January 14, 2015 • 59 mins
It's time to go back in time to the future of the past! It's 2015, the year Marty McFly traveled forward to in Back to the Future II. How does it stack up?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. He's welcome to rid Thinking, the podcast that
looks of the future and says, tell me, doctor, where
are we going this time? I'm Jonathan Strickland LA, and
(00:20):
I'm Griff McCormick. Hey, Griff, Hey, So guys, happy two,
Thank you. Yeah, this is the first podcast episode that
we are recording in Yeah. So it's it's a brand
new year. And it's not just a brand new year,
it's a very important year for the future. According to
(00:40):
the documentary series Back to the Future, you know, I
thought Back to the Future just did not have enough
future in it. It's all about the fifties. Yeah, exactly.
Well that's because he has to go back to the future.
Oh that's right. But it's really really rectified that deficiency
in the sequel. Yes, well they only partially did, because
(01:01):
most of the sequel still takes place in the nineteen
fifties and the nineteen eighties, and and honestly, when you
spend some time in the future, you're thankful for that.
The future is stupendous. According to nineteen eighty nine, uh
this this nine nine movie? Um yeah, yeah, back Back
to the Future Part two was was released in nineteen
(01:22):
eighty nine. That's four years after Back to the Future
Part one, Right, And as many people have pointed out
on Twitter at the beginning of this year, hey, we're
now in the Back to the Future two year. Yeah, yeah,
that the year that they go forward to from Back
to the Future too is uh, they in fact land
on four at four pm on October one, right, and uh.
(01:47):
One of the people who actually mentioned that this is
the year of Back to the Future to future was me,
And it was on our forward Thinking page that I
did post that. Yeah. It was one of those things
where I got hired of seeing the meme. I'm sure
you guys have seen it too, where multiple times over
the last few years, people have posted a photoshopped version
(02:09):
of the time machine that the time yeah, exactly from
the DeLorean and had the date change so that it
reflected whatever the current date was that day and say,
today's the day that Murty move Fly traveled to the future.
And I kept thinking, no, it was two thousand fifteen.
And it's easy to It's easy to prove one because
you can go see the movie. But two, they he
(02:32):
traveled in thirty year increments. He traveled thirty years to
his past and thirty years to his future, approximately a
generation gap, which is kind of the point of the
storyline exactly. So I mean that you know that when
I kept seeing it back in two thousand twelve was
a bad year for it. I think I saw it
three or four times in two thousand twelve. But now
(02:52):
we're finally in that year. We're not quite at that time, because,
like you said, Lauren, it's October that we're looking at. Yeah,
I think that we can suck up any inconsistencies in
the movie with the fact that it's not October yet.
I think that by the time it is October, all
of these things will have come to pass. There's gonna
be some pretty dramatic things to happen this year in
order for that to happen. Well, since we're here at
(03:14):
the outset of the year, I think it would be
great to do a couple of episodes looking at all
of the fantastic predictions about the year made by the
movie Back to the Future too, and see see how
we stack up against reality. Honestly, a lot of them
were really clever. I just watched the movie again last night, Um,
(03:34):
it had been maybe twelve years since I had seen it,
like a like a good chunk of time. Um. But
I mean a lot of the predictions that it makes,
and I made little air quotes because those work really
well on radio when I said predictions, Uh, A lot
of their predictions are for the sake of kind of
silly jokes, most of them delivered by Christopher Lloyd. Um.
(03:57):
But that being said, a lot of the little details
in the movie were actually very canny in terms of
telling us what our world was going to look like, right,
especially considering that you know, nineteen five, that's a year
or nineteen nine when this movie was made. That's a
year before cell phones became a regular thing that normal
(04:18):
people were in possession of, Right. I mean there were
some cellular telephones, but they were pretty rare. Um. And uh,
you know you think about that in that context, like
even today, it's hard for us to predict what the
future is going to look like. Go back ten years,
and everyone thought that cell phones were just gonna keep
getting smaller and smaller, to the point where that became
(04:40):
a joke, like it was a status symbol how small
your cell phone was. But then we had the transformation
of being able to watch things like video on our phones.
Now it's important to have a large phone. Actually. Um,
In fact, I'm gonna give a little visual visual aid.
I have a new phone that's approximately the size of
a truck. Yeah, I've I've met bears that are smaller
(05:03):
than that phone. This is this is. I'm holding up
the next to six that I just got yesterday, and
it is. It is ginormous. So uh. Anyway, the point
I'm trying to make is that they were even further
removed from the wondrous future than we were by definition,
and yet some of their predictions are pretty prescient, not
(05:25):
all of them, obviously, and they were all meant as
kind of a tongue in cheek sort of jokey way
of looking at the future. Well, as I alluded to earlier,
there are so many things that predicts that we decided
we should break this up into two episodes. Today is
going to be part one of Back to the Future.
Part Two's predictions, right, and that's pretty much gonna be
(05:48):
the title, right. No, Okay, so we're gonna moving ahead. Okay, Okay,
let's let's set the scene, all right. You're you're, you're
young Michael J. Fox. I am a young Michael J. Fox.
You often, I often mistake you for Michael J. Fox. Right,
you hop out of your dolory and just having traveled
forward thirty years from from your comfortable home in the
(06:08):
nineteen eighties, and what are some of the things you
see in the world around you in the southern California
of Well, there's tons of stuff to cover. Let's start
with the clothing, because that was one of the first
things that we get to see in the film. Yeah.
Of course, any time that you time travel, you have
to I mean, assuming that you're not in the Doctor
Who universe, in which no one really cares, you have
(06:30):
to immediately find some kind of clothing so that you
can fit in with a local population. Right, So you
find somebody about your build, you knock them out, and
you steal their clothes and leave them naked. That's that's standard,
m O. Yeah, or Doc Brown happens to have gone
shopping for you and just gives you a bunch of stuff.
How convenient. So so Doc gives a few things to
Marty McFly so that he can he can blend in.
(06:53):
Actually he's essentially posing as his own son who looks
exactly like him. Yeah, because everyone in that universe looks
exactly like their ancestors or descendants. I say, again, how convenient. Yeah, well,
you know whatever. So o, no, no, no, hold on.
I remember one big piece of clothing from this, okay,
which is the automatic lace up shoes. Yeah. Yeah, you
(07:14):
put these on and uh they they seem like they're
kind of not quite fitting you. But then all of
a sudden, the little Nike symbol lights up and the
laces conformed to your feet. Yea, power laces. Yeah, yeah,
it sounds it sounds neumatic. Yeah. Well, obviously there's nothing
like this in reality, right, not yet, but there's gonna
(07:36):
be this year. Nike is in fact working on it. Yeah,
they announced this previously that at some point in two
thousand and fifteen they will begin selling shoes that will
in fact have power laces. Now, they've had mock ups,
like like shoes that look like the ones Marty McFly war.
They've offered that a few times over the years, the
most recent I think being two thousand eleven, and it
(07:57):
even lights up, like they have shoes that light up
and they look, you know, cosmetically like that thing exactly.
But they didn't have the power. Leases all of that
changes this year, so that technology is actually coming true. Okay,
so self lacing shoes actually coming out this year. I
can't wait till we see them and we can talk
(08:18):
about this, like talk about how cool they are or
how disappointing they are. Right, I get the feeling it
will be one way or the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But how about the jacket that dries itself off? Yeah? Yeah, Well,
I mean when you first when he first puts on
this jacket, uh, the arms are way too long, and
then it goes up self adjusting and and the arms
(08:41):
makes some kind of weird pneumatic noise I'm not sure why,
and they retract to be properly fitting. You're right, it's
not just drying. It's it's also self adjusting. Yeah. Um.
And then later in the in the film, we find
out that it is also self drying, like if you,
for example, fall into a pond off of your hoverboard,
then it can it can just kind of go, wouldn't,
And all of a sudden it's perfect. It's like it's
(09:03):
like it's filled with hair dryer. Suddenly. I don't want
to be a naysayer, but I really again don't think
I want this technology. I mean, I wouldn't want a
jacket that had heating elements, and I wouldn't worry too much, Joe,
not unless it was for a very specified cold weather
expedition kind of purpose that I could I could see
that maybe that would be useful. Yeah, I could see
(09:25):
like there'd be some sort of heating element allah, an
electric blanket kind of thing chad into a jacket like that,
but not one that would be you know, I have
a motor in it that would that would turn a
fan so that it could blow and blow dry your
your outfit while you're wearing it. That doesn't seem terribly practical. Again,
it was one of those elements I think thrown in
(09:45):
there as uh like a fanciful science fiction e humorous.
It was more a joke than anything else. Um that
the self adjusting part though, and I believe we've talked
about this on the show way back in the day,
perhaps when we for started out the podcast. But people
are working on creating materials that can go into clothing
that will allow that clothing to to to fit your
(10:08):
form better by either um using using kinetic energy from
when you move to to form the to fit the
fabric to the contours of your body or um or otherwise. Uh,
you know, just just creating, especially through three D printing
more customizable clothes. So and at ces, I saw BELTI belt.
(10:32):
It is a It's a belt that adjusts itself to you.
So if you are wearing loose pants, it'll it'll adjust
so it's snug on you. And then if you start
eating a big meal, it'll let itself out a notch
all on its own. That sounds like a very friendly snake. Okay, yeah,
you gotta think of it. Think of it as like
(10:52):
I think of it as like the belt itself is
fed through a system that uses rollers to either tighten
it or loosen it. The buckle is huge, is not
like a tiny thing. Um and Joe and I already
had discussion about what might happen should the absolute worst occur,
and you're just thinking this is just way too tight.
It's getting worse. Yeah, I wouldn't. My fear of being
(11:14):
popped like a grape is greater than my desire to
not have to fiddle with my own belt. Now we
have we have seen some advances in textiles and in codings,
for textiles that would prevent clothing from getting wet where
the you know where water and oils will just roll
right off. Some of the stain proof clothing that we've
(11:35):
seen that's treated by this stuff or has its actual
structure made in such a way where liquids will just
roll right off, we've seen that. But that's obviously different
from something that will dry itself once it's already become wet.
But still we thought that would be an interesting one. Um,
you've got another element. Here's something I don't actually remember
this from the movie. Yeah, okay, So so there were
(11:57):
several like small personal gadgets that I wanted to kind
of toss into this category. Um. One is a pair
of digital binoculars that Doc Brown uses again early on
in the film. They're the size of kind of like
a small polaroid camera, and they can report, uh, you know,
in their little display, they report like your distance from
the subject. Um. They can auto focus on human subjects,
(12:19):
and it will also give you a little like x
y z coordinate range that I guess is related to
like global positioning or something, but it's I mean, it's
not It's up on the screen for like three seconds.
I imagine that must be Biff using it to spy
on Doc Brown is using it to spy on young Marty.
Oh okay, all right, so um, as it turns out,
(12:39):
we do have digital binoculars. UH. Generally speaking, they tend
to be cameras and displays that are built into a
binocular form factor. So you'll get a pair of cameras,
you get that stereoscopic effect that way. Um, they can
look pretty far, and you know, I can imagine building
in uh systems including things like GPS and a compass
(13:00):
and that sort of thing where you could get readouts
that would tell you approximate information about this kind of stuff.
I don't know that why anybody really want that in binoculars.
I mean, I could see it if it were a
pair of binoculars that also acted as an actual camera
so that you're taking pictures or video, and then you
want the GEO tag to be in there as well,
(13:22):
so I could see it for that. You know, there
are I'm seeing more and more apps now that are
about being able to map your real life experience to
an app so you can share it more easily on
social media or even like if you're out in the
wilderness and you say, oh, hey, I want to go
to that peak over there. How far away is it? Um? Right?
(13:43):
Then you know it would be useful to have the coordinates. Yeah, exactly. Uh,
now I do remember this next one, just spying on people.
