the future that was

Remember when you were a kid and you first saw Back To The Future II where they go to the year 2015 and there are flying cars, hoverboards, self tying shoe laces, hoverboards and hydrating pizzas, how everything looked so clean and Utopian, and how the future was about to look like such a brighter and happier place.

Well its been twenty years since that movie was made (1989), now its 2009 and there are still no flying cars and no plans to make them!

Apart from great advancements in computers (the internet was unheard in BTTF's version of the future), what can we expect from further beyond than 2015?

A horrible dull future



The future that the 2006 movie Children of Men gave us was truly amazing, the year 2027 and not a child born in 18 years, the United Kingdom is the only country to regain law and society (just), while the rest of the world has become lawless, people are slowly losing it, life is dull and urban environments are stretched to the max in filth, violence, crime and general ugliness, this may happen in the future from a depression that crashes the current financial system meaning that law and order will fall soon afterwards reducing mankind back to the survival of the fittest.

A corporate run future

Man I hate corporations trying to sell me horseshit products I don't need!

But what if these corporations got together and gained more power above the government, of if they got so powerful they were allowed do business like sovereign countries, the 2008 John Cusack movie War Inc. took such a scenario showing a corporation (Tamberlain, based on the read life Haliburton) invading a fictional Middle Eastern country of Turaqistan for its vast oil reserves.



They then opened up the war destroyed control for business for big business.

This might be a stretch but think of this, in theory "anybody can run for president of the United States!"

I wonder who McDonalds wants up there?
I wonder who Diet Coke wants up there?

A totalitarian future



A future very like George Orwells 1984 were a small totalitarian government controls EVERYTHING everyone does every second of their lives, when 1984 came out it was more of a fear of what the world would look like if the Soviet Union took over.

However in 2002 when the US government proposed putting out an implantable RFID chip several hundred people speculated further saying it was the first step towards the rise of a totalitarian government in America (see video below).



The idea is that these chips will contain the money (hence digital money), from the chips the government can deduct the taxes you owe etc. etc. so you literally become a serf to them, and if you protest what they're doing they'll turn off your chip, and there is nothing you can do, you can't buy food you won't be able to survive!

This scenario may be more plausible in the mere future than the next one;

A future robot uprising


Be afraid, be very afraid

Man makes robot, robot gains intelligence, robot rebels against man and enslaves it.

I'm not going to bring up Will Smith's I Robot simply because I hate that movie with every fiber of my body (Will Smith totally sold himself), many sci fi movies show a robot uprising to be, first because they were programmed to think and feel and second after they've wiped out most of their creators (see Battlestar Galactica) they will want to look and feel like their creators.



A future of space travel



Firefly and Alien pull this off the best in my mind, a future where we will have truckers in space, where we discover a series of plants and emigrate to them, a future where space travel is just as common as car travel is on Earth today (okay maybe that's a push, as common as air travel), this scenario is a push considering how we haven't managed to send a man to Mars yet and the fact that our natural resources are on their way to depletion.

And the fact we're still kill each other over ideals, religion and resources shows that we'll probably never get that far in the future anyway!