Hello!

Disclaimer: I tried posting this some time ago, but it was swallowed up by a void. This is something that happens on the forum occasionally. Apologies if my original post pops up.


2021 is here. What futuristic technology are we missing right now?

From Back to the future: self lacing shoes. The name describes itself. Also hoverboards. The ones in the movie are just skateboards without wheels. I want something that can fly over regular traffic.

From Terminator: The rise of the machines. Was supposed to happen in '97. Over 20 years later and I'm still waiting to be shot to death by murder bots. What's the freakin' hold up?

Street Fighter 2010: The game takes place 10-ish years ago. It was a combination of the Alien franchise and the Terminator series. The particular tech missing from this is the arm mounted canon.

Not from any particular media: when I was training for office administration in college, there was talk of the paperless office. I can see it happening eventually, but certainly not within my lifetime.

"self-lacing shoes" in the form of sensor inflatable fastening could be done probably relatively easily, but isn't worth the cost.

EDIT: They exist, as tension/"lace" and not pneumatic. https://www.geekwire.com/2019/nike-unveils-new-self-lacing-basketball-shoes-controlled-smartphone-app/

Hal, we are missing Hal,

the obelisk did emerge !

Isn't the standard "Where's my flying car?" I mean, practical, consumer=purchasable car, of course. Not the vaporware and cars that convert to planes that have been "available" since the 80s. Plus speaking of BttF, which also features a flying car, I'd love to have a Mr. Fusion. More convenient, longer lasting than a gasoline-powered generator, for sure.

The three shells. Toilet paper should be obsolete.

Wasn't there talk that we should have high-speed trains that can hover above the ocean by now?
Pretty sure this was mentioned in the movie Zeitgeist many years ago.

where i pour water on food powder, and it cooks itself into a tasty meal
this is the one we actually need not the other techs, like lame looking flying cars

Everything, except the handheld communication devices from Star Trek (= smartphones). Oh and self-driving cars seem to be becoming some kind of reality as well.

Quite many futuristic views, not counting Mad Max and Waterworld kind of dystopias, seem to have believed that we would be using technology which uses lots of energy, like flying cars, hoverboards, generally flying to everywhere (even space) all the time, everything is automated etc. Sometimes this is explained by having come up with fusion energy or some other way to generate lots of energy very cheaply and pollution-free, but sometimes even this isn't required. Cars fly because... cars fly, no matter how much energy that would actually require.

Oh and the security concerns of flying cars is not really thought of either, even if the rush hour scenes in e.g. "The Fifth Element" and "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones" give some glimpse of that. Two cars slightly colliding in mid-air...

What no movies (that I remember of) seemed to anticipate was that there will be a worldwide religious movement lead by an autistic Swedish girl, which demands that everyone must use as little energy as possible, and a society which resembles China in the 70s is some kind of utopia that we should strive for (ie. no cars (except maybe for the highest elite), everyone either bicycles or walks to wherever they want to go, people go from Europe to US to attend an UN convention with a sailboat, etc.).

Then again such future would have seemed kinda boring, as if going back in time a few hundred years, so no wonder it wasn't used in any movies.

The self cleaning house or apartment.

A natural nuclear fusion-fission hybrid reactor.

A holodeck. Live in a one room apartment and make it look like a luxury villa.

Robot butlers.

Artificial bodies with several sexes to accommodate wishes and feelings of people thinking there is or should be more than one.

Weather control.

Mind reading devices.

The time machine.

A virtual 3D dream recording device this would revolutionize the world of entertainment!

I can't believe I forgot about the three seashells

XD

Depends what you want. If you want a robotic Lucy Liu, I'm afraid you'll need to wait until the year 3000.

why even live?

Autonomous vehicles are much safer than human drivers since they communicate between each other so they always know what the other will be doing and what's happening further down the road, have much faster response times than a human, and don't have bad temper; and self-driving cars will arrive much earlier than flying cars. We won't have to worry about traffic congestion and crashes in the city low-altitude airspace.

That's a real thing. I think they go for $15K - $30K

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sex+dolls