I agree, it's a little bit over. Yeah. No, if
you're if all you're doing is just trying to clandestinely
watch someone, they're easier ways unless you're playing D and
D and you need to know the number of fat
You know whether or not you can walk to them
(14:03):
in a single action. How many grid squares? I could
estimate it, or I could just lift up this handy
dandy para binocular. Now, Jonathan, you're not about to steal
my thunder on my favorite item. That's just Which is
the next one, right, the robotic extending baseball Okay, you
already said it, the robotic telescoping baseball bat. I remember this,
(14:25):
and this, I think is what the future is really
all about, is about baseball bats that start off short
but extend because that's useful. Yeah, I mean, you say
you want to store five DD baseball bats in a box,
so we're talking on typical Wednesday. You can't store them
all in the box. If they're all long to begin with,
(14:48):
so you got to shrink them, and then when you
want to use them, you just press the telescoping extension
button and the bat slides on out. As it turns out,
the use case scenario that Joe is suggesting has not
been compelling enough for anyone to actually develop a robotic
telescoping baseball bat. I've seen yet. Now is it, Lauren?
(15:09):
I have a question about the movie. Is it? Is
it Griff in the movie who uses the bat? He
pulls it out menacingly as if you hit Marty with it,
he has it behind his back. In fact, and uh
and and while he is menacing Marty or Marty Jr.
I forget which the bat kind of again, there's this
terrific pneumatic sound they keep using for everything, so inaccurate
(15:32):
to how anything would actually function. I guess it could
be just a normal robotic I think it'd be hilarious
if you if you saw every single gadget, every single
piece of clothing was actually connected via two to its
enormous pneumatic That's what I imagine this had to be
in order to make that noise. But yeah, so he's
holding it behind his back and it kind of telescopes out.
You might be useful also to have a smart bat
(15:54):
so that it knows when to extend on its own
to tell it. Now, that's not good because if anyone
has smart bat and they wanted to menace me, that
bat would be like, I just can't. There's I can't
extend long enough for you to beat This guy needs
really seriously to be beaten up. Okay, how about some
other menacing mischief gadgets? Yeah, another item that I think
(16:15):
Griff has It could be one of his gang members. Uh,
is kind of like a digital soundboard, because when he
calls Marty a chicken, you get this great little digital
sound bite. Yeah yeah, yeah, except that but way more digitized.
Oh yeah, one of his little one of his little
toady's presses a button. Okay, I'm not I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. I didn't catch it, but yeah, yeah,
(16:37):
do we have that amazing capacity today? Shocker? Yes, Let's
go to YouTube and watch some soundboard prank calls. I've
seen people just like grab the like things out of
greeting cards where you would be able to record your
own message and a greeting card and essentially do that.
I mean, we've got tons of tech like that, and
(16:59):
we even of the soundtrack shirt from Think Geek. Did
you guys remember when that that was one of that
was one of their April Fools jokes one year where
got so much attention that they decided to actually make
that shirt exactly. They've done this several times where they
put out a product that they might be thinking about doing,
but they haven't actually decided yet, and they want to
see what the reaction is for April Fools and then
(17:21):
they go ahead and do it. The video they had
for their April Fools shirt was amazing, where you know,
it's a guy just kind of going through his daily life,
but whenever he's in a particular situation, he uses his
soundtrack shirt to add the the cinematic feel um that
is appropriate for whatever situation he's in. So he's being chased,
he's got like chase music playing, he sees a he
(17:42):
sees a young lady, and he presses the romantic music
that kind of thing. So this is stuff that we
obviously have incorporated into all different parts of our lives.
Most of us don't carry around a soundboard, but he
certainly could you could you could use your phone. Yeah.
And that's the thing is that again, this this movie
didn't predict the era of the smartphone, where a lot
(18:03):
of the stuff that that people do in the future
is that there are things that are handled by a
mobile device these days. Yeah. Well, I think one of
the big holes in this movie's vision of the future,
and and most movies frankly, is the lack of the Internet.
I mean, yeah, yeah, the pervasiveness of the Internet and smartphone.
That's why. I mean even the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
(18:26):
they envisioned the encyclopedia, encyclopedia that you would carry. The
actual guide was a self contained thing. It wasn't it
wasn't connected to some sort of network. In the original one,
it was all all that information was stored in this
handheld device. And the interesting thing is now we have
access to the equivalent of that, but it's through network connections. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,
(18:48):
and because because it couldn't be updated in Hitchhiker's Guy, right, right,
it was all a stable format until a new one
was published. Right. That's what Ford Prefect was doing on Earth,
was he was gathering research so that he could update
the entry on Earth for the next edition of The
Guy Right. Okay, Um, but actually, before we move on
from Griff's gangs gadgets, say that five times fast. Um,
(19:13):
I wanted to mention that one thing that will that
will be possible in this incredible future of today is
that women can be part of your crappy high school gang. Yeah. Yeah,
for the first time in the series, we see they're
not allowed to speak. Oh no, no, she has speaking
like do because she has like a claude one finger
(19:33):
and and it's it's a detachable clause. It's not like
her finger is a claw. And she and she threatens
Marty or something. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I remember her.
He's got like a really high ponytail. Yeah. For the
sake of equality, I'm all four female bullies. Well, I mean,
I guess we've always had female bullies for for a
society in which females feel okay about bullying males. Yeah,
(19:58):
there you go the future indeed, So continuing on this
bright future and various gadgets, Okay, this this next device
shows up a couple of places in the movie. Um. First,
relatively early on, when Marty is approached by someone looking
for donations UM for the clock tower, which as always
is in need of repair. UM. And secondly when um,
(20:21):
when someone pays for a cab ride later on UH.
And and that is a little handheld digital credit pad
that that can be access to using a thumb print,
Like you press your thumb into it and it knows
who you are and it just deducts whatever you want
to give from your bank account. Biometric payment, and we've
talked about that so many times on the show. And
(20:42):
while we don't really see a lot of implementations of
that directly, it is something that we've seen indirectly used.
For example, Apple pay using using an iPhone to pay
for something through NFC, which is in the iPhone, but
you use you might use your thumb print as the
way of identifying yourself so that you acknowledge the payment
(21:04):
going through. So it's not we haven't reached a point
where our fingerprints are directly tied to our bank accounts,
which I think a lot of people are thankful for.
But we've definitely reached this point where we can have
the credit card or currency free monetary exchange these days. Yeah,
and we can we can certainly have like mobile payments anywhere,
(21:28):
even without biometrics for through things like like Square or
other little credit dongles. Yeah, yep, so that that one's
uh well, well, the implementation is different today than what
we see in the film. It's still more or less
i'd say, I'd say, in the same spirit. So that
one's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, Um. They also featured a
(21:48):
some kind of I D technique, and I believe it
was also through a thumb print, though it might have
been off screen. I have to admit to you, guys,
I wasn't paying wrapped attention every moment of this film.
I do not blame you for this. Having seen there,
I'm actually very fond of it. But but uh yeah, yeah,
they have I D techniques that will tell, for example,
(22:09):
a cop if they if they scan you, however, they're
going to scan you basic personal personal profile kind of
information like your age, your address, your name, and um
can run an immediate drug screening on you. Oh, this
is what they do with what's her face? When they
when they find Jennifer Marty's girlfriend. Yeah, and then they
end up because she's been knocked out, they end up
(22:31):
taking her back to what they think is her home
because of course her her genetic information hasn't changed at all.
Her fingerprint or her DNA or whatever it is that
they scan is identical to her future selves, right, So
they just drop her off at her future selves home
because they don't know that she's you know, not, she's
not from that time. Why don't they just take her
(22:52):
to jail because she's just she's found unconscious. Yeah, her
drug screening comes back clean. Okay, Yeah, people don't get
no further question. People get thrown in jail just for
being unconscious, not in this incredible future. So hey, wait
a second, we're skipping over a huge part of this future.
(23:15):
I know what you mean. The hypercolor baseball caps exactly
what I mean. That did come out in the eighties
but was almost immediately abandoned because no, I'm talking about
where we're going. We don't need rows. The flying car,
in fact, you see it. I believe at the end
of the first Back to the Future movie that you know,
(23:36):
you take your delore into and you can get it
upgraded so that it can do vertical takeoff and landing. Yeah. Yeah,
that that the cars in this in this potential future,
that the wheels kind of turn up and the car
can do a sort of running vertical takeoff like like
I guess you need a little bit of a landing stretch,
but or a takeoff stretch, so that'd be like a
(23:57):
short takeoff and landing. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Um
and yeah yeah they do right. They do have have
a conversion for older model cars and nine dollars yes,
um and uh. And and they're quiet like like like
an electric car might be today. Yeah. So we've done
(24:18):
episodes on flying cars, We've talked about them extensively on
this podcast, and as we have mentioned before, we don't
really have what we certainly don't have flying cars that
your general consumer can get their hands on. We a
lot of the flying cars we've looked at look more
like drivable airplanes and less like a car that flies.
But that is some progress. I mean, we basically have
(24:39):
light sportcraft, uh, flying vehicles that you could also drive
on a road. You you probably need to have some
kind of pilot training to fly them for for the
ones that we actually have, yes, yeah uh. As we've
talked about with flying cars in the past, I want
to reiterate my point of view, which is that I
don't think flying cars will ever become a reality unless
(25:01):
they're fully autonomous, right, Yeah, just I hope that they
won't because that sounds terrifically dangerous. Yeah, just letting people
operate their own flying vehicles around the city, it sounds
absolutely insane. So so there's less You've got Doc Brown
popping in and out of existence on the wrong side
of the highway. And then there's just these two flames
(25:21):
that are extending out in the middle of the air
for no reason. But like, what is what is what
is actually on fire? Look that the delirian when it
when it goes through time. Um, the the drag created
by even the vertical standing wheels is so great that
it catches the molecules in the air. The atmosphere is burning.
(25:45):
Like every time he travels through time, he just wipes
out all life on earth. That Doc Brown so irresponsible. Yeah.
Uh so these flying cars also have an infrastructure set
up where where the highways I guess ways, sky ways
thank you thank you? Yeah yeah, are our lit um
and signed with these kind of drone like floating lights
(26:08):
and signs. I want to raise a point about that,
which is that if we were to designate roadways in
the sky over cities. I feel like that could counteract
some of the positive implications of having a flying vehicle.
Like part of what's great about having a flying car,
at least in your imagination, is you can travel as
(26:29):
the crow flies, so you don't need to go in
an L shape to get to your destination on the
main roads. You can go straight there in a straight line,
and of course that is much more efficient. But if
you if you're basically having to get on the highway anyway,
except it's just above the ground, why why are you
(26:49):
even having flying cars at this point? And there's there's
even a moment in the movie where where Doc and
Marty are trying to get somewhere and and Doc checks,
I think can his driving visor, which I'll discuss in
another second, um the traffic conditions, and he's like, the
highways jammed or the skyways jammed. We're never going to
get through in time, which is my really terrible Christopher
(27:12):
llyd impression. I think, Um, but uh yeah, yeah, So
it's basically pointless other than the fact that it gives
you more ground space, I guess. So yeah, I mean,
I guess you could say it could travel faster because
it doesn't have the friction on the ground. Maybe, but
it's it's more than just pointless though, because it's it's
counterproductive because when you have an accident, and you would,
(27:36):
then you have the added complication that your accident is
taking place at above the ground will fall down. Yeah.
So so it's it's not just not just counterproductive, it
is actively killing people. Well, I have another question, which
is that as again, as we've talked about with flying
(27:57):
cars in the past, you'd have a large energy consumption problem. Absolutely.
Flight is not something that is mechanically easy. It requires
a large energy investment, especially if you're talking about vertical
or short takeoff and landing. Well, yeah, when you have
something like a car that does not on its own
generate lift, yeah, then you obviously have to overcome all
(28:18):
the weight of that vehicle with lift generated some other way. Yeah.
So this is a huge problem when you're you're imagining
creating flying cars, you'd have to have this gigantic energy
investment in getting it in the air. You want to
make it incredibly light so that it, you know, requires
as little lift as possible. How are they generating this energy?
And it's no problem. They just use fusion. Mr fusion.
(28:45):
They just pop it open and throw a beer in
a banana peal. Yea, yeah, it's it's a fusion. It's
a it's a little car held fusion generator UM that
can be retroactively installed. And uh and and and it's
powered by garbage. And here's here's something. Let me let
me let me list out some of the problems I
have here. Obviously we don't have that step one. Step
(29:09):
one is the fusion industries. It's not a business that
we have yet, so we're all just waiting for fusion industries.
