Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. He's welcome to rid Thinking, the podcast that
Speaker 1: looks of the future and says, tell me, doctor, where
Speaker 1: are we going this time? I'm Jonathan Strickland LA, and
Speaker 1: I'm Griff McCormick. Hey, Griff, Hey, So guys, happy two,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, this is the first podcast episode that
Speaker 1: we are recording in Yeah. So it's it's a brand
Speaker 1: new year. And it's not just a brand new year,
Speaker 1: it's a very important year for the future. According to
Speaker 1: the documentary series Back to the Future, you know, I
Speaker 1: thought Back to the Future just did not have enough
Speaker 1: future in it. It's all about the fifties. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Well that's because he has to go back to the future.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. But it's really really rectified that deficiency
Speaker 1: in the sequel. Yes, well they only partially did, because
Speaker 1: most of the sequel still takes place in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and the nineteen eighties, and and honestly, when you
Speaker 1: spend some time in the future, you're thankful for that.
Speaker 1: The future is stupendous. According to nineteen eighty nine, uh
Speaker 1: this this nine nine movie? Um yeah, yeah, back Back
Speaker 1: to the Future Part two was was released in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. That's four years after Back to the Future
Speaker 1: Part one, Right, And as many people have pointed out
Speaker 1: on Twitter at the beginning of this year, hey, we're
Speaker 1: now in the Back to the Future two year. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the year that they go forward to from Back
Speaker 1: to the Future too is uh, they in fact land
Speaker 1: on four at four pm on October one, right, and uh.
Speaker 1: One of the people who actually mentioned that this is
Speaker 1: the year of Back to the Future to future was me,
Speaker 1: And it was on our forward Thinking page that I
Speaker 1: did post that. Yeah. It was one of those things
Speaker 1: where I got hired of seeing the meme. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you guys have seen it too, where multiple times over
Speaker 1: the last few years, people have posted a photoshopped version
Speaker 1: of the time machine that the time yeah, exactly from
Speaker 1: the DeLorean and had the date change so that it
Speaker 1: reflected whatever the current date was that day and say,
Speaker 1: today's the day that Murty move Fly traveled to the future.
Speaker 1: And I kept thinking, no, it was two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1: And it's easy to It's easy to prove one because
Speaker 1: you can go see the movie. But two, they he
Speaker 1: traveled in thirty year increments. He traveled thirty years to
Speaker 1: his past and thirty years to his future, approximately a
Speaker 1: generation gap, which is kind of the point of the
Speaker 1: storyline exactly. So I mean that you know that when
Speaker 1: I kept seeing it back in two thousand twelve was
Speaker 1: a bad year for it. I think I saw it
Speaker 1: three or four times in two thousand twelve. But now
Speaker 1: we're finally in that year. We're not quite at that time, because,
Speaker 1: like you said, Lauren, it's October that we're looking at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that we can suck up any inconsistencies in
Speaker 1: the movie with the fact that it's not October yet.
Speaker 1: I think that by the time it is October, all
Speaker 1: of these things will have come to pass. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be some pretty dramatic things to happen this year in
Speaker 1: order for that to happen. Well, since we're here at
Speaker 1: the outset of the year, I think it would be
Speaker 1: great to do a couple of episodes looking at all
Speaker 1: of the fantastic predictions about the year made by the
Speaker 1: movie Back to the Future too, and see see how
Speaker 1: we stack up against reality. Honestly, a lot of them
Speaker 1: were really clever. I just watched the movie again last night, Um,
Speaker 1: it had been maybe twelve years since I had seen it,
Speaker 1: like a like a good chunk of time. Um. But
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of the predictions that it makes,
Speaker 1: and I made little air quotes because those work really
Speaker 1: well on radio when I said predictions, Uh, A lot
Speaker 1: of their predictions are for the sake of kind of
Speaker 1: silly jokes, most of them delivered by Christopher Lloyd. Um.
Speaker 1: But that being said, a lot of the little details
Speaker 1: in the movie were actually very canny in terms of
Speaker 1: telling us what our world was going to look like, right,
Speaker 1: especially considering that you know, nineteen five, that's a year
Speaker 1: or nineteen nine when this movie was made. That's a
Speaker 1: year before cell phones became a regular thing that normal
Speaker 1: people were in possession of, Right. I mean there were
Speaker 1: some cellular telephones, but they were pretty rare. Um. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know you think about that in that context, like
Speaker 1: even today, it's hard for us to predict what the
Speaker 1: future is going to look like. Go back ten years,
Speaker 1: and everyone thought that cell phones were just gonna keep
Speaker 1: getting smaller and smaller, to the point where that became
Speaker 1: a joke, like it was a status symbol how small
Speaker 1: your cell phone was. But then we had the transformation
Speaker 1: of being able to watch things like video on our phones.
Speaker 1: Now it's important to have a large phone. Actually. Um,
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm gonna give a little visual visual aid.
Speaker 1: I have a new phone that's approximately the size of
Speaker 1: a truck. Yeah, I've I've met bears that are smaller
Speaker 1: than that phone. This is this is. I'm holding up
Speaker 1: the next to six that I just got yesterday, and
Speaker 1: it is. It is ginormous. So uh. Anyway, the point
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make is that they were even further
Speaker 1: removed from the wondrous future than we were by definition,
Speaker 1: and yet some of their predictions are pretty prescient, not
Speaker 1: all of them, obviously, and they were all meant as
Speaker 1: kind of a tongue in cheek sort of jokey way
Speaker 1: of looking at the future. Well, as I alluded to earlier,
Speaker 1: there are so many things that predicts that we decided
Speaker 1: we should break this up into two episodes. Today is
Speaker 1: going to be part one of Back to the Future.
Speaker 1: Part Two's predictions, right, and that's pretty much gonna be
Speaker 1: the title, right. No, Okay, so we're gonna moving ahead. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's set the scene, all right. You're you're, you're
Speaker 1: young Michael J. Fox. I am a young Michael J. Fox.
Speaker 1: You often, I often mistake you for Michael J. Fox. Right,
Speaker 1: you hop out of your dolory and just having traveled
Speaker 1: forward thirty years from from your comfortable home in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and what are some of the things you
Speaker 1: see in the world around you in the southern California
Speaker 1: of Well, there's tons of stuff to cover. Let's start
Speaker 1: with the clothing, because that was one of the first
Speaker 1: things that we get to see in the film. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course, any time that you time travel, you have
Speaker 1: to I mean, assuming that you're not in the Doctor
Speaker 1: Who universe, in which no one really cares, you have
Speaker 1: to immediately find some kind of clothing so that you
Speaker 1: can fit in with a local population. Right, So you
Speaker 1: find somebody about your build, you knock them out, and
Speaker 1: you steal their clothes and leave them naked. That's that's standard,
Speaker 1: m O. Yeah, or Doc Brown happens to have gone
Speaker 1: shopping for you and just gives you a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: How convenient. So so Doc gives a few things to
Speaker 1: Marty McFly so that he can he can blend in.
Speaker 1: Actually he's essentially posing as his own son who looks
Speaker 1: exactly like him. Yeah, because everyone in that universe looks
Speaker 1: exactly like their ancestors or descendants. I say, again, how convenient. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. So o, no, no, no, hold on.
Speaker 1: I remember one big piece of clothing from this, okay,
Speaker 1: which is the automatic lace up shoes. Yeah. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: put these on and uh they they seem like they're
Speaker 1: kind of not quite fitting you. But then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the little Nike symbol lights up and the
Speaker 1: laces conformed to your feet. Yea, power laces. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds it sounds neumatic. Yeah. Well, obviously there's nothing
Speaker 1: like this in reality, right, not yet, but there's gonna
Speaker 1: be this year. Nike is in fact working on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they announced this previously that at some point in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen they will begin selling shoes that will
Speaker 1: in fact have power laces. Now, they've had mock ups,
Speaker 1: like like shoes that look like the ones Marty McFly war.
