What the Movies Got Right About the Future

4 predictions of future technology that the movies got right

Autonomous Cars

Experiments on automated driving systems have been trialed since the 1950s. Movies and TV shows like: Knight Rider, Total Recall and Minority Report have showcased interactive driverless cars, set in the year 2054. But as soon as 2019, cars feature interactive computers, while Google and Tesla have tested self-driving cars on public roads. By 2020, self-driving cars could be a staple of ride sharing public transit package delivery.

Hoverboard

The hoverboard dazzled moviegoers in the 1989 sci-fi adventure Back to the Future 2. Despite not being as commonplace in that movie's “future” of 2015, modern attempts at hoverboards have yielded some success. Lexus has produced the Slide, a superconductor board that requires a magnetic surface to work. Others have created jet-powered flyboards. Others define hoverboards as a sort of vehicle that uses air to get it off the ground, but some argue that those are hovercrafts.

Video Calling

It may a feature of every smartphone and computer, but video phones were first shown on the big screen in the German expressionist film Metropolis — in 1927. The future tech then appeared in1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey., which predicted they would be commonplace by 2001, and even work from space orbit. But instantaneous digital video conferencing beat the film by 16 years -- the first digital videophone becoming operational in 1985.

Virtual Reality

The concept of virtual reality was codified in pop culture Laurence Manning’s The Man Who Awoke in 1933. Total Recall and The Matrix popularized the idea of entire visual worlds that could be easily explored with eyewear or an implant — something they saw happening by 2085. But VR headsets already offer interactive experiences that could soon be at human eye resolution., with applications for entertainment education, and medical research.

Brut.