They've got a real short timeline to work on this
and get a product out onto the market. But in
the step one is that we have yet to have
a really efficient fusion reactor generate energy. We have seen
(29:29):
in two thousand and fourteen we saw there are research projects, yes,
and in two thousand and fourteen we saw the first
time where a fusion reactor actually produced more energy than
it took to start it, but it only was able
to consume one percent of the fuel, meaning it's still
very inefficient. So if your fuel goes unused, that's still
not a great story. Even though you're getting more energy
(29:50):
out of the initial reaction than you did having to
put into it, so we still got a long way
to go. Secondly, that has nothing to do with just
throwing garbage into something. Third, even within the the logic
of the film itself, this doesn't make sense because in
the third film you find out that the car still
runs on gasoline, that the fusion was for the time circuits,
(30:14):
not for the vehicle itself, because when Marty McFly goes
back in time, the fuel line ruptures, and that's why
he can't get the car going anymore. The second so,
what are the other cars that have Mr Fusion on
them use it for. I'm guessing that a lot of
them are using fuel, because there is a Texico station
(30:34):
shown off in the very beginning of Marty's journey back
to the future. Well let's not get into the Texico
station yet. That's a whole other section, but the point
being that I think they're still using some sort of
gasoline style fuel, at least for some functions of the car.
Keeping in mind that the cars themselves have been a
(30:54):
lot of them have been retrofitted with this flying stuff,
it may be that Mr Fusion is providing the power
or flight. But then for terrestrial operation. It's still using gasoline.
What's a hybrid vehicle? I can't what a ridiculously bone
headed prediction they make that we'd still be using fossil
fuel cars. Look, I spent all last week talking about that.
(31:17):
So we're just gonna We're just gonna move on. Um, well,
how about some other stuff having to do with the
cars in the driving All right, Well, we we mentioned
a minute ago, um Doc Brown's driving goggles, and um,
they appear to be completely opaque. I'm wondering if Christopher
Lloyd was walking around blind every time he was wearing
them on Wait wait, wait, wait wait, driving goggles the
(31:39):
car like open air winda. No, it's more like smart glasses. Yeah.
It it's sort of like a visor. It looks it
looks visor's silver. It's silver. I can picture it now,
I know what you're yeah. Yeah. And and I was
thinking while I was watching it that maybe it's like
a heads up display or something. And uh and and
he does have a line that made me think that
(32:01):
it has like a rear display in the goggles. You
can so that he can see behind the car better
than just with mirrors. See that that is entirely possible.
I mean, it's it's we've got smart glasses that are
coming out now that can do things like feed video
into the glasses. I don't know that we're going to
see that becomes something acceptable in like, I'm sure we're
(32:23):
going to see legislation actually banning that kind of stuff
for drivers behind the wheel of a car. But with
the blast shield down, I can't see a thing. How
am I supposed to fly? All right, Luke, listen, you
go play with your power converters. The adults talk separate
incredible future past that we're talking about. That that's an
entirely different universe. We talked about that with the lightsabers.
(32:46):
So yeah, Um, the car that the Dolorean for the
future also does have a metallic barcode license plate. That's
kind of interesting. Yeah, also unnecessary. I mean I wonder
if that would be an improved it. No, no, no,
because I mean if you have a database that has
everybody's vehicle registration in it and it's linked to an
(33:07):
alpha numerical license plate, that's gonna be a lot easier
for someone to relay over a communication device and saying,
oh it's a barcode, let me scan it. Well there though,
you're assuming that it's a human reading Oh yeah, I guess,
But I guess a machine could read alpha numerica or
a bark could only read alpha numericas they were I
don't know, really good at And that's the thing is
(33:31):
that when this was made, we didn't really have image
recognition systems like the software in the hardware that would
be able to take a picture of a license plate
and be able to machine read that. But now we
have that, so there's no need for the barcode, right.
You could totally get that same information from you know,
(33:51):
off the shelf stuff today, which is really the crazy
thing is that you could get like a webcam of
a decent clarity and some software and you could read it.
But I think it is worth pointing out that what
this implies with the barcode, even if it underestimates our
technology's ability to read alpha numeric, it is I think,
sort of assuming something that has come true, which is
(34:13):
that you will have machines looking at your car and
identifying you without a human in the middle. Absolutely true
traffic cameras now that we have that will automatically send
you a ticket looking at your license plate. YEP. That
that is true. That's a great point. Uh yeah, I
can't disagree with that, so so so we'll give them
(34:37):
yeah yeah, kind of kind of sort of. Um. And
and the last point that we have here in this
little kind of cars section is going back to those
to those gas stations that we've talked about, and they
appear to be automated, this this Texico station. Because this
film is chock full of product placement. It's amazing. Yeah,
it's so cool. I'm actually really proud of how well
(34:59):
they graded product placement. And Texico appears prominently both in
in all three eras. So it's in it's in the
the Marty's present, it's in the past, and it's in
his future. It does not they do, not, however, appear
as far as I am aware, in the Old West,
(35:20):
which maybe there's just like a feed station owned by
Text and Company, but I don't know, I don't remember
seeing yea um but but yeah, so so there's this
this Texico station with with like an automated robot service agent. Yeah,
like a like a like a robotic gas pump. It
(35:42):
actually extends out and begins fueling a car that's parked
there into the back seat of your car exactly, just
just spraying your automobile with flammable fuel. Yeah, so we
don't have these that. We don't have the automated ones.
We've got a lot us self serve stations, but not
robotic ones. Well, what we do have now in a
(36:05):
lot of cases though this isn't really astounding to almost
anybody who drives because we're used to him. Now we
have we have like pre pay stations that you can
pay for your gas without going inside. That's yeah, which
is very convenient. Also, I don't believe it was gasoline
whatever whatever. I don't know what it is. It's just
(36:26):
on the sign uh and and and the prices range
from seven dollars to almost nine dollars depending upon the
type of havilne you one I get. I based this
entirely off a screenshot that someone tookolne. It's like fossil
fuels derived from ham. It's a good guest, Joe. But
it also could very possibly just be a proprietary name
(36:48):
for that company's fuel in the future. So it could
just be that it is gasoline, but they call it
have a line. Well, I want to transition to another point.
Please do I recall scene in Back to the Future
Part two where where Michael J. Fox wanders out onto
the street in front of a movie theater. In the
movie theater is showing what it calls a hollow film
(37:11):
of Jaws nineteen number one. I am very disappointed that
we have not reached Jaws nineteen yet. I think the
last Jaws film was was Jaws for Jaws Revenge, which
is a wonderful movie. I really thought that there were
five or six of them, Jaws for starring the brilliant
Michael Kaine. Maybe I'm just Sharknado movies or something. I'm
(37:33):
not sure. Sharkonado and Piranha have both made direct references
to Jaws. Yeah, and they're they're easily nineteen terrible shark
movies since Jaws, but they're not within the Jaws franchise.
So but anyway, they're advertising Jaws nineteen this time. It's
really personal, that's what the tagline is. And I don't
(37:56):
know exactly what kind of difference they're imagining in upcome
film technology, but I get a whiff of unrealistic ideas
of sort of holographic projection. The things we've talked about
on the show before where you have a projected image
that is three dimensional, free standing and can be viewed
(38:17):
from three hundred and sixty degrees. I think, as far
as I know, we're we're still it's the nix on
that that's not gonna happen. Yeah, yeah, And and even
if the film itself is not in quite that format,
definitely this this advertisement for it is this this billboard? Right? Yes? Yeah,
(38:37):
So a big shark comes up out of the movie
theater and a big cartoon shirt, a big jabber jaw
comes up out of the movie theater and chomps down
on Michael J. Fox, and he quips that it still
looks fake, which it does. But heck, I would be
impressed if the if a movie theater could project a
(38:59):
three dimension anal image that could be viewed from any
angle and would come out into the streets. Right. So,
there is such a thing as glasses free three D,
which can give you the effect of seeing an image
appear to be coming out from a screen. This often
is used in um in in displays for businesses things like,
(39:20):
uh like casinos, for example, I've seen them there, um
and you there have been some glasses free three D
television at least prototypes that have been created. But this
is not a hologram. It's not something that you can
view from any angle. If you were standing to the
side of this display, you wouldn't see anything being projected
(39:41):
out from the screen. You have to be in a
sweet spot to get the effect. Yeah. Yeah, The same
is true for for the Peppers ghost illusions, which we
discussed at length in our episode about holograms. Right right,
So in the case of glasses free three D, you
might be familiar when you're watching three D with glasses.
What's really happening is your left eye is getting one
(40:01):
set of images, your right eye is getting another set
of images, and your brain gets tricked. Your brain combines
us two into the experience of seeing a single image,
and that's what gives you that illusion of depth, assuming
that the film was made well enough. Keeping in mind
that three D movies are made using an average of
what most people's like the average width of our distance
(40:25):
between a person's eyes, and depending on how your eyes
actually match up to that average, your experience maybe, you know,
fairly convincing, or it maybe headache inducing. Oh man, I
wonder if that's why I hate all three D movies.
If there's something wrong with my eyes, well, it may
not be that there's anything wrong. It may just be
(40:45):
that you deviate from the average to a point where
that's the problem. And it's not that it's not that
something's wrong, it's just that you're not average. I think
you should be proud of that, Joe. But at any rate, um, So,
the glasses are doing that work right. There's a filter
that lets one set in or shutter. That's letting one
set in and keeping the other set out either way
with glasses free three D. That stuff is built directly
(41:06):
into the screen itself, so your left eyes getting one
set of images, your right eyes getting another. But it's
all based upon the screen and where you are standing.
So if you imagine that the television is at the
center of a pie and you can only stand on
essentially one half of that pie. The half that's behind
the TV is useless. But imagine that there are slices
(41:27):
coming out and they all converge on the television. If
you are standing or sitting in the middle of a
slice so that you know you're you're nice and comfy,
then you're getting the ideal situation. Situation. You get the
ideal viewing experience, you can get that three D effect.
But if you're straddling one of those those cross those
uh those cuts, you know, between the slices, then you're
(41:49):
not getting those images properly, and it's gonna look like
a big old mess and it's going to be totally
out of focus and disorienting. Related to media, I did
want to mention that that they have news drones to
to take pictures in audio and video, which which I mean,
I guess aren't that far off. Now. We've got drones
that have cameras, you know, incorporated into them. We've got
(42:11):
consumer drones that have cameras incorporated into them. I think
the main issue there would just be knowing when to
have them trained on a on an event that's newsworthy. Well,
we also have legislation right now that very much limits
the commercial use of drones. Yeah, and and these drones
were like right up in people's faces, so so yeah,
we we haven't reached a future where we can use
(42:34):
those kind of drones freely. However, in relation to the
news media, everything is still printed on paper newspapers like
with paper, like with tree pulp, like dead trees. So
newspapers still exist in two thousand fifty, Yes, but there
are fewer of them. Yeah. Maybe maybe this is just
(42:57):
an example of Doc Brown having been from the past,
um really sticking with with one particular type of news media,
kind of like how how vampires tend to stick with
their their whatever was in style when they were first turned.
That's how you can tell a vampire. It's the one
that's wearing the Edwardian outfit or is sparkling one of
(43:20):
the two the two giveaways. I'll take your word for it. Okay, okay, Hey,
I have something else I want to bring up back
to the freaking part too. I remember there's a part
where the McFly family has a hankering for some pizza
and they get a little hockey puck disc kind of thing,
stick it in some kind of rehydrator machine black and
(43:43):
Decker hydrator. Yeah, they shut the door, press the button,
like three seconds later it comes out a steamy pizza
that's ready to eat. Yeah, and and even that's too long.
The McFly children are complaining at how long it's taking
too And then you've got like you can rehydrate a
pizza Like that's the compliment to the chef. Um, we
(44:05):
don't have this. Yeah, I understand that this is pretty
much just for a joke. Yeah, but yeah, I don't
see anything like that on the market. Now. We've got
dehydrated foods, and there are some dehydrated foods that you
rehydrate by boiling them, but that's that's not exactly a timesaver.
It is a space saver, certainly, and it can mean
that the food is edible for longer by removing the moisture.
(44:29):
Obviously we've got a lot of space food that enters
into this category. But no, we don't have a hydrator
like oven like device, and and it wouldn't make your
pizza crust crispy, so I'm not You just have a
big old wet mass of dough and cheese stuff. Um.
It is voice activated though, so that was pretty cool.