Speaker 1: They've offered that a few times over the years, the
Speaker 1: most recent I think being two thousand eleven, and it
Speaker 1: even lights up, like they have shoes that light up
Speaker 1: and they look, you know, cosmetically like that thing exactly.
Speaker 1: But they didn't have the power. Leases all of that
Speaker 1: changes this year, so that technology is actually coming true. Okay,
Speaker 1: so self lacing shoes actually coming out this year. I
Speaker 1: can't wait till we see them and we can talk
Speaker 1: about this, like talk about how cool they are or
Speaker 1: how disappointing they are. Right, I get the feeling it
Speaker 1: will be one way or the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: But how about the jacket that dries itself off? Yeah? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean when you first when he first puts on
Speaker 1: this jacket, uh, the arms are way too long, and
Speaker 1: then it goes up self adjusting and and the arms
Speaker 1: makes some kind of weird pneumatic noise I'm not sure why,
Speaker 1: and they retract to be properly fitting. You're right, it's
Speaker 1: not just drying. It's it's also self adjusting. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And then later in the in the film, we find
Speaker 1: out that it is also self drying, like if you,
Speaker 1: for example, fall into a pond off of your hoverboard,
Speaker 1: then it can it can just kind of go, wouldn't,
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden it's perfect. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like it's filled with hair dryer. Suddenly. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a naysayer, but I really again don't think
Speaker 1: I want this technology. I mean, I wouldn't want a
Speaker 1: jacket that had heating elements, and I wouldn't worry too much, Joe,
Speaker 1: not unless it was for a very specified cold weather
Speaker 1: expedition kind of purpose that I could I could see
Speaker 1: that maybe that would be useful. Yeah, I could see
Speaker 1: like there'd be some sort of heating element allah, an
Speaker 1: electric blanket kind of thing chad into a jacket like that,
Speaker 1: but not one that would be you know, I have
Speaker 1: a motor in it that would that would turn a
Speaker 1: fan so that it could blow and blow dry your
Speaker 1: your outfit while you're wearing it. That doesn't seem terribly practical. Again,
Speaker 1: it was one of those elements I think thrown in
Speaker 1: there as uh like a fanciful science fiction e humorous.
Speaker 1: It was more a joke than anything else. Um that
Speaker 1: the self adjusting part though, and I believe we've talked
Speaker 1: about this on the show way back in the day,
Speaker 1: perhaps when we for started out the podcast. But people
Speaker 1: are working on creating materials that can go into clothing
Speaker 1: that will allow that clothing to to to fit your
Speaker 1: form better by either um using using kinetic energy from
Speaker 1: when you move to to form the to fit the
Speaker 1: fabric to the contours of your body or um or otherwise. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just just creating, especially through three D printing
Speaker 1: more customizable clothes. So and at ces, I saw BELTI belt.
Speaker 1: It is a It's a belt that adjusts itself to you.
Speaker 1: So if you are wearing loose pants, it'll it'll adjust
Speaker 1: so it's snug on you. And then if you start
Speaker 1: eating a big meal, it'll let itself out a notch
Speaker 1: all on its own. That sounds like a very friendly snake. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta think of it. Think of it as like
Speaker 1: I think of it as like the belt itself is
Speaker 1: fed through a system that uses rollers to either tighten
Speaker 1: it or loosen it. The buckle is huge, is not
Speaker 1: like a tiny thing. Um and Joe and I already
Speaker 1: had discussion about what might happen should the absolute worst occur,
Speaker 1: and you're just thinking this is just way too tight.
Speaker 1: It's getting worse. Yeah, I wouldn't. My fear of being
Speaker 1: popped like a grape is greater than my desire to
Speaker 1: not have to fiddle with my own belt. Now we
Speaker 1: have we have seen some advances in textiles and in codings,
Speaker 1: for textiles that would prevent clothing from getting wet where
Speaker 1: the you know where water and oils will just roll
Speaker 1: right off. Some of the stain proof clothing that we've
Speaker 1: seen that's treated by this stuff or has its actual
Speaker 1: structure made in such a way where liquids will just
Speaker 1: roll right off, we've seen that. But that's obviously different
Speaker 1: from something that will dry itself once it's already become wet.
Speaker 1: But still we thought that would be an interesting one. Um,
Speaker 1: you've got another element. Here's something I don't actually remember
Speaker 1: this from the movie. Yeah, okay, So so there were
Speaker 1: several like small personal gadgets that I wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of toss into this category. Um. One is a pair
Speaker 1: of digital binoculars that Doc Brown uses again early on
Speaker 1: in the film. They're the size of kind of like
Speaker 1: a small polaroid camera, and they can report, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in their little display, they report like your distance from
Speaker 1: the subject. Um. They can auto focus on human subjects,
Speaker 1: and it will also give you a little like x
Speaker 1: y z coordinate range that I guess is related to
Speaker 1: like global positioning or something, but it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not It's up on the screen for like three seconds.
Speaker 1: I imagine that must be Biff using it to spy
Speaker 1: on Doc Brown is using it to spy on young Marty.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right, so um, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: we do have digital binoculars. UH. Generally speaking, they tend
Speaker 1: to be cameras and displays that are built into a
Speaker 1: binocular form factor. So you'll get a pair of cameras,
Speaker 1: you get that stereoscopic effect that way. Um, they can
Speaker 1: look pretty far, and you know, I can imagine building
Speaker 1: in uh systems including things like GPS and a compass
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing where you could get readouts
Speaker 1: that would tell you approximate information about this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't know that why anybody really want that in binoculars.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could see it if it were a
Speaker 1: pair of binoculars that also acted as an actual camera
Speaker 1: so that you're taking pictures or video, and then you
Speaker 1: want the GEO tag to be in there as well,
Speaker 1: so I could see it for that. You know, there
Speaker 1: are I'm seeing more and more apps now that are
Speaker 1: about being able to map your real life experience to
Speaker 1: an app so you can share it more easily on
Speaker 1: social media or even like if you're out in the
Speaker 1: wilderness and you say, oh, hey, I want to go
Speaker 1: to that peak over there. How far away is it? Um? Right?
Speaker 1: Then you know it would be useful to have the coordinates. Yeah, exactly. Uh,
Speaker 1: now I do remember this next one, just spying on people.
Speaker 1: I agree, it's a little bit over. Yeah. No, if
Speaker 1: you're if all you're doing is just trying to clandestinely
Speaker 1: watch someone, they're easier ways unless you're playing D and
Speaker 1: D and you need to know the number of fat
Speaker 1: You know whether or not you can walk to them
Speaker 1: in a single action. How many grid squares? I could
Speaker 1: estimate it, or I could just lift up this handy
Speaker 1: dandy para binocular. Now, Jonathan, you're not about to steal
Speaker 1: my thunder on my favorite item. That's just Which is
Speaker 1: the next one, right, the robotic extending baseball Okay, you
Speaker 1: already said it, the robotic telescoping baseball bat. I remember this,
Speaker 1: and this, I think is what the future is really
Speaker 1: all about, is about baseball bats that start off short
Speaker 1: but extend because that's useful. Yeah, I mean, you say
Speaker 1: you want to store five DD baseball bats in a box,
Speaker 1: so we're talking on typical Wednesday. You can't store them
Speaker 1: all in the box. If they're all long to begin with,
Speaker 1: so you got to shrink them, and then when you
Speaker 1: want to use them, you just press the telescoping extension
Speaker 1: button and the bat slides on out. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: the use case scenario that Joe is suggesting has not
Speaker 1: been compelling enough for anyone to actually develop a robotic
Speaker 1: telescoping baseball bat. I've seen yet. Now is it, Lauren?
