the film, and it is hard to actually figure out which came first. Google’s idea, or if Google took inspiration from the film itself.
It is remarkable to think that so many futurists have projected ideas of what the future might actually be like. Some of the greatest dystopian novels written by the likes of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell have in fact predicted many things that are present in our lives today. Sometimes they get it wrong, but on a very many good occasions, they have got it right – albeit in a different form. We must realise that the thoughts of these brilliant minds do not have the knowledge of future technologies.
It is incredible to think that real tangible pieces of technology come from a concept. A though in someone’s head, a mere idea. Once the idea is developed and researched, it eventually becomes reality. Could we possibly develop a ring road subway underwater, which runs off the energy of waves? Could be develop underground walkways that speed us on to our destinations in five minutes, without us feeling the effects of it? We could. But that is probably far in the future. If we don’t start dreaming about outrageous and outside the box solutions, we will never develop them. Perhaps it is time to really start to dream big.