It wasn't so much a push a button as much
(44:50):
as a talk very closely into it. It was like
hydrate level four or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Also
in the McFly's kitchen, they have kind of like high
your ponic looking garden in the ceiling that that bursts down.
This is really quite large. I mean like you would
have to have an entire floor in between your floors
for the size of this kind of hydroponic garden. But yeah,
(45:11):
they call it down and it's got some grapes and
herbs growing stuff like that. I think that's actually a
great idea. Yeah, when we've all talked about that in
the kitchen from the future type stuff, you know, we've
we've mentioned the idea of the kitchen of the future
having some kind of hydroponic style garden where you can
get your hands on fresh stuff a lot, mostly in
(45:33):
urban areas where you wouldn't necessarily have access to it
otherwise or not easy access maybe, but it's not something
that we see in the the average home today. Though,
even this kind of realization of it makes sense to
me that you would have a something that folds up
into the ceiling where it could be right under sort
(45:53):
of a glass area where it could get sunlight. I
don't know that that makes sense. That doesn't want that
in my kitchen. Doesn't work. I don't one in my kitchen.
My kitchen is directly under my bedroom and we need
to build a new house. Okay, well, yeah, um, I'll
make sure to get my Mr Fusion to help me,
you know, power all this amazing technology. The last thing
(46:17):
of note in their kitchen um and I was so
fond of this looking back on it, Uh is they've
got this. I assume it's like a recipe station. It's
called Master Cook and it looks exactly like the faux
recipe stations, a little video screen recipe guides that they
had in some of those nineteen fifties Kitchen of the Future.
(46:39):
It looks precisely like it it was. So it's it's
very it's very cute. Folks at home, you should look
these up if you've never seen them before. We've talked
about him on this podcast previously. Ge was the company
that was sponsoring a lot of these videos great the
Kitchen of the Future, where they imagined how the funniest
thing is like they still imagined that a hundred years
(46:59):
into the future, that Mom's going to spend all day
in the kitchen. Yeah, yeah, don't don't worry. Our gender
stereotypes will be firmly in place right now, so she
doesn't actually have to cook, but she's still in the
kitchen all day. The figures out buttons to push, probably
a lot of valiums. So yeah, you're combining the promotional
(47:21):
videos with mad men. Yeah, but so in these videos,
they'd have like Mom's thinking about what to make and
she's got some kind of like looks like a TV
screen with recipes on it, but she doesn't make the food.
She just pushes a button and then they come out
of some kind of conveyor belt. That Lawrence version is
Mom's thinking about her third glass of wine for the day. Ye.
(47:43):
The look on the on the nice actress's face in
the video. And I'm not sure if it was a
intentional portrayal or if she was directed to do so,
or if that was just what the actress was feeling
that day, but she's she's a blank slate, y'all, and
she's yeah, it's very Stepford. Let's talk about some of
the home electronics that are that are that appear in
(48:06):
Back to Theatre. Calling them featured is probably being going
too far. But in it, uh, one one thing that's
referenced but that is is not actually shown is the
video games of the future, because you do have a
couple of young punk kids who go up to a
old arcade box in the eighties cafe vintage thing. Huh
(48:27):
and and and Marty says, oh, I can show you
how to use it, and and it's got one of
the little wired guns and he shoots some stuff on
the screen and they're like, oh man, you have to
use your hands. That's like a baby's toy. This is
also a great illustration of how Back to the Future
Too was merely a bridge between the first one and
the third one, because this was just to set up
Marty McFly's ability to shoot a pistol in part three. Anyway,
(48:50):
that them saying like, oh you you know, you have
to use your hands. That's a kid's toy or baby's toy. Um.
You know, we do have lots of examples video game
systems that allow you to not have to use a controller,
although many of them you still use your hands because
you're just you're controlling things like the connect or or
(49:11):
you know, PlayStation even has their camera system that allows
you to do hands free gaming with certain titles. Um.
And those are just two recent examples. There have been
tons of attempts to go to this kind of approach.
I don't know, because if you're saying like, even if
you're not having to hold something in your hands with
the connected, you still would be using your hand, which
(49:33):
is yeah, That's what I said at the beginning, was
that you know, you still are just you're controlling, but
you can also do voice control. So what I'm imagining
they're saying is that you've got a brain computer interface
that they play their video games by plugging a chord
into the back of their head, despite the fact that
there's no port visible where hiding it were along the
(49:53):
lines of virtual reality, like like demolition Man style. Yeah,
well see, you are guess working here. There's no indication.
We don't see the video games. I mean, that is
a possible answer, but we don't actually see what their
video games are, so we don't know what the implementation is.
But we we have voice control, we've got gesture control. Um,
we're even starting to see some brain computer interface stuff,
(50:16):
though not on the consumer level necessarily, at least not
beyond something really rudimentary like a you know, concentrate and
you can make this fan blow harder, which will make
this ball float in the air a little higher, which
will allow it to go through an obstacle. Course, yeah,
I got to I watched people use it c s
and I was determined not to be one of them
because I didn't want to show up on b roll
(50:37):
on someone else's story about the thing. But watching people
like scrunch up their faces they're trying to make a
little ping pong ball float a little higher in the
air was kind of entertaining, But we don't exactly know
what the interface was. Clearly still right now in two
thousand fifteen early two thousand fifteen, we're still very much
dependent upon controllers. So if that changes dramatically, uh, First
(51:01):
of all, I this one. I think the ship is sailed.
There's no way for it to change dramatically enough where
a little punk kid is going to assume that that's
the norm now and that using your hands is for babies.
There's not enough time to pass. We would have need
to have gone to hands free at least five years ago.
(51:21):
Another objection I would raise is that babies aren't very
good at using their hands for things, and I would
think that something you need strong, dexterous control for would
be something that's more adult. But anyway, I do maybe
those kids in the movie We're just idiots, which you know,
suggesting that there will be idiots in two thousand fifteen
is a prediction I can completely get behind. Hey another
(51:43):
prediction that is vaguely plausible. Are these handprint scanner locks
for the front door of more biometrics? Yeah, because again
when the cops bring um what's her face home, Jennifer Um,
when they bring her up to the house they think
is her home, it's actually her future selves home. They
use her thumb. They actually grab her hand and use
(52:06):
her thumb to unlock the door, because she's still unconscious
at this point, and they bring her in and she's
they slump her down on the couch and then they
leave because you know they've done their civic duty. So
the thing is that biometrics to to open up locks
not that unusual. There actually are some examples even on
the consumer market where you can buy a lock that
(52:27):
has a scanner. It's usually hidden behind something like it's
got a The lock itself has got a little hook,
and the ideas you put your finger on the inside
of that hook and it scans your finger and if
your fingerprint matches, then it'll unlock. So that way it's
not exposed the elements. People don't see what kind of
lock it is. Um, But you can't you can't get
those The kind of morbid criticism of such a thing
(52:50):
is that someone could enter your home by cutting off
your hands right or or even getting a getting a
really decent photograph of your hand at this point, and
which is where depending on the exact type of scanner exactly.
That's why I prefer the scanners that are scanning for
blood vessels, and preferably ones that are scanning for blood
moving through the blood levels, because then it'll be like, well,
(53:11):
that's a dead finger. I'm calling the police. So, hey,
what's this thing about digital windows? I don't remember this.
Um So there's a there's a window shade over their
actual window, their their actual living room window, because their
neighborhood has turned pretty seedy in the intervening years. Um.
So they've got this window shade that's this really shoddy
(53:33):
digital screen, uh that's tuned to some kind of relaxing channel.
One point, they have like just a like a city
scape scene outside, so it looks like a beautiful skyline
type of thing at night. Uh. And then at one
point they finally do lift the shade up and it retracts.
So it's it's one of those were you know, you
pull down and then it it'll it'll retract up into itself.
(53:56):
Cartoon style. The ones always go flap flap and cartoons.
I did a hand gesture that would have been very
helpful if you could see me um at any rate. Uh,
there are two ways you could do this. You could
have an o LED style screen which can be flexible,
and you could actually have the shade itself be a display.
Or what would be easier in my mind is it
(54:19):
would just be a reflective screen and you would end
up projecting UM a scene on that using a small projector.
And we've seen small projectors become more and more common,
even high resolution small projectors like things that you could
you can slip it into your pocket if you need
to take it on a trip, and then use it
to show your power point presentation to the board or whatever.
(54:42):
You know. I think it was in our episode about
Minority Report that we talked about transparent screens where there
are people who are actually working on this, but it
sounds like what they want here is actually not a
transparent screen. Yeah, you basically just want a regular screen
and where you actually don't see outside. Yeah, that was
kind of and they do lift it up so you
(55:04):
do see the window behind eventually, but it's one of
those things where it's it's kind of it wasn't It
wasn't going far enough, because you could get a transparent display.
I played with one at CS just recently, where you
can see right, you know, when when the screen is clear,
like when there's nothing being projected out, you can see
straight through it. And when it's acting as a display,
(55:26):
it's nearly opaque depending on how dark the images that's
playing across the screen. So it's kind of funny to
me that this is a case where it didn't quite
go far enough. Yeah. Yeah. Um. Another thing kind of
like that they have these their home television in the
Flies home is this very large wide screen TV that
looks a pretty um analogous analogous analogous um to uh
(55:51):
to the kind of televisions that many people have in
their homes these days. Um. It has multi screen viewing capacity,
which is a thing that television's have these days. Um.
Although all of the images within this little multi screen
set up are in standard format, none of them are
wide screen four by three, six by nine, which I
thought was very charming. Um and uh uh And and
(56:15):
all the kids apparently watched like six screens at the
same time, which is actually pretty president according according to
data from how people are frequently watching things on their
smartphones and a television and a laptop or at the
same time four tabs open. Yeah. I mean, I definitely
have been guilty of having multiple screens up, but it
means that I'm not paying attention to anything. Really doesn't
(56:38):
mean I'm not I'm not absorbing anything at that point.
But yeah, you can. There are services television services that
allow you to have as many as nine different channels
on display on a single screen, um simultaneously. It's also
voice activated, So again we have systems like Sony or
Xbox the connect that allow for voice activation, and we're
(57:01):
even seeing that built into some televisions now as well.
So that's not that unusual. It's not it's not common
where again you would see it in your average uh
consumers home, but it is possible. And the fact that
it was a wall mounted television was actually really forward
thinking because that's the way a lot of people watch
their TVs now and that was not something that was
(57:23):
big in Yeah. Yeah, I. And and that it was
a flat screen too, I suppose, um uh. And and
one more that I really want to talk about before
we break for you for the second episode is that
they had a thermostat with with multiple programmable controls, like
you can just walk up and press a button and
it will set the temperature and and presumably a number
(57:46):
of other controls to a whole set of whatever you
told it to be interesting. So which complex environmental controls? Yeah,
which we've got Yeah, Nest. Nest came out a couple
of years ago and has been and really popular, and
now we've got a lot of competitors on the market
to These are all learning thermostats that make it very
easy for you to change the temperature of your home.
(58:07):
And it also can even have learning algorithms so that
it knows what your preferences are, or it can detect
if there's no one in the house and make sure
that you're not heating an empty house. Or you can
set it to to do a thing at a certain
time of day, or you can trigger it when you
when you're coming home, or it can automatically trigger when
you're coming home. So so honestly, this is another thing
(58:28):
that didn't quite look far forward enough in that uh,
I mean the fact that that older Marty has to
go up to the wall and poke a button on it.
It's kind of outdated. Yeah, yeah, so this was fun.
This was a fun first episode. We still got a
lot more. You're probably thinking, hey, there's one incredible piece
of technology that's in Back to the Future too that
(58:49):
you guys didn't cover. Well, you know, we have this
on purpose. You had to save some stuff for the
second episode. We actually move things around to make sure
about it. So make sure you join us for our
next episode, where we will conclude this discussion and hit
several more and talk about the things that are possible
that are not possible that might be hoaxes or jobs. Hint, hint,
(59:11):
And if you have any suggestions for future episodes, you
should let us know. Send us an email the addresses
f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com. Drop
us a line on Twitter, Google Plus, or Facebook. On
Google Plus and Twitter, we are f W thinking. Just
search fw thinking on Facebook will pop right up. Leave
us a suggestion, comment, questions, anything you like, and we
(59:34):
will talk to you again really soon. Create For more
on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward
thinking dot com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's go
(59:57):
places
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. He's welcome to rid Thinking, the podcast that
looks of the future and says, tell me, doctor, where
are we going this time? I'm Jonathan Strickland LA, and
(00:20):
I'm Griff McCormick. Hey, Griff, Hey, So guys, happy two,
Thank you. Yeah, this is the first podcast episode that
we are recording in Yeah. So it's it's a brand
new year. And it's not just a brand new year,
it's a very important year for the future. According to
(00:40):
the documentary series Back to the Future, you know, I
thought Back to the Future just did not have enough
future in it. It's all about the fifties. Yeah, exactly.