Speaker 1: I have a question about the movie. Is it? Is
Speaker 1: it Griff in the movie who uses the bat? He
Speaker 1: pulls it out menacingly as if you hit Marty with it,
Speaker 1: he has it behind his back. In fact, and uh
Speaker 1: and and while he is menacing Marty or Marty Jr.
Speaker 1: I forget which the bat kind of again, there's this
Speaker 1: terrific pneumatic sound they keep using for everything, so inaccurate
Speaker 1: to how anything would actually function. I guess it could
Speaker 1: be just a normal robotic I think it'd be hilarious
Speaker 1: if you if you saw every single gadget, every single
Speaker 1: piece of clothing was actually connected via two to its
Speaker 1: enormous pneumatic That's what I imagine this had to be
Speaker 1: in order to make that noise. But yeah, so he's
Speaker 1: holding it behind his back and it kind of telescopes out.
Speaker 1: You might be useful also to have a smart bat
Speaker 1: so that it knows when to extend on its own
Speaker 1: to tell it. Now, that's not good because if anyone
Speaker 1: has smart bat and they wanted to menace me, that
Speaker 1: bat would be like, I just can't. There's I can't
Speaker 1: extend long enough for you to beat This guy needs
Speaker 1: really seriously to be beaten up. Okay, how about some
Speaker 1: other menacing mischief gadgets? Yeah, another item that I think
Speaker 1: Griff has It could be one of his gang members. Uh,
Speaker 1: is kind of like a digital soundboard, because when he
Speaker 1: calls Marty a chicken, you get this great little digital
Speaker 1: sound bite. Yeah yeah, yeah, except that but way more digitized.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, one of his little one of his little
Speaker 1: toady's presses a button. Okay, I'm not I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I didn't catch it, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: do we have that amazing capacity today? Shocker? Yes, Let's
Speaker 1: go to YouTube and watch some soundboard prank calls. I've
Speaker 1: seen people just like grab the like things out of
Speaker 1: greeting cards where you would be able to record your
Speaker 1: own message and a greeting card and essentially do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got tons of tech like that, and
Speaker 1: we even of the soundtrack shirt from Think Geek. Did
Speaker 1: you guys remember when that that was one of that
Speaker 1: was one of their April Fools jokes one year where
Speaker 1: got so much attention that they decided to actually make
Speaker 1: that shirt exactly. They've done this several times where they
Speaker 1: put out a product that they might be thinking about doing,
Speaker 1: but they haven't actually decided yet, and they want to
Speaker 1: see what the reaction is for April Fools and then
Speaker 1: they go ahead and do it. The video they had
Speaker 1: for their April Fools shirt was amazing, where you know,
Speaker 1: it's a guy just kind of going through his daily life,
Speaker 1: but whenever he's in a particular situation, he uses his
Speaker 1: soundtrack shirt to add the the cinematic feel um that
Speaker 1: is appropriate for whatever situation he's in. So he's being chased,
Speaker 1: he's got like chase music playing, he sees a he
Speaker 1: sees a young lady, and he presses the romantic music
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So this is stuff that we
Speaker 1: obviously have incorporated into all different parts of our lives.
Speaker 1: Most of us don't carry around a soundboard, but he
Speaker 1: certainly could you could you could use your phone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing is that again, this this movie
Speaker 1: didn't predict the era of the smartphone, where a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff that that people do in the future
Speaker 1: is that there are things that are handled by a
Speaker 1: mobile device these days. Yeah. Well, I think one of
Speaker 1: the big holes in this movie's vision of the future,
Speaker 1: and and most movies frankly, is the lack of the Internet.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, yeah, the pervasiveness of the Internet and smartphone.
Speaker 1: That's why. I mean even the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
Speaker 1: they envisioned the encyclopedia, encyclopedia that you would carry. The
Speaker 1: actual guide was a self contained thing. It wasn't it
Speaker 1: wasn't connected to some sort of network. In the original one,
Speaker 1: it was all all that information was stored in this
Speaker 1: handheld device. And the interesting thing is now we have
Speaker 1: access to the equivalent of that, but it's through network connections. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: and because because it couldn't be updated in Hitchhiker's Guy, right, right,
Speaker 1: it was all a stable format until a new one
Speaker 1: was published. Right. That's what Ford Prefect was doing on Earth,
Speaker 1: was he was gathering research so that he could update
Speaker 1: the entry on Earth for the next edition of The
Speaker 1: Guy Right. Okay, Um, but actually, before we move on
Speaker 1: from Griff's gangs gadgets, say that five times fast. Um,
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention that one thing that will that
Speaker 1: will be possible in this incredible future of today is
Speaker 1: that women can be part of your crappy high school gang. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for the first time in the series, we see they're
Speaker 1: not allowed to speak. Oh no, no, she has speaking
Speaker 1: like do because she has like a claude one finger
Speaker 1: and and it's it's a detachable clause. It's not like
Speaker 1: her finger is a claw. And she and she threatens
Speaker 1: Marty or something. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I remember her.
Speaker 1: He's got like a really high ponytail. Yeah. For the
Speaker 1: sake of equality, I'm all four female bullies. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess we've always had female bullies for for a
Speaker 1: society in which females feel okay about bullying males. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go the future indeed, So continuing on this
Speaker 1: bright future and various gadgets, Okay, this this next device
Speaker 1: shows up a couple of places in the movie. Um. First,
Speaker 1: relatively early on, when Marty is approached by someone looking
Speaker 1: for donations UM for the clock tower, which as always
Speaker 1: is in need of repair. UM. And secondly when um,
Speaker 1: when someone pays for a cab ride later on UH.
Speaker 1: And and that is a little handheld digital credit pad
Speaker 1: that that can be access to using a thumb print,
Speaker 1: Like you press your thumb into it and it knows
Speaker 1: who you are and it just deducts whatever you want
Speaker 1: to give from your bank account. Biometric payment, and we've
Speaker 1: talked about that so many times on the show. And
Speaker 1: while we don't really see a lot of implementations of
Speaker 1: that directly, it is something that we've seen indirectly used.
Speaker 1: For example, Apple pay using using an iPhone to pay
Speaker 1: for something through NFC, which is in the iPhone, but
Speaker 1: you use you might use your thumb print as the
Speaker 1: way of identifying yourself so that you acknowledge the payment
Speaker 1: going through. So it's not we haven't reached a point
Speaker 1: where our fingerprints are directly tied to our bank accounts,
Speaker 1: which I think a lot of people are thankful for.
Speaker 1: But we've definitely reached this point where we can have
Speaker 1: the credit card or currency free monetary exchange these days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we can we can certainly have like mobile payments anywhere,
Speaker 1: even without biometrics for through things like like Square or
Speaker 1: other little credit dongles. Yeah, yep, so that that one's
Speaker 1: uh well, well, the implementation is different today than what
Speaker 1: we see in the film. It's still more or less
Speaker 1: i'd say, I'd say, in the same spirit. So that
Speaker 1: one's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, Um. They also featured a
Speaker 1: some kind of I D technique, and I believe it
Speaker 1: was also through a thumb print, though it might have
Speaker 1: been off screen. I have to admit to you, guys,
Speaker 1: I wasn't paying wrapped attention every moment of this film.
