The future, which is happening now
So here we are in 2010 and there STILL aren’t any flying cars.
We’re kind of shy on personal rocket backpacks as well, despite James Bond using one to escape bad guys once.
And what about interstellar flight to interstellar colonies? Or for that matter scheduled Pan Am flights to the moon? (Complete with stewardesses using Velcro-bottomed slippers to anchor themselves to the floor.)
One thing that was supposed to still be widespread was smoking, complete with self-igniting cigarettes and presumably a quick and easy cure for lung cancer.
But while a dwindling number of people continue to puff, the idea they would be banished into alleyways or outside back doors like pariahs wasn’t something anyone saw coming.
OK, so what future stuff DO we have?
Well, there’s personal communicators, aka “cell phones.” Videophones (technically available, but do you know anyone who has one?) A space station. Lasers (in places you never expected to see them). Cameras everywhere watching everyone (just not the way Orwell envisioned things). Electric cars (sort of). Life-saving medical technology and procedures which are now routine, but unfortunately at costs that threaten to impoverish people (at least in the U.S.) Genetic modification. A robot vacuum cleaner (sort of). Flat-screen TVs (and getting flatter).
Oh yeah! I almost forgot electric books! (A friend got a Kindle for Christmas.)
On the flip side, one future thing we’re likely never to see will be flying bar tables.
It was the science fiction writer Larry Niven who explained why this idea wouldn’t work.
In one of his short stories, the narrator is been invited into a bar by another character and notices that the tables seemed to be designed to hover, but are all solidly grounded.
His companion explains that when the place opened up, the tables did indeed hover. But since people drink in bars, and when they drink they get silly, it wasn’t long before fights were breaking out because somebody would fly over another patron and dump their drink on their head or start swooping around on an impromptu joyride.
The owners tried to fix the tables in place at different altitudes, but people figured out how to hack the controls and the next thing you know folks were playing bumper cars with their tables. So, ultimately, the tables wound up being nailed to the floor.
Having been in more than one bar, I think Niven hit this one on the head. As the French say, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
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