Well that's because he has to go back to the future.
Oh that's right. But it's really really rectified that deficiency
in the sequel. Yes, well they only partially did, because
(01:01):
most of the sequel still takes place in the nineteen
fifties and the nineteen eighties, and and honestly, when you
spend some time in the future, you're thankful for that.
The future is stupendous. According to nineteen eighty nine, uh
this this nine nine movie? Um yeah, yeah, back Back
to the Future Part two was was released in nineteen
(01:22):
eighty nine. That's four years after Back to the Future
Part one, Right, And as many people have pointed out
on Twitter at the beginning of this year, hey, we're
now in the Back to the Future two year. Yeah, yeah,
that the year that they go forward to from Back
to the Future too is uh, they in fact land
on four at four pm on October one, right, and uh.
(01:47):
One of the people who actually mentioned that this is
the year of Back to the Future to future was me,
And it was on our forward Thinking page that I
did post that. Yeah. It was one of those things
where I got hired of seeing the meme. I'm sure
you guys have seen it too, where multiple times over
the last few years, people have posted a photoshopped version
(02:09):
of the time machine that the time yeah, exactly from
the DeLorean and had the date change so that it
reflected whatever the current date was that day and say,
today's the day that Murty move Fly traveled to the future.
And I kept thinking, no, it was two thousand fifteen.
And it's easy to It's easy to prove one because
you can go see the movie. But two, they he
(02:32):
traveled in thirty year increments. He traveled thirty years to
his past and thirty years to his future, approximately a
generation gap, which is kind of the point of the
storyline exactly. So I mean that you know that when
I kept seeing it back in two thousand twelve was
a bad year for it. I think I saw it
three or four times in two thousand twelve. But now
(02:52):
we're finally in that year. We're not quite at that time, because,
like you said, Lauren, it's October that we're looking at. Yeah,
I think that we can suck up any inconsistencies in
the movie with the fact that it's not October yet.
I think that by the time it is October, all
of these things will have come to pass. There's gonna
be some pretty dramatic things to happen this year in
order for that to happen. Well, since we're here at
(03:14):
the outset of the year, I think it would be
great to do a couple of episodes looking at all
of the fantastic predictions about the year made by the
movie Back to the Future too, and see see how
we stack up against reality. Honestly, a lot of them
were really clever. I just watched the movie again last night, Um,
(03:34):
it had been maybe twelve years since I had seen it,
like a like a good chunk of time. Um. But
I mean a lot of the predictions that it makes,
and I made little air quotes because those work really
well on radio when I said predictions, Uh, A lot
of their predictions are for the sake of kind of
silly jokes, most of them delivered by Christopher Lloyd. Um.
(03:57):
But that being said, a lot of the little details
in the movie were actually very canny in terms of
telling us what our world was going to look like, right,
especially considering that you know, nineteen five, that's a year
or nineteen nine when this movie was made. That's a
year before cell phones became a regular thing that normal
(04:18):
people were in possession of, Right. I mean there were
some cellular telephones, but they were pretty rare. Um. And uh,
you know you think about that in that context, like
even today, it's hard for us to predict what the
future is going to look like. Go back ten years,
and everyone thought that cell phones were just gonna keep
getting smaller and smaller, to the point where that became
(04:40):
a joke, like it was a status symbol how small
your cell phone was. But then we had the transformation
of being able to watch things like video on our phones.
Now it's important to have a large phone. Actually. Um,
In fact, I'm gonna give a little visual visual aid.
I have a new phone that's approximately the size of
a truck. Yeah, I've I've met bears that are smaller
(05:03):
than that phone. This is this is. I'm holding up
the next to six that I just got yesterday, and
it is. It is ginormous. So uh. Anyway, the point
I'm trying to make is that they were even further
removed from the wondrous future than we were by definition,
and yet some of their predictions are pretty prescient, not
(05:25):
all of them, obviously, and they were all meant as
kind of a tongue in cheek sort of jokey way
of looking at the future. Well, as I alluded to earlier,
there are so many things that predicts that we decided
we should break this up into two episodes. Today is
going to be part one of Back to the Future.
Part Two's predictions, right, and that's pretty much gonna be
(05:48):
the title, right. No, Okay, so we're gonna moving ahead. Okay, Okay,
let's let's set the scene, all right. You're you're, you're
young Michael J. Fox. I am a young Michael J. Fox.
You often, I often mistake you for Michael J. Fox. Right,
you hop out of your dolory and just having traveled
forward thirty years from from your comfortable home in the
(06:08):
nineteen eighties, and what are some of the things you
see in the world around you in the southern California
of Well, there's tons of stuff to cover. Let's start
with the clothing, because that was one of the first
things that we get to see in the film. Yeah.
Of course, any time that you time travel, you have
to I mean, assuming that you're not in the Doctor
Who universe, in which no one really cares, you have
(06:30):
to immediately find some kind of clothing so that you
can fit in with a local population. Right, So you
find somebody about your build, you knock them out, and
you steal their clothes and leave them naked. That's that's standard,
m O. Yeah, or Doc Brown happens to have gone
shopping for you and just gives you a bunch of stuff.
How convenient. So so Doc gives a few things to
Marty McFly so that he can he can blend in.
(06:53):
Actually he's essentially posing as his own son who looks
exactly like him. Yeah, because everyone in that universe looks
exactly like their ancestors or descendants. I say, again, how convenient. Yeah, well,
you know whatever. So o, no, no, no, hold on.
I remember one big piece of clothing from this, okay,
which is the automatic lace up shoes. Yeah. Yeah, you
(07:14):
put these on and uh they they seem like they're
kind of not quite fitting you. But then all of
a sudden, the little Nike symbol lights up and the
laces conformed to your feet. Yea, power laces. Yeah, yeah,
it sounds it sounds neumatic. Yeah. Well, obviously there's nothing
like this in reality, right, not yet, but there's gonna
(07:36):
be this year. Nike is in fact working on it. Yeah,
they announced this previously that at some point in two
thousand and fifteen they will begin selling shoes that will
in fact have power laces. Now, they've had mock ups,
like like shoes that look like the ones Marty McFly war.
They've offered that a few times over the years, the
most recent I think being two thousand eleven, and it
(07:57):
even lights up, like they have shoes that light up
and they look, you know, cosmetically like that thing exactly.
But they didn't have the power. Leases all of that
changes this year, so that technology is actually coming true. Okay,
so self lacing shoes actually coming out this year. I
can't wait till we see them and we can talk
(08:18):
about this, like talk about how cool they are or
how disappointing they are. Right, I get the feeling it
will be one way or the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But how about the jacket that dries itself off? Yeah? Yeah, Well,
I mean when you first when he first puts on
this jacket, uh, the arms are way too long, and
then it goes up self adjusting and and the arms
(08:41):
makes some kind of weird pneumatic noise I'm not sure why,
and they retract to be properly fitting. You're right, it's
not just drying. It's it's also self adjusting. Yeah. Um.
And then later in the in the film, we find
out that it is also self drying, like if you,
for example, fall into a pond off of your hoverboard,
then it can it can just kind of go, wouldn't,
And all of a sudden it's perfect. It's like it's
(09:03):
like it's filled with hair dryer. Suddenly. I don't want
to be a naysayer, but I really again don't think
I want this technology. I mean, I wouldn't want a
jacket that had heating elements, and I wouldn't worry too much, Joe,
not unless it was for a very specified cold weather
expedition kind of purpose that I could I could see
that maybe that would be useful. Yeah, I could see
(09:25):
like there'd be some sort of heating element allah, an
electric blanket kind of thing chad into a jacket like that,
but not one that would be you know, I have
a motor in it that would that would turn a
fan so that it could blow and blow dry your
your outfit while you're wearing it. That doesn't seem terribly practical. Again,
it was one of those elements I think thrown in
(09:45):
there as uh like a fanciful science fiction e humorous.
It was more a joke than anything else. Um that
the self adjusting part though, and I believe we've talked
about this on the show way back in the day,
perhaps when we for started out the podcast. But people
are working on creating materials that can go into clothing
that will allow that clothing to to to fit your
(10:08):
form better by either um using using kinetic energy from
when you move to to form the to fit the
fabric to the contours of your body or um or otherwise. Uh,
you know, just just creating, especially through three D printing
more customizable clothes. So and at ces, I saw BELTI belt.
(10:32):
It is a It's a belt that adjusts itself to you.
So if you are wearing loose pants, it'll it'll adjust
so it's snug on you. And then if you start
eating a big meal, it'll let itself out a notch
all on its own. That sounds like a very friendly snake. Okay, yeah,
you gotta think of it. Think of it as like
(10:52):
I think of it as like the belt itself is
fed through a system that uses rollers to either tighten
it or loosen it. The buckle is huge, is not
like a tiny thing. Um and Joe and I already
had discussion about what might happen should the absolute worst occur,
and you're just thinking this is just way too tight.
It's getting worse. Yeah, I wouldn't. My fear of being
(11:14):
popped like a grape is greater than my desire to
not have to fiddle with my own belt. Now we
have we have seen some advances in textiles and in codings,
for textiles that would prevent clothing from getting wet where
the you know where water and oils will just roll
right off. Some of the stain proof clothing that we've
(11:35):
seen that's treated by this stuff or has its actual
structure made in such a way where liquids will just
roll right off, we've seen that. But that's obviously different
from something that will dry itself once it's already become wet.
But still we thought that would be an interesting one. Um,
you've got another element. Here's something I don't actually remember
this from the movie. Yeah, okay, So so there were
(11:57):
several like small personal gadgets that I wanted to kind
of toss into this category. Um. One is a pair
of digital binoculars that Doc Brown uses again early on
in the film. They're the size of kind of like
a small polaroid camera, and they can report, uh, you know,
in their little display, they report like your distance from
the subject. Um. They can auto focus on human subjects,
(12:19):
and it will also give you a little like x
y z coordinate range that I guess is related to
like global positioning or something, but it's I mean, it's
not It's up on the screen for like three seconds.
I imagine that must be Biff using it to spy
on Doc Brown is using it to spy on young Marty.
Oh okay, all right, so um, as it turns out,
(12:39):
we do have digital binoculars. UH. Generally speaking, they tend
to be cameras and displays that are built into a
binocular form factor. So you'll get a pair of cameras,
you get that stereoscopic effect that way. Um, they can
look pretty far, and you know, I can imagine building
in uh systems including things like GPS and a compass
(13:00):
and that sort of thing where you could get readouts
that would tell you approximate information about this kind of stuff.
I don't know that why anybody really want that in binoculars.
I mean, I could see it if it were a
pair of binoculars that also acted as an actual camera
so that you're taking pictures or video, and then you
want the GEO tag to be in there as well,
(13:22):
so I could see it for that. You know, there
are I'm seeing more and more apps now that are
about being able to map your real life experience to
an app so you can share it more easily on
social media or even like if you're out in the
wilderness and you say, oh, hey, I want to go
to that peak over there. How far away is it? Um? Right?
(13:43):
Then you know it would be useful to have the coordinates. Yeah, exactly. Uh,
now I do remember this next one, just spying on people.
I agree, it's a little bit over. Yeah. No, if
you're if all you're doing is just trying to clandestinely
watch someone, they're easier ways unless you're playing D and
D and you need to know the number of fat
You know whether or not you can walk to them
(14:03):
in a single action. How many grid squares? I could
estimate it, or I could just lift up this handy
dandy para binocular. Now, Jonathan, you're not about to steal
my thunder on my favorite item. That's just Which is
the next one, right, the robotic extending baseball Okay, you
already said it, the robotic telescoping baseball bat. I remember this,
(14:25):
and this, I think is what the future is really
all about, is about baseball bats that start off short
but extend because that's useful. Yeah, I mean, you say
you want to store five DD baseball bats in a box,
so we're talking on typical Wednesday. You can't store them
all in the box. If they're all long to begin with,
(14:48):
so you got to shrink them, and then when you
want to use them, you just press the telescoping extension
button and the bat slides on out. As it turns out,
the use case scenario that Joe is suggesting has not
been compelling enough for anyone to actually develop a robotic
telescoping baseball bat. I've seen yet. Now is it, Lauren?