Speaker 1: I do not blame you for this. Having seen there,
Speaker 1: I'm actually very fond of it. But but uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have I D techniques that will tell, for example,
Speaker 1: a cop if they if they scan you, however, they're
Speaker 1: going to scan you basic personal personal profile kind of
Speaker 1: information like your age, your address, your name, and um
Speaker 1: can run an immediate drug screening on you. Oh, this
Speaker 1: is what they do with what's her face? When they
Speaker 1: when they find Jennifer Marty's girlfriend. Yeah, and then they
Speaker 1: end up because she's been knocked out, they end up
Speaker 1: taking her back to what they think is her home
Speaker 1: because of course her her genetic information hasn't changed at all.
Speaker 1: Her fingerprint or her DNA or whatever it is that
Speaker 1: they scan is identical to her future selves, right, So
Speaker 1: they just drop her off at her future selves home
Speaker 1: because they don't know that she's you know, not, she's
Speaker 1: not from that time. Why don't they just take her
Speaker 1: to jail because she's just she's found unconscious. Yeah, her
Speaker 1: drug screening comes back clean. Okay, Yeah, people don't get
Speaker 1: no further question. People get thrown in jail just for
Speaker 1: being unconscious, not in this incredible future. So hey, wait
Speaker 1: a second, we're skipping over a huge part of this future.
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. The hypercolor baseball caps exactly
Speaker 1: what I mean. That did come out in the eighties
Speaker 1: but was almost immediately abandoned because no, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: where we're going. We don't need rows. The flying car,
Speaker 1: in fact, you see it. I believe at the end
Speaker 1: of the first Back to the Future movie that you know,
Speaker 1: you take your delore into and you can get it
Speaker 1: upgraded so that it can do vertical takeoff and landing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that the cars in this in this potential future,
Speaker 1: that the wheels kind of turn up and the car
Speaker 1: can do a sort of running vertical takeoff like like
Speaker 1: I guess you need a little bit of a landing stretch,
Speaker 1: but or a takeoff stretch, so that'd be like a
Speaker 1: short takeoff and landing. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Um
Speaker 1: and yeah yeah they do right. They do have have
Speaker 1: a conversion for older model cars and nine dollars yes,
Speaker 1: um and uh. And and they're quiet like like like
Speaker 1: an electric car might be today. Yeah. So we've done
Speaker 1: episodes on flying cars, We've talked about them extensively on
Speaker 1: this podcast, and as we have mentioned before, we don't
Speaker 1: really have what we certainly don't have flying cars that
Speaker 1: your general consumer can get their hands on. We a
Speaker 1: lot of the flying cars we've looked at look more
Speaker 1: like drivable airplanes and less like a car that flies.
Speaker 1: But that is some progress. I mean, we basically have
Speaker 1: light sportcraft, uh, flying vehicles that you could also drive
Speaker 1: on a road. You you probably need to have some
Speaker 1: kind of pilot training to fly them for for the
Speaker 1: ones that we actually have, yes, yeah uh. As we've
Speaker 1: talked about with flying cars in the past, I want
Speaker 1: to reiterate my point of view, which is that I
Speaker 1: don't think flying cars will ever become a reality unless
Speaker 1: they're fully autonomous, right, Yeah, just I hope that they
Speaker 1: won't because that sounds terrifically dangerous. Yeah, just letting people
Speaker 1: operate their own flying vehicles around the city, it sounds
Speaker 1: absolutely insane. So so there's less You've got Doc Brown
Speaker 1: popping in and out of existence on the wrong side
Speaker 1: of the highway. And then there's just these two flames
Speaker 1: that are extending out in the middle of the air
Speaker 1: for no reason. But like, what is what is what
Speaker 1: is actually on fire? Look that the delirian when it
Speaker 1: when it goes through time. Um, the the drag created
Speaker 1: by even the vertical standing wheels is so great that
Speaker 1: it catches the molecules in the air. The atmosphere is burning.
Speaker 1: Like every time he travels through time, he just wipes
Speaker 1: out all life on earth. That Doc Brown so irresponsible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so these flying cars also have an infrastructure set
Speaker 1: up where where the highways I guess ways, sky ways
Speaker 1: thank you thank you? Yeah yeah, are our lit um
Speaker 1: and signed with these kind of drone like floating lights
Speaker 1: and signs. I want to raise a point about that,
Speaker 1: which is that if we were to designate roadways in
Speaker 1: the sky over cities. I feel like that could counteract
Speaker 1: some of the positive implications of having a flying vehicle.
Speaker 1: Like part of what's great about having a flying car,
Speaker 1: at least in your imagination, is you can travel as
Speaker 1: the crow flies, so you don't need to go in
Speaker 1: an L shape to get to your destination on the
Speaker 1: main roads. You can go straight there in a straight line,
Speaker 1: and of course that is much more efficient. But if
Speaker 1: you if you're basically having to get on the highway anyway,
Speaker 1: except it's just above the ground, why why are you
Speaker 1: even having flying cars at this point? And there's there's
Speaker 1: even a moment in the movie where where Doc and
Speaker 1: Marty are trying to get somewhere and and Doc checks,
Speaker 1: I think can his driving visor, which I'll discuss in
Speaker 1: another second, um the traffic conditions, and he's like, the
Speaker 1: highways jammed or the skyways jammed. We're never going to
Speaker 1: get through in time, which is my really terrible Christopher
Speaker 1: llyd impression. I think, Um, but uh yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's basically pointless other than the fact that it gives
Speaker 1: you more ground space, I guess. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say it could travel faster because
Speaker 1: it doesn't have the friction on the ground. Maybe, but
Speaker 1: it's it's more than just pointless though, because it's it's
Speaker 1: counterproductive because when you have an accident, and you would,
Speaker 1: then you have the added complication that your accident is
Speaker 1: taking place at above the ground will fall down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so it's it's not just not just counterproductive, it
Speaker 1: is actively killing people. Well, I have another question, which
Speaker 1: is that as again, as we've talked about with flying
Speaker 1: cars in the past, you'd have a large energy consumption problem. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Flight is not something that is mechanically easy. It requires
Speaker 1: a large energy investment, especially if you're talking about vertical
Speaker 1: or short takeoff and landing. Well, yeah, when you have
Speaker 1: something like a car that does not on its own
Speaker 1: generate lift, yeah, then you obviously have to overcome all
Speaker 1: the weight of that vehicle with lift generated some other way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is a huge problem when you're you're imagining
Speaker 1: creating flying cars, you'd have to have this gigantic energy
Speaker 1: investment in getting it in the air. You want to
Speaker 1: make it incredibly light so that it, you know, requires
Speaker 1: as little lift as possible. How are they generating this energy?
Speaker 1: And it's no problem. They just use fusion. Mr fusion.
Speaker 1: They just pop it open and throw a beer in
Speaker 1: a banana peal. Yea, yeah, it's it's a fusion. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a little car held fusion generator UM that
Speaker 1: can be retroactively installed. And uh and and and it's
Speaker 1: powered by garbage. And here's here's something. Let me let
Speaker 1: me let me list out some of the problems I
Speaker 1: have here. Obviously we don't have that step one. Step
Speaker 1: one is the fusion industries. It's not a business that
Speaker 1: we have yet, so we're all just waiting for fusion industries.
