As 2015 is finally upon us, we can now see what Back to the Future Part II predicted and how right they were. Unfortunately, it isn’t quite what Marty and the Doc showed us back in 1989. But even if life isn’t quite all self-drying jackets and holographic movie posters, there is one invention which is making its way into our lives, the Nike self-lacing shoes.
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American shoe giant Nike, have announced they plan to release the real version of the self-lacing shoes worn by Marty McFly when he visited the future of 2015. Nike CEO Mark Parker claimed the fictional shoes were the “greatest shoe never made” and in 2014 the company filed a patent for the self-lacing mechanism within the shoe. The actual lacing itself would be achieved either by a button on the shoe or automatically when the user slips their feet in through weight detection. The shoes, named the Nike Air MAGS, will be released by the end of the year.
As for other predictions from the film, several are in fact reality. The ‘phone glasses’, as seen in the McFly household, certainly bears resemblance to Google Glass, the wearable technology that completely enables a hands-free experience utilising voice-activation for control. In the film, the stylish looking glasses enabled you to phone and video chat, something that has existed in mobile phones for a while now. It has to be said though, the design of the phone glasses in Back to the Future are significantly cooler than Google Glass.
The future world of kitchen appliances must have appealed to the film makers back in 1989, as the film featured many improvements around the kitchen, including a ‘food hydrator’, which supposedly takes a tiny, dry pizza and hydrates it to a full sized and very tasty meal in under 20 seconds. Unfortunately this one invention hasn’t seen the light of day yet. Another invention that present day 2015 hasn’t caught up with the 80s iteration is the ‘retractable garden centre’, an organic vegetable garden in your actual kitchen, conveniently able to be stashed away until you need it.
Self-drying jackets were very much a common thing in the Back to the Future world of 2015, as Marty McFly demonstrated, a press of a button and the jacket would dry itself in a matter of seconds. A technology many would agree, would be incredibly handy. Walking your dog should have been easier in 2015, by way of an automatic dog walker which meant you never actually had to physically take your pet out. Holographic movie posters were another idea that never really caught on, in the case of the film when a badly animated shark burst out of the poster towards Marty, advertising Jaws 19, which thankfully also hasn’t happened.
Finally, the most wanted invention from the film, the hoverboard. But unlike some of the crazy contraptions thought of back in 1989 that have never materialised, the one that has had relative progress is the skateboard of the future. A Kickstarter campaign was started by Hendo Hover, a team who were looking for $250,000 to actually fund the project of creating one. Not only did they meet their target, they exceeded it by double and a video was released showing pro skater Tony Hawk testing it out. The hoverboard will officially be unveiled to the world October 21 2015.
So by the end of the year, you too will be cruising around on a hoverboard wearing Nike auto-lacing shoes.