(15:09):
I have a question about the movie. Is it? Is
it Griff in the movie who uses the bat? He
pulls it out menacingly as if you hit Marty with it,
he has it behind his back. In fact, and uh
and and while he is menacing Marty or Marty Jr.
I forget which the bat kind of again, there's this
terrific pneumatic sound they keep using for everything, so inaccurate
(15:32):
to how anything would actually function. I guess it could
be just a normal robotic I think it'd be hilarious
if you if you saw every single gadget, every single
piece of clothing was actually connected via two to its
enormous pneumatic That's what I imagine this had to be
in order to make that noise. But yeah, so he's
holding it behind his back and it kind of telescopes out.
You might be useful also to have a smart bat
(15:54):
so that it knows when to extend on its own
to tell it. Now, that's not good because if anyone
has smart bat and they wanted to menace me, that
bat would be like, I just can't. There's I can't
extend long enough for you to beat This guy needs
really seriously to be beaten up. Okay, how about some
other menacing mischief gadgets? Yeah, another item that I think
(16:15):
Griff has It could be one of his gang members. Uh,
is kind of like a digital soundboard, because when he
calls Marty a chicken, you get this great little digital
sound bite. Yeah yeah, yeah, except that but way more digitized.
Oh yeah, one of his little one of his little
toady's presses a button. Okay, I'm not I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. I didn't catch it, but yeah, yeah,
(16:37):
do we have that amazing capacity today? Shocker? Yes, Let's
go to YouTube and watch some soundboard prank calls. I've
seen people just like grab the like things out of
greeting cards where you would be able to record your
own message and a greeting card and essentially do that.
I mean, we've got tons of tech like that, and
(16:59):
we even of the soundtrack shirt from Think Geek. Did
you guys remember when that that was one of that
was one of their April Fools jokes one year where
got so much attention that they decided to actually make
that shirt exactly. They've done this several times where they
put out a product that they might be thinking about doing,
but they haven't actually decided yet, and they want to
see what the reaction is for April Fools and then
(17:21):
they go ahead and do it. The video they had
for their April Fools shirt was amazing, where you know,
it's a guy just kind of going through his daily life,
but whenever he's in a particular situation, he uses his
soundtrack shirt to add the the cinematic feel um that
is appropriate for whatever situation he's in. So he's being chased,
he's got like chase music playing, he sees a he
(17:42):
sees a young lady, and he presses the romantic music
that kind of thing. So this is stuff that we
obviously have incorporated into all different parts of our lives.
Most of us don't carry around a soundboard, but he
certainly could you could you could use your phone. Yeah.
And that's the thing is that again, this this movie
didn't predict the era of the smartphone, where a lot
(18:03):
of the stuff that that people do in the future
is that there are things that are handled by a
mobile device these days. Yeah. Well, I think one of
the big holes in this movie's vision of the future,
and and most movies frankly, is the lack of the Internet.
I mean, yeah, yeah, the pervasiveness of the Internet and smartphone.
That's why. I mean even the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
(18:26):
they envisioned the encyclopedia, encyclopedia that you would carry. The
actual guide was a self contained thing. It wasn't it
wasn't connected to some sort of network. In the original one,
it was all all that information was stored in this
handheld device. And the interesting thing is now we have
access to the equivalent of that, but it's through network connections. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,
(18:48):
and because because it couldn't be updated in Hitchhiker's Guy, right, right,
it was all a stable format until a new one
was published. Right. That's what Ford Prefect was doing on Earth,
was he was gathering research so that he could update
the entry on Earth for the next edition of The
Guy Right. Okay, Um, but actually, before we move on
from Griff's gangs gadgets, say that five times fast. Um,
(19:13):
I wanted to mention that one thing that will that
will be possible in this incredible future of today is
that women can be part of your crappy high school gang. Yeah. Yeah,
for the first time in the series, we see they're
not allowed to speak. Oh no, no, she has speaking
like do because she has like a claude one finger
(19:33):
and and it's it's a detachable clause. It's not like
her finger is a claw. And she and she threatens
Marty or something. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I remember her.
He's got like a really high ponytail. Yeah. For the
sake of equality, I'm all four female bullies. Well, I mean,
I guess we've always had female bullies for for a
society in which females feel okay about bullying males. Yeah,
(19:58):
there you go the future indeed, So continuing on this
bright future and various gadgets, Okay, this this next device
shows up a couple of places in the movie. Um. First,
relatively early on, when Marty is approached by someone looking
for donations UM for the clock tower, which as always
is in need of repair. UM. And secondly when um,
(20:21):
when someone pays for a cab ride later on UH.
And and that is a little handheld digital credit pad
that that can be access to using a thumb print,
Like you press your thumb into it and it knows
who you are and it just deducts whatever you want
to give from your bank account. Biometric payment, and we've
talked about that so many times on the show. And
(20:42):
while we don't really see a lot of implementations of
that directly, it is something that we've seen indirectly used.
For example, Apple pay using using an iPhone to pay
for something through NFC, which is in the iPhone, but
you use you might use your thumb print as the
way of identifying yourself so that you acknowledge the payment
(21:04):
going through. So it's not we haven't reached a point
where our fingerprints are directly tied to our bank accounts,
which I think a lot of people are thankful for.
But we've definitely reached this point where we can have
the credit card or currency free monetary exchange these days. Yeah,
and we can we can certainly have like mobile payments anywhere,
(21:28):
even without biometrics for through things like like Square or
other little credit dongles. Yeah, yep, so that that one's
uh well, well, the implementation is different today than what
we see in the film. It's still more or less
i'd say, I'd say, in the same spirit. So that
one's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, Um. They also featured a
(21:48):
some kind of I D technique, and I believe it
was also through a thumb print, though it might have
been off screen. I have to admit to you, guys,
I wasn't paying wrapped attention every moment of this film.
I do not blame you for this. Having seen there,
I'm actually very fond of it. But but uh yeah, yeah,
they have I D techniques that will tell, for example,
(22:09):
a cop if they if they scan you, however, they're
going to scan you basic personal personal profile kind of
information like your age, your address, your name, and um
can run an immediate drug screening on you. Oh, this
is what they do with what's her face? When they
when they find Jennifer Marty's girlfriend. Yeah, and then they
end up because she's been knocked out, they end up
(22:31):
taking her back to what they think is her home
because of course her her genetic information hasn't changed at all.
Her fingerprint or her DNA or whatever it is that
they scan is identical to her future selves, right, So
they just drop her off at her future selves home
because they don't know that she's you know, not, she's
not from that time. Why don't they just take her
(22:52):
to jail because she's just she's found unconscious. Yeah, her
drug screening comes back clean. Okay, Yeah, people don't get
no further question. People get thrown in jail just for
being unconscious, not in this incredible future. So hey, wait
a second, we're skipping over a huge part of this future.
(23:15):
I know what you mean. The hypercolor baseball caps exactly
what I mean. That did come out in the eighties
but was almost immediately abandoned because no, I'm talking about
where we're going. We don't need rows. The flying car,
in fact, you see it. I believe at the end
of the first Back to the Future movie that you know,
(23:36):
you take your delore into and you can get it
upgraded so that it can do vertical takeoff and landing. Yeah. Yeah,
that that the cars in this in this potential future,
that the wheels kind of turn up and the car
can do a sort of running vertical takeoff like like
I guess you need a little bit of a landing stretch,
but or a takeoff stretch, so that'd be like a
(23:57):
short takeoff and landing. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Um
and yeah yeah they do right. They do have have
a conversion for older model cars and nine dollars yes,
um and uh. And and they're quiet like like like
an electric car might be today. Yeah. So we've done
(24:18):
episodes on flying cars, We've talked about them extensively on
this podcast, and as we have mentioned before, we don't
really have what we certainly don't have flying cars that
your general consumer can get their hands on. We a
lot of the flying cars we've looked at look more
like drivable airplanes and less like a car that flies.
But that is some progress. I mean, we basically have
(24:39):
light sportcraft, uh, flying vehicles that you could also drive
on a road. You you probably need to have some
kind of pilot training to fly them for for the
ones that we actually have, yes, yeah uh. As we've
talked about with flying cars in the past, I want
to reiterate my point of view, which is that I
don't think flying cars will ever become a reality unless
(25:01):
they're fully autonomous, right, Yeah, just I hope that they
won't because that sounds terrifically dangerous. Yeah, just letting people
operate their own flying vehicles around the city, it sounds
absolutely insane. So so there's less You've got Doc Brown
popping in and out of existence on the wrong side
of the highway. And then there's just these two flames
(25:21):
that are extending out in the middle of the air
for no reason. But like, what is what is what
is actually on fire? Look that the delirian when it
when it goes through time. Um, the the drag created
by even the vertical standing wheels is so great that
it catches the molecules in the air. The atmosphere is burning.
(25:45):
Like every time he travels through time, he just wipes
out all life on earth. That Doc Brown so irresponsible. Yeah.
Uh so these flying cars also have an infrastructure set
up where where the highways I guess ways, sky ways
thank you thank you? Yeah yeah, are our lit um
and signed with these kind of drone like floating lights
(26:08):
and signs. I want to raise a point about that,
which is that if we were to designate roadways in
the sky over cities. I feel like that could counteract
some of the positive implications of having a flying vehicle.
Like part of what's great about having a flying car,
at least in your imagination, is you can travel as
(26:29):
the crow flies, so you don't need to go in
an L shape to get to your destination on the
main roads. You can go straight there in a straight line,
and of course that is much more efficient. But if
you if you're basically having to get on the highway anyway,
except it's just above the ground, why why are you
(26:49):
even having flying cars at this point? And there's there's
even a moment in the movie where where Doc and
Marty are trying to get somewhere and and Doc checks,
I think can his driving visor, which I'll discuss in
another second, um the traffic conditions, and he's like, the
highways jammed or the skyways jammed. We're never going to
get through in time, which is my really terrible Christopher
(27:12):
llyd impression. I think, Um, but uh yeah, yeah, So
it's basically pointless other than the fact that it gives
you more ground space, I guess. So yeah, I mean,
I guess you could say it could travel faster because
it doesn't have the friction on the ground. Maybe, but
it's it's more than just pointless though, because it's it's
counterproductive because when you have an accident, and you would,
(27:36):
then you have the added complication that your accident is
taking place at above the ground will fall down. Yeah.
So so it's it's not just not just counterproductive, it
is actively killing people. Well, I have another question, which
is that as again, as we've talked about with flying
(27:57):
cars in the past, you'd have a large energy consumption problem. Absolutely.
Flight is not something that is mechanically easy. It requires
a large energy investment, especially if you're talking about vertical
or short takeoff and landing. Well, yeah, when you have
something like a car that does not on its own
generate lift, yeah, then you obviously have to overcome all
(28:18):
the weight of that vehicle with lift generated some other way. Yeah.
So this is a huge problem when you're you're imagining
creating flying cars, you'd have to have this gigantic energy
investment in getting it in the air. You want to
make it incredibly light so that it, you know, requires
as little lift as possible. How are they generating this energy?
And it's no problem. They just use fusion. Mr fusion.
(28:45):
They just pop it open and throw a beer in
a banana peal. Yea, yeah, it's it's a fusion. It's
a it's a little car held fusion generator UM that
can be retroactively installed. And uh and and and it's
powered by garbage. And here's here's something. Let me let
me let me list out some of the problems I
have here. Obviously we don't have that step one. Step
(29:09):
one is the fusion industries. It's not a business that
we have yet, so we're all just waiting for fusion industries.