Speaker 1: They've got a real short timeline to work on this
Speaker 1: and get a product out onto the market. But in
Speaker 1: the step one is that we have yet to have
Speaker 1: a really efficient fusion reactor generate energy. We have seen
Speaker 1: in two thousand and fourteen we saw there are research projects, yes,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand and fourteen we saw the first
Speaker 1: time where a fusion reactor actually produced more energy than
Speaker 1: it took to start it, but it only was able
Speaker 1: to consume one percent of the fuel, meaning it's still
Speaker 1: very inefficient. So if your fuel goes unused, that's still
Speaker 1: not a great story. Even though you're getting more energy
Speaker 1: out of the initial reaction than you did having to
Speaker 1: put into it, so we still got a long way
Speaker 1: to go. Secondly, that has nothing to do with just
Speaker 1: throwing garbage into something. Third, even within the the logic
Speaker 1: of the film itself, this doesn't make sense because in
Speaker 1: the third film you find out that the car still
Speaker 1: runs on gasoline, that the fusion was for the time circuits,
Speaker 1: not for the vehicle itself, because when Marty McFly goes
Speaker 1: back in time, the fuel line ruptures, and that's why
Speaker 1: he can't get the car going anymore. The second so,
Speaker 1: what are the other cars that have Mr Fusion on
Speaker 1: them use it for. I'm guessing that a lot of
Speaker 1: them are using fuel, because there is a Texico station
Speaker 1: shown off in the very beginning of Marty's journey back
Speaker 1: to the future. Well let's not get into the Texico
Speaker 1: station yet. That's a whole other section, but the point
Speaker 1: being that I think they're still using some sort of
Speaker 1: gasoline style fuel, at least for some functions of the car.
Speaker 1: Keeping in mind that the cars themselves have been a
Speaker 1: lot of them have been retrofitted with this flying stuff,
Speaker 1: it may be that Mr Fusion is providing the power
Speaker 1: or flight. But then for terrestrial operation. It's still using gasoline.
Speaker 1: What's a hybrid vehicle? I can't what a ridiculously bone
Speaker 1: headed prediction they make that we'd still be using fossil
Speaker 1: fuel cars. Look, I spent all last week talking about that.
Speaker 1: So we're just gonna We're just gonna move on. Um, well,
Speaker 1: how about some other stuff having to do with the
Speaker 1: cars in the driving All right, Well, we we mentioned
Speaker 1: a minute ago, um Doc Brown's driving goggles, and um,
Speaker 1: they appear to be completely opaque. I'm wondering if Christopher
Speaker 1: Lloyd was walking around blind every time he was wearing
Speaker 1: them on Wait wait, wait, wait wait, driving goggles the
Speaker 1: car like open air winda. No, it's more like smart glasses. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It it's sort of like a visor. It looks it
Speaker 1: looks visor's silver. It's silver. I can picture it now,
Speaker 1: I know what you're yeah. Yeah. And and I was
Speaker 1: thinking while I was watching it that maybe it's like
Speaker 1: a heads up display or something. And uh and and
Speaker 1: he does have a line that made me think that
Speaker 1: it has like a rear display in the goggles. You
Speaker 1: can so that he can see behind the car better
Speaker 1: than just with mirrors. See that that is entirely possible.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's we've got smart glasses that are
Speaker 1: coming out now that can do things like feed video
Speaker 1: into the glasses. I don't know that we're going to
Speaker 1: see that becomes something acceptable in like, I'm sure we're
Speaker 1: going to see legislation actually banning that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: for drivers behind the wheel of a car. But with
Speaker 1: the blast shield down, I can't see a thing. How
Speaker 1: am I supposed to fly? All right, Luke, listen, you
Speaker 1: go play with your power converters. The adults talk separate
Speaker 1: incredible future past that we're talking about. That that's an
Speaker 1: entirely different universe. We talked about that with the lightsabers.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Um, the car that the Dolorean for the
Speaker 1: future also does have a metallic barcode license plate. That's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. Yeah, also unnecessary. I mean I wonder
Speaker 1: if that would be an improved it. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: because I mean if you have a database that has
Speaker 1: everybody's vehicle registration in it and it's linked to an
Speaker 1: alpha numerical license plate, that's gonna be a lot easier
Speaker 1: for someone to relay over a communication device and saying,
Speaker 1: oh it's a barcode, let me scan it. Well there though,
Speaker 1: you're assuming that it's a human reading Oh yeah, I guess,
Speaker 1: But I guess a machine could read alpha numerica or
Speaker 1: a bark could only read alpha numericas they were I
Speaker 1: don't know, really good at And that's the thing is
Speaker 1: that when this was made, we didn't really have image
Speaker 1: recognition systems like the software in the hardware that would
Speaker 1: be able to take a picture of a license plate
Speaker 1: and be able to machine read that. But now we
Speaker 1: have that, so there's no need for the barcode, right.
Speaker 1: You could totally get that same information from you know,
Speaker 1: off the shelf stuff today, which is really the crazy
Speaker 1: thing is that you could get like a webcam of
Speaker 1: a decent clarity and some software and you could read it.
Speaker 1: But I think it is worth pointing out that what
Speaker 1: this implies with the barcode, even if it underestimates our
Speaker 1: technology's ability to read alpha numeric, it is I think,
Speaker 1: sort of assuming something that has come true, which is
Speaker 1: that you will have machines looking at your car and
Speaker 1: identifying you without a human in the middle. Absolutely true
Speaker 1: traffic cameras now that we have that will automatically send
Speaker 1: you a ticket looking at your license plate. YEP. That
Speaker 1: that is true. That's a great point. Uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't disagree with that, so so so we'll give them
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, kind of kind of sort of. Um. And
Speaker 1: and the last point that we have here in this
Speaker 1: little kind of cars section is going back to those
Speaker 1: to those gas stations that we've talked about, and they
Speaker 1: appear to be automated, this this Texico station. Because this
Speaker 1: film is chock full of product placement. It's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so cool. I'm actually really proud of how well
Speaker 1: they graded product placement. And Texico appears prominently both in
Speaker 1: in all three eras. So it's in it's in the
Speaker 1: the Marty's present, it's in the past, and it's in
Speaker 1: his future. It does not they do, not, however, appear
Speaker 1: as far as I am aware, in the Old West,
Speaker 1: which maybe there's just like a feed station owned by
Speaker 1: Text and Company, but I don't know, I don't remember
Speaker 1: seeing yea um but but yeah, so so there's this
Speaker 1: this Texico station with with like an automated robot service agent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a like a like a robotic gas pump. It
Speaker 1: actually extends out and begins fueling a car that's parked
Speaker 1: there into the back seat of your car exactly, just
Speaker 1: just spraying your automobile with flammable fuel. Yeah, so we
Speaker 1: don't have these that. We don't have the automated ones.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot us self serve stations, but not
Speaker 1: robotic ones. Well, what we do have now in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases though this isn't really astounding to almost
Speaker 1: anybody who drives because we're used to him. Now we
Speaker 1: have we have like pre pay stations that you can
Speaker 1: pay for your gas without going inside. That's yeah, which
Speaker 1: is very convenient. Also, I don't believe it was gasoline
Speaker 1: whatever whatever. I don't know what it is. It's just
Speaker 1: on the sign uh and and and the prices range
Speaker 1: from seven dollars to almost nine dollars depending upon the
Speaker 1: type of havilne you one I get. I based this
Speaker 1: entirely off a screenshot that someone tookolne. It's like fossil
Speaker 1: fuels derived from ham. It's a good guest, Joe. But
Speaker 1: it also could very possibly just be a proprietary name
Speaker 1: for that company's fuel in the future. So it could
Speaker 1: just be that it is gasoline, but they call it
Speaker 1: have a line. Well, I want to transition to another point.
Speaker 1: Please do I recall scene in Back to the Future
Speaker 1: Part two where where Michael J. Fox wanders out onto
Speaker 1: the street in front of a movie theater. In the
Speaker 1: movie theater is showing what it calls a hollow film
Speaker 1: of Jaws nineteen number one. I am very disappointed that
Speaker 1: we have not reached Jaws nineteen yet. I think the
Speaker 1: last Jaws film was was Jaws for Jaws Revenge, which
Speaker 1: is a wonderful movie. I really thought that there were
Speaker 1: five or six of them, Jaws for starring the brilliant
Speaker 1: Michael Kaine. Maybe I'm just Sharknado movies or something. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. Sharkonado and Piranha have both made direct references
Speaker 1: to Jaws. Yeah, and they're they're easily nineteen terrible shark
Speaker 1: movies since Jaws, but they're not within the Jaws franchise.
