It's finally 2015, the year when Back to the Future II promised everything would be cooler.
The first Back to the Future movie hit theaters 30 years ago today. In the sequel, released in 1989, director Robert Zemeckis imagined a futuristic world where people would have hoverboards, food hydrators and automatic dog walkers. Oh, and for some reason, fax machines would still be cool.
Okay, so many predictions in the film were hilariously off the mark. But there are some gadgets the film predicted correctly. Here are a just a few tech tools from the Back to the Future universe that have actually come to life.
(For what it's worth: Lexus has actually created a real hoverboard — but it basically only workson specially made streets combined with magnets. Plus, the company isn't even making the boards for mass consumption. Excuse us while we cry.)
1. Phone glasses
In Back to the Future II, everyone wore multi-purpose smart glasses to watch TV or answer calls. Today, we have things like Google Glass and the Oculus Rift for similar-ish tasks, though neither are super mainstream yet. Besides, wearing Google Glass today still makes you look like a total glasshole.
2. Doors with fingerprint recognition (and biometrics in general).
Aside from phones with touch ID, people today can totally buy door locks that operate with fingerprint recognition.
For an even more futuristic twist, there's a hotel in Barcelona that has a fingerprint recognition system on its doors, as well as a Singaporean hotel in the works that will have fingerprint recognition technology. (On top of that, it also largely be run by robots.) The future is now, kids.
3. Marty McFly's self-lacing Nikes
In the sequel, McFly slips on a pair of self-lacing white Nikes, inspiring a chorus of ooh-ing and aah-ing sneakerheads. In 2011, Nike actually released 1500 pairs of limited edition Nike Air Mags, replicas of the '80s high-tops. However, they were only sold through an eBay auction, with benefits going toward the Michael J. Fox foundation for Parkinson's Research.
If you're still sad you couldn't cop a pair, you can now snag a slipper version of the shoes.
4. TV video calls
Video chatting straight from your TV seemed like a futuristic impossibility in 1989. Today, we have the power of video calling in our pockets. There are also numerous ways to video chat on a TV in today's world, from using a smart TV with Skype to using a BluRay player or an Xbox One.
5. Tablets
Characters casually wield tablets in the film and — surprise, surprise — we're obsessed with the things now. Sure, we all made our jokes when the iPad was initially released, but tablets have since become the perfect in-between for people too lazy to carry laptops and too tired to stare at small phone screens.
However, it's still unacceptable to take photos with your iPad at concerts. And graduations. And parties. And family vacations. And...
6. 3-D movie obsessions (and never-ending sequels)
In one scene, McFly walks by a movie theater called a Holomax playing Jaws 19 — and a hologram of a shark leaps out at him. Sure, we don't have hologram theaters, but 3-D movies have become de rigeur (experiencing a particular boom after the release of Avatar in 2009) and are only becoming more impressive.
Sequels and remakes in general are also getting fairly more aggressive in Hollywood. (Looking at you, Fast and Furious 7 and Spider-Man).
7. Hands-free gaming
Playing video games with your hands is basically like playing "a baby's toy," according to a kid in the film (played by a pint-sized Elijah Wood). Today, we have the Xbox Kinect, which can operate via gestures and spoken commands.
Unfortunately, the Kinect is kind of a flop, so there's still no baby toy stigma around traditional gaming.
BONUS: A Miami baseball team
The film was wrong (very, very wrong) about predicting the Chicago Cubs winning a World Series — they haven't done that since 1908. However, it did correctly predict a Miami baseball team springing to life: The Miami Marlins made their debut in 1993.
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