They've got a real short timeline to work on this
and get a product out onto the market. But in
the step one is that we have yet to have
a really efficient fusion reactor generate energy. We have seen
(29:29):
in two thousand and fourteen we saw there are research projects, yes,
and in two thousand and fourteen we saw the first
time where a fusion reactor actually produced more energy than
it took to start it, but it only was able
to consume one percent of the fuel, meaning it's still
very inefficient. So if your fuel goes unused, that's still
not a great story. Even though you're getting more energy
(29:50):
out of the initial reaction than you did having to
put into it, so we still got a long way
to go. Secondly, that has nothing to do with just
throwing garbage into something. Third, even within the the logic
of the film itself, this doesn't make sense because in
the third film you find out that the car still
runs on gasoline, that the fusion was for the time circuits,
(30:14):
not for the vehicle itself, because when Marty McFly goes
back in time, the fuel line ruptures, and that's why
he can't get the car going anymore. The second so,
what are the other cars that have Mr Fusion on
them use it for. I'm guessing that a lot of
them are using fuel, because there is a Texico station
(30:34):
shown off in the very beginning of Marty's journey back
to the future. Well let's not get into the Texico
station yet. That's a whole other section, but the point
being that I think they're still using some sort of
gasoline style fuel, at least for some functions of the car.
Keeping in mind that the cars themselves have been a
(30:54):
lot of them have been retrofitted with this flying stuff,
it may be that Mr Fusion is providing the power
or flight. But then for terrestrial operation. It's still using gasoline.
What's a hybrid vehicle? I can't what a ridiculously bone
headed prediction they make that we'd still be using fossil
fuel cars. Look, I spent all last week talking about that.
(31:17):
So we're just gonna We're just gonna move on. Um, well,
how about some other stuff having to do with the
cars in the driving All right, Well, we we mentioned
a minute ago, um Doc Brown's driving goggles, and um,
they appear to be completely opaque. I'm wondering if Christopher
Lloyd was walking around blind every time he was wearing
them on Wait wait, wait, wait wait, driving goggles the
(31:39):
car like open air winda. No, it's more like smart glasses. Yeah.
It it's sort of like a visor. It looks it
looks visor's silver. It's silver. I can picture it now,
I know what you're yeah. Yeah. And and I was
thinking while I was watching it that maybe it's like
a heads up display or something. And uh and and
he does have a line that made me think that
(32:01):
it has like a rear display in the goggles. You
can so that he can see behind the car better
than just with mirrors. See that that is entirely possible.
I mean, it's it's we've got smart glasses that are
coming out now that can do things like feed video
into the glasses. I don't know that we're going to
see that becomes something acceptable in like, I'm sure we're
(32:23):
going to see legislation actually banning that kind of stuff
for drivers behind the wheel of a car. But with
the blast shield down, I can't see a thing. How
am I supposed to fly? All right, Luke, listen, you
go play with your power converters. The adults talk separate
incredible future past that we're talking about. That that's an
entirely different universe. We talked about that with the lightsabers.
(32:46):
So yeah, Um, the car that the Dolorean for the
future also does have a metallic barcode license plate. That's
kind of interesting. Yeah, also unnecessary. I mean I wonder
if that would be an improved it. No, no, no,
because I mean if you have a database that has
everybody's vehicle registration in it and it's linked to an
(33:07):
alpha numerical license plate, that's gonna be a lot easier
for someone to relay over a communication device and saying,
oh it's a barcode, let me scan it. Well there though,
you're assuming that it's a human reading Oh yeah, I guess,
But I guess a machine could read alpha numerica or
a bark could only read alpha numericas they were I
don't know, really good at And that's the thing is
(33:31):
that when this was made, we didn't really have image
recognition systems like the software in the hardware that would
be able to take a picture of a license plate
and be able to machine read that. But now we
have that, so there's no need for the barcode, right.
You could totally get that same information from you know,
(33:51):
off the shelf stuff today, which is really the crazy
thing is that you could get like a webcam of
a decent clarity and some software and you could read it.
But I think it is worth pointing out that what
this implies with the barcode, even if it underestimates our
technology's ability to read alpha numeric, it is I think,
sort of assuming something that has come true, which is
(34:13):
that you will have machines looking at your car and
identifying you without a human in the middle. Absolutely true
traffic cameras now that we have that will automatically send
you a ticket looking at your license plate. YEP. That
that is true. That's a great point. Uh yeah, I
can't disagree with that, so so so we'll give them
(34:37):
yeah yeah, kind of kind of sort of. Um. And
and the last point that we have here in this
little kind of cars section is going back to those
to those gas stations that we've talked about, and they
appear to be automated, this this Texico station. Because this
film is chock full of product placement. It's amazing. Yeah,
it's so cool. I'm actually really proud of how well
(34:59):
they graded product placement. And Texico appears prominently both in
in all three eras. So it's in it's in the
the Marty's present, it's in the past, and it's in
his future. It does not they do, not, however, appear
as far as I am aware, in the Old West,
(35:20):
which maybe there's just like a feed station owned by
Text and Company, but I don't know, I don't remember
seeing yea um but but yeah, so so there's this
this Texico station with with like an automated robot service agent. Yeah,
like a like a like a robotic gas pump. It
(35:42):
actually extends out and begins fueling a car that's parked
there into the back seat of your car exactly, just
just spraying your automobile with flammable fuel. Yeah, so we
don't have these that. We don't have the automated ones.
We've got a lot us self serve stations, but not
robotic ones. Well, what we do have now in a
(36:05):
lot of cases though this isn't really astounding to almost
anybody who drives because we're used to him. Now we
have we have like pre pay stations that you can
pay for your gas without going inside. That's yeah, which
is very convenient. Also, I don't believe it was gasoline
whatever whatever. I don't know what it is. It's just
(36:26):
on the sign uh and and and the prices range
from seven dollars to almost nine dollars depending upon the
type of havilne you one I get. I based this
entirely off a screenshot that someone tookolne. It's like fossil
fuels derived from ham. It's a good guest, Joe. But
it also could very possibly just be a proprietary name
(36:48):
for that company's fuel in the future. So it could
just be that it is gasoline, but they call it
have a line. Well, I want to transition to another point.
Please do I recall scene in Back to the Future
Part two where where Michael J. Fox wanders out onto
the street in front of a movie theater. In the
movie theater is showing what it calls a hollow film
(37:11):
of Jaws nineteen number one. I am very disappointed that
we have not reached Jaws nineteen yet. I think the
last Jaws film was was Jaws for Jaws Revenge, which
is a wonderful movie. I really thought that there were
five or six of them, Jaws for starring the brilliant
Michael Kaine. Maybe I'm just Sharknado movies or something. I'm
(37:33):
not sure. Sharkonado and Piranha have both made direct references
to Jaws. Yeah, and they're they're easily nineteen terrible shark
movies since Jaws, but they're not within the Jaws franchise.
So but anyway, they're advertising Jaws nineteen this time. It's
really personal, that's what the tagline is. And I don't
(37:56):
know exactly what kind of difference they're imagining in upcome
film technology, but I get a whiff of unrealistic ideas
of sort of holographic projection. The things we've talked about
on the show before where you have a projected image
that is three dimensional, free standing and can be viewed
(38:17):
from three hundred and sixty degrees. I think, as far
as I know, we're we're still it's the nix on
that that's not gonna happen. Yeah, yeah, And and even
if the film itself is not in quite that format,
definitely this this advertisement for it is this this billboard? Right? Yes? Yeah,
(38:37):
So a big shark comes up out of the movie
theater and a big cartoon shirt, a big jabber jaw
comes up out of the movie theater and chomps down
on Michael J. Fox, and he quips that it still
looks fake, which it does. But heck, I would be
impressed if the if a movie theater could project a
(38:59):
three dimension anal image that could be viewed from any
angle and would come out into the streets. Right. So,
there is such a thing as glasses free three D,
which can give you the effect of seeing an image
appear to be coming out from a screen. This often
is used in um in in displays for businesses things like,
(39:20):
uh like casinos, for example, I've seen them there, um
and you there have been some glasses free three D
television at least prototypes that have been created. But this
is not a hologram. It's not something that you can
view from any angle. If you were standing to the
side of this display, you wouldn't see anything being projected
(39:41):
out from the screen. You have to be in a
sweet spot to get the effect. Yeah. Yeah, The same
is true for for the Peppers ghost illusions, which we
discussed at length in our episode about holograms. Right right,
So in the case of glasses free three D, you
might be familiar when you're watching three D with glasses.
What's really happening is your left eye is getting one
(40:01):
set of images, your right eye is getting another set
of images, and your brain gets tricked. Your brain combines
us two into the experience of seeing a single image,
and that's what gives you that illusion of depth, assuming
that the film was made well enough. Keeping in mind
that three D movies are made using an average of
what most people's like the average width of our distance
(40:25):
between a person's eyes, and depending on how your eyes
actually match up to that average, your experience maybe, you know,
fairly convincing, or it maybe headache inducing. Oh man, I
wonder if that's why I hate all three D movies.
If there's something wrong with my eyes, well, it may
not be that there's anything wrong. It may just be
(40:45):
that you deviate from the average to a point where
that's the problem. And it's not that it's not that
something's wrong, it's just that you're not average. I think
you should be proud of that, Joe. But at any rate, um, So,
the glasses are doing that work right. There's a filter
that lets one set in or shutter. That's letting one
set in and keeping the other set out either way
with glasses free three D. That stuff is built directly
(41:06):
into the screen itself, so your left eyes getting one
set of images, your right eyes getting another. But it's
all based upon the screen and where you are standing.
So if you imagine that the television is at the
center of a pie and you can only stand on
essentially one half of that pie. The half that's behind
the TV is useless. But imagine that there are slices
(41:27):
coming out and they all converge on the television. If
you are standing or sitting in the middle of a
slice so that you know you're you're nice and comfy,
then you're getting the ideal situation. Situation. You get the
ideal viewing experience, you can get that three D effect.
But if you're straddling one of those those cross those
uh those cuts, you know, between the slices, then you're
(41:49):
not getting those images properly, and it's gonna look like
a big old mess and it's going to be totally
out of focus and disorienting. Related to media, I did
want to mention that that they have news drones to
to take pictures in audio and video, which which I mean,
I guess aren't that far off. Now. We've got drones
that have cameras, you know, incorporated into them. We've got
(42:11):
consumer drones that have cameras incorporated into them. I think
the main issue there would just be knowing when to
have them trained on a on an event that's newsworthy. Well,
we also have legislation right now that very much limits
the commercial use of drones. Yeah, and and these drones
were like right up in people's faces, so so yeah,
we we haven't reached a future where we can use
(42:34):
those kind of drones freely. However, in relation to the
news media, everything is still printed on paper newspapers like
with paper, like with tree pulp, like dead trees. So
newspapers still exist in two thousand fifty, Yes, but there
are fewer of them. Yeah. Maybe maybe this is just
(42:57):
an example of Doc Brown having been from the past,
um really sticking with with one particular type of news media,
kind of like how how vampires tend to stick with
their their whatever was in style when they were first turned.
That's how you can tell a vampire. It's the one
that's wearing the Edwardian outfit or is sparkling one of
(43:20):
the two the two giveaways. I'll take your word for it. Okay, okay, Hey,
I have something else I want to bring up back
to the freaking part too. I remember there's a part
where the McFly family has a hankering for some pizza
and they get a little hockey puck disc kind of thing,
stick it in some kind of rehydrator machine black and
(43:43):
Decker hydrator. Yeah, they shut the door, press the button,
like three seconds later it comes out a steamy pizza
that's ready to eat. Yeah, and and even that's too long.
The McFly children are complaining at how long it's taking
too And then you've got like you can rehydrate a
pizza Like that's the compliment to the chef. Um, we
(44:05):
don't have this. Yeah, I understand that this is pretty
much just for a joke. Yeah, but yeah, I don't
see anything like that on the market. Now. We've got
dehydrated foods, and there are some dehydrated foods that you
rehydrate by boiling them, but that's that's not exactly a timesaver.
It is a space saver, certainly, and it can mean
that the food is edible for longer by removing the moisture.
(44:29):
Obviously we've got a lot of space food that enters
into this category. But no, we don't have a hydrator
like oven like device, and and it wouldn't make your
pizza crust crispy, so I'm not You just have a
big old wet mass of dough and cheese stuff. Um.
It is voice activated though, so that was pretty cool.