Speaker 1: So but anyway, they're advertising Jaws nineteen this time. It's
Speaker 1: really personal, that's what the tagline is. And I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what kind of difference they're imagining in upcome
Speaker 1: film technology, but I get a whiff of unrealistic ideas
Speaker 1: of sort of holographic projection. The things we've talked about
Speaker 1: on the show before where you have a projected image
Speaker 1: that is three dimensional, free standing and can be viewed
Speaker 1: from three hundred and sixty degrees. I think, as far
Speaker 1: as I know, we're we're still it's the nix on
Speaker 1: that that's not gonna happen. Yeah, yeah, And and even
Speaker 1: if the film itself is not in quite that format,
Speaker 1: definitely this this advertisement for it is this this billboard? Right? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So a big shark comes up out of the movie
Speaker 1: theater and a big cartoon shirt, a big jabber jaw
Speaker 1: comes up out of the movie theater and chomps down
Speaker 1: on Michael J. Fox, and he quips that it still
Speaker 1: looks fake, which it does. But heck, I would be
Speaker 1: impressed if the if a movie theater could project a
Speaker 1: three dimension anal image that could be viewed from any
Speaker 1: angle and would come out into the streets. Right. So,
Speaker 1: there is such a thing as glasses free three D,
Speaker 1: which can give you the effect of seeing an image
Speaker 1: appear to be coming out from a screen. This often
Speaker 1: is used in um in in displays for businesses things like,
Speaker 1: uh like casinos, for example, I've seen them there, um
Speaker 1: and you there have been some glasses free three D
Speaker 1: television at least prototypes that have been created. But this
Speaker 1: is not a hologram. It's not something that you can
Speaker 1: view from any angle. If you were standing to the
Speaker 1: side of this display, you wouldn't see anything being projected
Speaker 1: out from the screen. You have to be in a
Speaker 1: sweet spot to get the effect. Yeah. Yeah, The same
Speaker 1: is true for for the Peppers ghost illusions, which we
Speaker 1: discussed at length in our episode about holograms. Right right,
Speaker 1: So in the case of glasses free three D, you
Speaker 1: might be familiar when you're watching three D with glasses.
Speaker 1: What's really happening is your left eye is getting one
Speaker 1: set of images, your right eye is getting another set
Speaker 1: of images, and your brain gets tricked. Your brain combines
Speaker 1: us two into the experience of seeing a single image,
Speaker 1: and that's what gives you that illusion of depth, assuming
Speaker 1: that the film was made well enough. Keeping in mind
Speaker 1: that three D movies are made using an average of
Speaker 1: what most people's like the average width of our distance
Speaker 1: between a person's eyes, and depending on how your eyes
Speaker 1: actually match up to that average, your experience maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: fairly convincing, or it maybe headache inducing. Oh man, I
Speaker 1: wonder if that's why I hate all three D movies.
Speaker 1: If there's something wrong with my eyes, well, it may
Speaker 1: not be that there's anything wrong. It may just be
Speaker 1: that you deviate from the average to a point where
Speaker 1: that's the problem. And it's not that it's not that
Speaker 1: something's wrong, it's just that you're not average. I think
Speaker 1: you should be proud of that, Joe. But at any rate, um, So,
Speaker 1: the glasses are doing that work right. There's a filter
Speaker 1: that lets one set in or shutter. That's letting one
Speaker 1: set in and keeping the other set out either way
Speaker 1: with glasses free three D. That stuff is built directly
Speaker 1: into the screen itself, so your left eyes getting one
Speaker 1: set of images, your right eyes getting another. But it's
Speaker 1: all based upon the screen and where you are standing.
Speaker 1: So if you imagine that the television is at the
Speaker 1: center of a pie and you can only stand on
Speaker 1: essentially one half of that pie. The half that's behind
Speaker 1: the TV is useless. But imagine that there are slices
Speaker 1: coming out and they all converge on the television. If
Speaker 1: you are standing or sitting in the middle of a
Speaker 1: slice so that you know you're you're nice and comfy,
Speaker 1: then you're getting the ideal situation. Situation. You get the
Speaker 1: ideal viewing experience, you can get that three D effect.
Speaker 1: But if you're straddling one of those those cross those
Speaker 1: uh those cuts, you know, between the slices, then you're
Speaker 1: not getting those images properly, and it's gonna look like
Speaker 1: a big old mess and it's going to be totally
Speaker 1: out of focus and disorienting. Related to media, I did
Speaker 1: want to mention that that they have news drones to
Speaker 1: to take pictures in audio and video, which which I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess aren't that far off. Now. We've got drones
Speaker 1: that have cameras, you know, incorporated into them. We've got
Speaker 1: consumer drones that have cameras incorporated into them. I think
Speaker 1: the main issue there would just be knowing when to
Speaker 1: have them trained on a on an event that's newsworthy. Well,
Speaker 1: we also have legislation right now that very much limits
Speaker 1: the commercial use of drones. Yeah, and and these drones
Speaker 1: were like right up in people's faces, so so yeah,
Speaker 1: we we haven't reached a future where we can use
Speaker 1: those kind of drones freely. However, in relation to the
Speaker 1: news media, everything is still printed on paper newspapers like
Speaker 1: with paper, like with tree pulp, like dead trees. So
Speaker 1: newspapers still exist in two thousand fifty, Yes, but there
Speaker 1: are fewer of them. Yeah. Maybe maybe this is just
Speaker 1: an example of Doc Brown having been from the past,
Speaker 1: um really sticking with with one particular type of news media,
Speaker 1: kind of like how how vampires tend to stick with
Speaker 1: their their whatever was in style when they were first turned.
Speaker 1: That's how you can tell a vampire. It's the one
Speaker 1: that's wearing the Edwardian outfit or is sparkling one of
Speaker 1: the two the two giveaways. I'll take your word for it. Okay, okay, Hey,
Speaker 1: I have something else I want to bring up back
Speaker 1: to the freaking part too. I remember there's a part
Speaker 1: where the McFly family has a hankering for some pizza
Speaker 1: and they get a little hockey puck disc kind of thing,
Speaker 1: stick it in some kind of rehydrator machine black and
Speaker 1: Decker hydrator. Yeah, they shut the door, press the button,
Speaker 1: like three seconds later it comes out a steamy pizza
Speaker 1: that's ready to eat. Yeah, and and even that's too long.
Speaker 1: The McFly children are complaining at how long it's taking
Speaker 1: too And then you've got like you can rehydrate a
Speaker 1: pizza Like that's the compliment to the chef. Um, we
Speaker 1: don't have this. Yeah, I understand that this is pretty
Speaker 1: much just for a joke. Yeah, but yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: see anything like that on the market. Now. We've got
Speaker 1: dehydrated foods, and there are some dehydrated foods that you
Speaker 1: rehydrate by boiling them, but that's that's not exactly a timesaver.
Speaker 1: It is a space saver, certainly, and it can mean
Speaker 1: that the food is edible for longer by removing the moisture.
Speaker 1: Obviously we've got a lot of space food that enters
Speaker 1: into this category. But no, we don't have a hydrator
Speaker 1: like oven like device, and and it wouldn't make your
Speaker 1: pizza crust crispy, so I'm not You just have a
Speaker 1: big old wet mass of dough and cheese stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: It is voice activated though, so that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so much a push a button as much
Speaker 1: as a talk very closely into it. It was like
Speaker 1: hydrate level four or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Also
Speaker 1: in the McFly's kitchen, they have kind of like high
Speaker 1: your ponic looking garden in the ceiling that that bursts down.
Speaker 1: This is really quite large. I mean like you would
Speaker 1: have to have an entire floor in between your floors
Speaker 1: for the size of this kind of hydroponic garden. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they call it down and it's got some grapes and
Speaker 1: herbs growing stuff like that. I think that's actually a
Speaker 1: great idea. Yeah, when we've all talked about that in
Speaker 1: the kitchen from the future type stuff, you know, we've
Speaker 1: we've mentioned the idea of the kitchen of the future
Speaker 1: having some kind of hydroponic style garden where you can
Speaker 1: get your hands on fresh stuff a lot, mostly in
Speaker 1: urban areas where you wouldn't necessarily have access to it
Speaker 1: otherwise or not easy access maybe, but it's not something
Speaker 1: that we see in the the average home today. Though,
Speaker 1: even this kind of realization of it makes sense to
Speaker 1: me that you would have a something that folds up
Speaker 1: into the ceiling where it could be right under sort
Speaker 1: of a glass area where it could get sunlight. I
Speaker 1: don't know that that makes sense. That doesn't want that
Speaker 1: in my kitchen. Doesn't work. I don't one in my kitchen.
Speaker 1: My kitchen is directly under my bedroom and we need
Speaker 1: to build a new house. Okay, well, yeah, um, I'll
Speaker 1: make sure to get my Mr Fusion to help me,
Speaker 1: you know, power all this amazing technology. The last thing
Speaker 1: of note in their kitchen um and I was so
Speaker 1: fond of this looking back on it, Uh is they've
Speaker 1: got this. I assume it's like a recipe station. It's
Speaker 1: called Master Cook and it looks exactly like the faux
Speaker 1: recipe stations, a little video screen recipe guides that they
Speaker 1: had in some of those nineteen fifties Kitchen of the Future.
Speaker 1: It looks precisely like it it was. So it's it's
Speaker 1: very it's very cute. Folks at home, you should look
Speaker 1: these up if you've never seen them before. We've talked
Speaker 1: about him on this podcast previously. Ge was the company
Speaker 1: that was sponsoring a lot of these videos great the
Speaker 1: Kitchen of the Future, where they imagined how the funniest
Speaker 1: thing is like they still imagined that a hundred years
Speaker 1: into the future, that Mom's going to spend all day
Speaker 1: in the kitchen. Yeah, yeah, don't don't worry. Our gender
Speaker 1: stereotypes will be firmly in place right now, so she
Speaker 1: doesn't actually have to cook, but she's still in the
Speaker 1: kitchen all day. The figures out buttons to push, probably
Speaker 1: a lot of valiums. So yeah, you're combining the promotional
Speaker 1: videos with mad men. Yeah, but so in these videos,
Speaker 1: they'd have like Mom's thinking about what to make and
Speaker 1: she's got some kind of like looks like a TV
Speaker 1: screen with recipes on it, but she doesn't make the food.
Speaker 1: She just pushes a button and then they come out
Speaker 1: of some kind of conveyor belt. That Lawrence version is
Speaker 1: Mom's thinking about her third glass of wine for the day. Ye.
Speaker 1: The look on the on the nice actress's face in
Speaker 1: the video. And I'm not sure if it was a
Speaker 1: intentional portrayal or if she was directed to do so,
Speaker 1: or if that was just what the actress was feeling
Speaker 1: that day, but she's she's a blank slate, y'all, and
Speaker 1: she's yeah, it's very Stepford. Let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: the home electronics that are that are that appear in
Speaker 1: Back to Theatre. Calling them featured is probably being going
Speaker 1: too far. But in it, uh, one one thing that's
Speaker 1: referenced but that is is not actually shown is the
Speaker 1: video games of the future, because you do have a
Speaker 1: couple of young punk kids who go up to a
Speaker 1: old arcade box in the eighties cafe vintage thing. Huh
Speaker 1: and and and Marty says, oh, I can show you
Speaker 1: how to use it, and and it's got one of
Speaker 1: the little wired guns and he shoots some stuff on
Speaker 1: the screen and they're like, oh man, you have to
Speaker 1: use your hands. That's like a baby's toy. This is
Speaker 1: also a great illustration of how Back to the Future
Speaker 1: Too was merely a bridge between the first one and
Speaker 1: the third one, because this was just to set up
Speaker 1: Marty McFly's ability to shoot a pistol in part three. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that them saying like, oh you you know, you have
Speaker 1: to use your hands. That's a kid's toy or baby's toy. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we do have lots of examples video game
Speaker 1: systems that allow you to not have to use a controller,
Speaker 1: although many of them you still use your hands because
Speaker 1: you're just you're controlling things like the connect or or
Speaker 1: you know, PlayStation even has their camera system that allows
Speaker 1: you to do hands free gaming with certain titles. Um.
Speaker 1: And those are just two recent examples. There have been
Speaker 1: tons of attempts to go to this kind of approach.
Speaker 1: I don't know, because if you're saying like, even if
Speaker 1: you're not having to hold something in your hands with
Speaker 1: the connected, you still would be using your hand, which
Speaker 1: is yeah, That's what I said at the beginning, was
Speaker 1: that you know, you still are just you're controlling, but
Speaker 1: you can also do voice control. So what I'm imagining
Speaker 1: they're saying is that you've got a brain computer interface
Speaker 1: that they play their video games by plugging a chord
Speaker 1: into the back of their head, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: there's no port visible where hiding it were along the
Speaker 1: lines of virtual reality, like like demolition Man style. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well see, you are guess working here. There's no indication.
Speaker 1: We don't see the video games. I mean, that is
Speaker 1: a possible answer, but we don't actually see what their
Speaker 1: video games are, so we don't know what the implementation is.
Speaker 1: But we we have voice control, we've got gesture control. Um,
Speaker 1: we're even starting to see some brain computer interface stuff,
Speaker 1: though not on the consumer level necessarily, at least not
Speaker 1: beyond something really rudimentary like a you know, concentrate and
Speaker 1: you can make this fan blow harder, which will make
Speaker 1: this ball float in the air a little higher, which
Speaker 1: will allow it to go through an obstacle. Course, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got to I watched people use it c s
Speaker 1: and I was determined not to be one of them
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to show up on b roll
Speaker 1: on someone else's story about the thing. But watching people
Speaker 1: like scrunch up their faces they're trying to make a
Speaker 1: little ping pong ball float a little higher in the
Speaker 1: air was kind of entertaining, But we don't exactly know
Speaker 1: what the interface was. Clearly still right now in two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen early two thousand fifteen, we're still very much
Speaker 1: dependent upon controllers. So if that changes dramatically, uh, First
Speaker 1: of all, I this one. I think the ship is sailed.
Speaker 1: There's no way for it to change dramatically enough where
Speaker 1: a little punk kid is going to assume that that's
Speaker 1: the norm now and that using your hands is for babies.
Speaker 1: There's not enough time to pass. We would have need
Speaker 1: to have gone to hands free at least five years ago.