It wasn't so much a push a button as much
(44:50):
as a talk very closely into it. It was like
hydrate level four or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Also
in the McFly's kitchen, they have kind of like high
your ponic looking garden in the ceiling that that bursts down.
This is really quite large. I mean like you would
have to have an entire floor in between your floors
for the size of this kind of hydroponic garden. But yeah,
(45:11):
they call it down and it's got some grapes and
herbs growing stuff like that. I think that's actually a
great idea. Yeah, when we've all talked about that in
the kitchen from the future type stuff, you know, we've
we've mentioned the idea of the kitchen of the future
having some kind of hydroponic style garden where you can
get your hands on fresh stuff a lot, mostly in
(45:33):
urban areas where you wouldn't necessarily have access to it
otherwise or not easy access maybe, but it's not something
that we see in the the average home today. Though,
even this kind of realization of it makes sense to
me that you would have a something that folds up
into the ceiling where it could be right under sort
(45:53):
of a glass area where it could get sunlight. I
don't know that that makes sense. That doesn't want that
in my kitchen. Doesn't work. I don't one in my kitchen.
My kitchen is directly under my bedroom and we need
to build a new house. Okay, well, yeah, um, I'll
make sure to get my Mr Fusion to help me,
you know, power all this amazing technology. The last thing
(46:17):
of note in their kitchen um and I was so
fond of this looking back on it, Uh is they've
got this. I assume it's like a recipe station. It's
called Master Cook and it looks exactly like the faux
recipe stations, a little video screen recipe guides that they
had in some of those nineteen fifties Kitchen of the Future.
(46:39):
It looks precisely like it it was. So it's it's
very it's very cute. Folks at home, you should look
these up if you've never seen them before. We've talked
about him on this podcast previously. Ge was the company
that was sponsoring a lot of these videos great the
Kitchen of the Future, where they imagined how the funniest
thing is like they still imagined that a hundred years
(46:59):
into the future, that Mom's going to spend all day
in the kitchen. Yeah, yeah, don't don't worry. Our gender
stereotypes will be firmly in place right now, so she
doesn't actually have to cook, but she's still in the
kitchen all day. The figures out buttons to push, probably
a lot of valiums. So yeah, you're combining the promotional
(47:21):
videos with mad men. Yeah, but so in these videos,
they'd have like Mom's thinking about what to make and
she's got some kind of like looks like a TV
screen with recipes on it, but she doesn't make the food.
She just pushes a button and then they come out
of some kind of conveyor belt. That Lawrence version is
Mom's thinking about her third glass of wine for the day. Ye.
(47:43):
The look on the on the nice actress's face in
the video. And I'm not sure if it was a
intentional portrayal or if she was directed to do so,
or if that was just what the actress was feeling
that day, but she's she's a blank slate, y'all, and
she's yeah, it's very Stepford. Let's talk about some of
the home electronics that are that are that appear in
(48:06):
Back to Theatre. Calling them featured is probably being going
too far. But in it, uh, one one thing that's
referenced but that is is not actually shown is the
video games of the future, because you do have a
couple of young punk kids who go up to a
old arcade box in the eighties cafe vintage thing. Huh
(48:27):
and and and Marty says, oh, I can show you
how to use it, and and it's got one of
the little wired guns and he shoots some stuff on
the screen and they're like, oh man, you have to
use your hands. That's like a baby's toy. This is
also a great illustration of how Back to the Future
Too was merely a bridge between the first one and
the third one, because this was just to set up
Marty McFly's ability to shoot a pistol in part three. Anyway,
(48:50):
that them saying like, oh you you know, you have
to use your hands. That's a kid's toy or baby's toy. Um.
You know, we do have lots of examples video game
systems that allow you to not have to use a controller,
although many of them you still use your hands because
you're just you're controlling things like the connect or or
(49:11):
you know, PlayStation even has their camera system that allows
you to do hands free gaming with certain titles. Um.
And those are just two recent examples. There have been
tons of attempts to go to this kind of approach.
I don't know, because if you're saying like, even if
you're not having to hold something in your hands with
the connected, you still would be using your hand, which
(49:33):
is yeah, That's what I said at the beginning, was
that you know, you still are just you're controlling, but
you can also do voice control. So what I'm imagining
they're saying is that you've got a brain computer interface
that they play their video games by plugging a chord
into the back of their head, despite the fact that
there's no port visible where hiding it were along the
(49:53):
lines of virtual reality, like like demolition Man style. Yeah,
well see, you are guess working here. There's no indication.
We don't see the video games. I mean, that is
a possible answer, but we don't actually see what their
video games are, so we don't know what the implementation is.
But we we have voice control, we've got gesture control. Um,
we're even starting to see some brain computer interface stuff,
(50:16):
though not on the consumer level necessarily, at least not
beyond something really rudimentary like a you know, concentrate and
you can make this fan blow harder, which will make
this ball float in the air a little higher, which
will allow it to go through an obstacle. Course, yeah,
I got to I watched people use it c s
and I was determined not to be one of them
because I didn't want to show up on b roll
(50:37):
on someone else's story about the thing. But watching people
like scrunch up their faces they're trying to make a
little ping pong ball float a little higher in the
air was kind of entertaining, But we don't exactly know
what the interface was. Clearly still right now in two
thousand fifteen early two thousand fifteen, we're still very much
dependent upon controllers. So if that changes dramatically, uh, First
(51:01):
of all, I this one. I think the ship is sailed.
There's no way for it to change dramatically enough where
a little punk kid is going to assume that that's
the norm now and that using your hands is for babies.
There's not enough time to pass. We would have need
to have gone to hands free at least five years ago.
(51:21):
Another objection I would raise is that babies aren't very
good at using their hands for things, and I would
think that something you need strong, dexterous control for would
be something that's more adult. But anyway, I do maybe
those kids in the movie We're just idiots, which you know,
suggesting that there will be idiots in two thousand fifteen
is a prediction I can completely get behind. Hey another
(51:43):
prediction that is vaguely plausible. Are these handprint scanner locks
for the front door of more biometrics? Yeah, because again
when the cops bring um what's her face home, Jennifer Um,
when they bring her up to the house they think
is her home, it's actually her future selves home. They
use her thumb. They actually grab her hand and use
(52:06):
her thumb to unlock the door, because she's still unconscious
at this point, and they bring her in and she's
they slump her down on the couch and then they
leave because you know they've done their civic duty. So
the thing is that biometrics to to open up locks
not that unusual. There actually are some examples even on
the consumer market where you can buy a lock that
(52:27):
has a scanner. It's usually hidden behind something like it's
got a The lock itself has got a little hook,
and the ideas you put your finger on the inside
of that hook and it scans your finger and if
your fingerprint matches, then it'll unlock. So that way it's
not exposed the elements. People don't see what kind of
lock it is. Um, But you can't you can't get
those The kind of morbid criticism of such a thing
(52:50):
is that someone could enter your home by cutting off
your hands right or or even getting a getting a
really decent photograph of your hand at this point, and
which is where depending on the exact type of scanner exactly.
That's why I prefer the scanners that are scanning for
blood vessels, and preferably ones that are scanning for blood
moving through the blood levels, because then it'll be like, well,
(53:11):
that's a dead finger. I'm calling the police. So, hey,
what's this thing about digital windows? I don't remember this.
Um So there's a there's a window shade over their
actual window, their their actual living room window, because their
neighborhood has turned pretty seedy in the intervening years. Um.
So they've got this window shade that's this really shoddy
(53:33):
digital screen, uh that's tuned to some kind of relaxing channel.
One point, they have like just a like a city
scape scene outside, so it looks like a beautiful skyline
type of thing at night. Uh. And then at one
point they finally do lift the shade up and it retracts.
So it's it's one of those were you know, you
pull down and then it it'll it'll retract up into itself.
(53:56):
Cartoon style. The ones always go flap flap and cartoons.
I did a hand gesture that would have been very
helpful if you could see me um at any rate. Uh,
there are two ways you could do this. You could
have an o LED style screen which can be flexible,
and you could actually have the shade itself be a display.
Or what would be easier in my mind is it
(54:19):
would just be a reflective screen and you would end
up projecting UM a scene on that using a small projector.
And we've seen small projectors become more and more common,
even high resolution small projectors like things that you could
you can slip it into your pocket if you need
to take it on a trip, and then use it
to show your power point presentation to the board or whatever.
(54:42):
You know. I think it was in our episode about
Minority Report that we talked about transparent screens where there
are people who are actually working on this, but it
sounds like what they want here is actually not a
transparent screen. Yeah, you basically just want a regular screen
and where you actually don't see outside. Yeah, that was
kind of and they do lift it up so you
(55:04):
do see the window behind eventually, but it's one of
those things where it's it's kind of it wasn't It
wasn't going far enough, because you could get a transparent display.
I played with one at CS just recently, where you
can see right, you know, when when the screen is clear,
like when there's nothing being projected out, you can see
straight through it. And when it's acting as a display,
(55:26):
it's nearly opaque depending on how dark the images that's
playing across the screen. So it's kind of funny to
me that this is a case where it didn't quite
go far enough. Yeah. Yeah. Um. Another thing kind of
like that they have these their home television in the
Flies home is this very large wide screen TV that
looks a pretty um analogous analogous analogous um to uh
(55:51):
to the kind of televisions that many people have in
their homes these days. Um. It has multi screen viewing capacity,
which is a thing that television's have these days. Um.
Although all of the images within this little multi screen
set up are in standard format, none of them are
wide screen four by three, six by nine, which I
thought was very charming. Um and uh uh And and
(56:15):
all the kids apparently watched like six screens at the
same time, which is actually pretty president according according to
data from how people are frequently watching things on their
smartphones and a television and a laptop or at the
same time four tabs open. Yeah. I mean, I definitely
have been guilty of having multiple screens up, but it
means that I'm not paying attention to anything. Really doesn't
(56:38):
mean I'm not I'm not absorbing anything at that point.
But yeah, you can. There are services television services that
allow you to have as many as nine different channels
on display on a single screen, um simultaneously. It's also
voice activated, So again we have systems like Sony or
Xbox the connect that allow for voice activation, and we're
(57:01):
even seeing that built into some televisions now as well.
So that's not that unusual. It's not it's not common
where again you would see it in your average uh
consumers home, but it is possible. And the fact that
it was a wall mounted television was actually really forward
thinking because that's the way a lot of people watch
their TVs now and that was not something that was
(57:23):
big in Yeah. Yeah, I. And and that it was
a flat screen too, I suppose, um uh. And and
one more that I really want to talk about before
we break for you for the second episode is that
they had a thermostat with with multiple programmable controls, like
you can just walk up and press a button and
it will set the temperature and and presumably a number
(57:46):
of other controls to a whole set of whatever you
told it to be interesting. So which complex environmental controls? Yeah,
which we've got Yeah, Nest. Nest came out a couple
of years ago and has been and really popular, and
now we've got a lot of competitors on the market
to These are all learning thermostats that make it very
easy for you to change the temperature of your home.
(58:07):
And it also can even have learning algorithms so that
it knows what your preferences are, or it can detect
if there's no one in the house and make sure
that you're not heating an empty house. Or you can
set it to to do a thing at a certain
time of day, or you can trigger it when you
when you're coming home, or it can automatically trigger when
you're coming home. So so honestly, this is another thing
(58:28):
that didn't quite look far forward enough in that uh,
I mean the fact that that older Marty has to
go up to the wall and poke a button on it.
It's kind of outdated. Yeah, yeah, so this was fun.
This was a fun first episode. We still got a
lot more. You're probably thinking, hey, there's one incredible piece
of technology that's in Back to the Future too that
(58:49):
you guys didn't cover. Well, you know, we have this
on purpose. You had to save some stuff for the
second episode. We actually move things around to make sure
about it. So make sure you join us for our
next episode, where we will conclude this discussion and hit
several more and talk about the things that are possible
that are not possible that might be hoaxes or jobs. Hint, hint,
(59:11):
And if you have any suggestions for future episodes, you
should let us know. Send us an email the addresses
f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com. Drop
us a line on Twitter, Google Plus, or Facebook. On
Google Plus and Twitter, we are f W thinking. Just
search fw thinking on Facebook will pop right up. Leave
us a suggestion, comment, questions, anything you like, and we
(59:34):
will talk to you again really soon. Create For more
on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward
thinking dot com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's go
(59:57):
places
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Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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