Speaker 1: Another objection I would raise is that babies aren't very
Speaker 1: good at using their hands for things, and I would
Speaker 1: think that something you need strong, dexterous control for would
Speaker 1: be something that's more adult. But anyway, I do maybe
Speaker 1: those kids in the movie We're just idiots, which you know,
Speaker 1: suggesting that there will be idiots in two thousand fifteen
Speaker 1: is a prediction I can completely get behind. Hey another
Speaker 1: prediction that is vaguely plausible. Are these handprint scanner locks
Speaker 1: for the front door of more biometrics? Yeah, because again
Speaker 1: when the cops bring um what's her face home, Jennifer Um,
Speaker 1: when they bring her up to the house they think
Speaker 1: is her home, it's actually her future selves home. They
Speaker 1: use her thumb. They actually grab her hand and use
Speaker 1: her thumb to unlock the door, because she's still unconscious
Speaker 1: at this point, and they bring her in and she's
Speaker 1: they slump her down on the couch and then they
Speaker 1: leave because you know they've done their civic duty. So
Speaker 1: the thing is that biometrics to to open up locks
Speaker 1: not that unusual. There actually are some examples even on
Speaker 1: the consumer market where you can buy a lock that
Speaker 1: has a scanner. It's usually hidden behind something like it's
Speaker 1: got a The lock itself has got a little hook,
Speaker 1: and the ideas you put your finger on the inside
Speaker 1: of that hook and it scans your finger and if
Speaker 1: your fingerprint matches, then it'll unlock. So that way it's
Speaker 1: not exposed the elements. People don't see what kind of
Speaker 1: lock it is. Um, But you can't you can't get
Speaker 1: those The kind of morbid criticism of such a thing
Speaker 1: is that someone could enter your home by cutting off
Speaker 1: your hands right or or even getting a getting a
Speaker 1: really decent photograph of your hand at this point, and
Speaker 1: which is where depending on the exact type of scanner exactly.
Speaker 1: That's why I prefer the scanners that are scanning for
Speaker 1: blood vessels, and preferably ones that are scanning for blood
Speaker 1: moving through the blood levels, because then it'll be like, well,
Speaker 1: that's a dead finger. I'm calling the police. So, hey,
Speaker 1: what's this thing about digital windows? I don't remember this.
Speaker 1: Um So there's a there's a window shade over their
Speaker 1: actual window, their their actual living room window, because their
Speaker 1: neighborhood has turned pretty seedy in the intervening years. Um.
Speaker 1: So they've got this window shade that's this really shoddy
Speaker 1: digital screen, uh that's tuned to some kind of relaxing channel.
Speaker 1: One point, they have like just a like a city
Speaker 1: scape scene outside, so it looks like a beautiful skyline
Speaker 1: type of thing at night. Uh. And then at one
Speaker 1: point they finally do lift the shade up and it retracts.
Speaker 1: So it's it's one of those were you know, you
Speaker 1: pull down and then it it'll it'll retract up into itself.
Speaker 1: Cartoon style. The ones always go flap flap and cartoons.
Speaker 1: I did a hand gesture that would have been very
Speaker 1: helpful if you could see me um at any rate. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are two ways you could do this. You could
Speaker 1: have an o LED style screen which can be flexible,
Speaker 1: and you could actually have the shade itself be a display.
Speaker 1: Or what would be easier in my mind is it
Speaker 1: would just be a reflective screen and you would end
Speaker 1: up projecting UM a scene on that using a small projector.
Speaker 1: And we've seen small projectors become more and more common,
Speaker 1: even high resolution small projectors like things that you could
Speaker 1: you can slip it into your pocket if you need
Speaker 1: to take it on a trip, and then use it
Speaker 1: to show your power point presentation to the board or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know. I think it was in our episode about
Speaker 1: Minority Report that we talked about transparent screens where there
Speaker 1: are people who are actually working on this, but it
Speaker 1: sounds like what they want here is actually not a
Speaker 1: transparent screen. Yeah, you basically just want a regular screen
Speaker 1: and where you actually don't see outside. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: kind of and they do lift it up so you
Speaker 1: do see the window behind eventually, but it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where it's it's kind of it wasn't It
Speaker 1: wasn't going far enough, because you could get a transparent display.
Speaker 1: I played with one at CS just recently, where you
Speaker 1: can see right, you know, when when the screen is clear,
Speaker 1: like when there's nothing being projected out, you can see
Speaker 1: straight through it. And when it's acting as a display,
Speaker 1: it's nearly opaque depending on how dark the images that's
Speaker 1: playing across the screen. So it's kind of funny to
Speaker 1: me that this is a case where it didn't quite
Speaker 1: go far enough. Yeah. Yeah. Um. Another thing kind of
Speaker 1: like that they have these their home television in the
Speaker 1: Flies home is this very large wide screen TV that
Speaker 1: looks a pretty um analogous analogous analogous um to uh
Speaker 1: to the kind of televisions that many people have in
Speaker 1: their homes these days. Um. It has multi screen viewing capacity,
Speaker 1: which is a thing that television's have these days. Um.
Speaker 1: Although all of the images within this little multi screen
Speaker 1: set up are in standard format, none of them are
Speaker 1: wide screen four by three, six by nine, which I
Speaker 1: thought was very charming. Um and uh uh And and
Speaker 1: all the kids apparently watched like six screens at the
Speaker 1: same time, which is actually pretty president according according to
Speaker 1: data from how people are frequently watching things on their
Speaker 1: smartphones and a television and a laptop or at the
Speaker 1: same time four tabs open. Yeah. I mean, I definitely
Speaker 1: have been guilty of having multiple screens up, but it
Speaker 1: means that I'm not paying attention to anything. Really doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I'm not I'm not absorbing anything at that point.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you can. There are services television services that
Speaker 1: allow you to have as many as nine different channels
Speaker 1: on display on a single screen, um simultaneously. It's also
Speaker 1: voice activated, So again we have systems like Sony or
Speaker 1: Xbox the connect that allow for voice activation, and we're
Speaker 1: even seeing that built into some televisions now as well.
Speaker 1: So that's not that unusual. It's not it's not common
Speaker 1: where again you would see it in your average uh
Speaker 1: consumers home, but it is possible. And the fact that
Speaker 1: it was a wall mounted television was actually really forward
Speaker 1: thinking because that's the way a lot of people watch
Speaker 1: their TVs now and that was not something that was
Speaker 1: big in Yeah. Yeah, I. And and that it was
Speaker 1: a flat screen too, I suppose, um uh. And and
Speaker 1: one more that I really want to talk about before
Speaker 1: we break for you for the second episode is that
Speaker 1: they had a thermostat with with multiple programmable controls, like
Speaker 1: you can just walk up and press a button and
Speaker 1: it will set the temperature and and presumably a number
Speaker 1: of other controls to a whole set of whatever you
Speaker 1: told it to be interesting. So which complex environmental controls? Yeah,
Speaker 1: which we've got Yeah, Nest. Nest came out a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago and has been and really popular, and
Speaker 1: now we've got a lot of competitors on the market
Speaker 1: to These are all learning thermostats that make it very
Speaker 1: easy for you to change the temperature of your home.
Speaker 1: And it also can even have learning algorithms so that
Speaker 1: it knows what your preferences are, or it can detect
Speaker 1: if there's no one in the house and make sure
Speaker 1: that you're not heating an empty house. Or you can
Speaker 1: set it to to do a thing at a certain
Speaker 1: time of day, or you can trigger it when you
Speaker 1: when you're coming home, or it can automatically trigger when
Speaker 1: you're coming home. So so honestly, this is another thing
Speaker 1: that didn't quite look far forward enough in that uh,
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that that older Marty has to
Speaker 1: go up to the wall and poke a button on it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of outdated. Yeah, yeah, so this was fun.
Speaker 1: This was a fun first episode. We still got a
Speaker 1: lot more. You're probably thinking, hey, there's one incredible piece
Speaker 1: of technology that's in Back to the Future too that
Speaker 1: you guys didn't cover. Well, you know, we have this
Speaker 1: on purpose. You had to save some stuff for the
Speaker 1: second episode. We actually move things around to make sure
Speaker 1: about it. So make sure you join us for our
Speaker 1: next episode, where we will conclude this discussion and hit
Speaker 1: several more and talk about the things that are possible
Speaker 1: that are not possible that might be hoaxes or jobs. Hint, hint,
Speaker 1: And if you have any suggestions for future episodes, you
Speaker 1: should let us know. Send us an email the addresses
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