With the advantage of AI, we no longer find it odd to speak to robots like Alexa or have smart houses and high levels of automation in our vehicles. However, there are many movies – both classics and more recent – that at the time of release depicted technologies that seemed entirely futuristic. Yet, in 2021 they are no longer quite so farfetched.
Taking a nostalgic trip down memory lane – smart home and security specialist, Somfy, have compiled a list of films that depicted tech that seemed futuristic at the time, but which is now available on the market today.
Iron Man (2008)
One of the technological aspects that Iron Man includes is a scene featuring touch technology. At the date of release, this technology was not hugely common and certainly not as advanced as it is today, and therefore appeared futuristic to audiences. However, for many of us, touch technology is now part of our everyday lives. The majority of us use phones that are completely touch screen and there are now touch screen laptops available on the market as well as a whole host of touch screen tablets.
Iron Man also features bionic suits which impressed audiences at the time of launch. Similar technology is now used to help people with mobility disabilities – Exoskeleton suits enable disabled people to walk and to eat and drink by themselves. There are also bionic braces on the market to support and protect parts of the body and aid in mobility during recovery from injury.
Ex Machina (2014)
One of the most memorable scenes in Ex Machina features a super smart home, which includes electric blinds and automatic doors. Electric blinds, shutters and automatic doors are now readily available on the market so that you can modify your home to your own personal taste. There are even devices that can connect all your smart home accessories, meaning you can set these to suit your day-to-day routine.
Not only this, but AI human-like robots, such as the one featured in this iconic film, now actually exist! In 2017, on the Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon invited robots and their creators onto the show, including an eerily human-like robot called Sophia from Hong Kong. The incredible technology used to create Sophia enabled her to have conversations with the host and even play rock paper scissors and since then, technology has only further developed.
Back to The Future 2 (1989)
Back to The Future 2 brought us all kinds of fantastical technologies, from self-tying shoes to drones, both of which are now available in the wider world. Although not an everyday piece of tech, Nike recently launched a pair of self-tying shoes which is an incredible development in personal technology.
Drones are also now readily available, with more affordable options out there for people to purchase. They are also now widely used in the film and photography industry, enabling people to capture scenes and images that would have been impossible to do before.
Minority Report (2002)
As a tech classic, Minority Report was one of the first of many films to display self-driving cars on the big screen. Autonomous cars now exist with different levels of autonomy – but it has been rumoured that Uber will be ordering an entire fleet when they become cheaper and more widely available! Electric cars are of course another option that many people opt for, especially when thinking about their carbon footprint.
HER (2013)
HER depicts the story of a man who talks to his AI system later falling in love with it and we can draw comparisons here to today’s Amazon Alexa. Whilst falling in love with our home devices is slightly farfetched, many households now have a smart speaker which can reel off latest orders, play music and tell jokes.
From 1989-2014 we see these films depicting what, at the time, appeared to be technology we would only ever see in films. However, rapidly developing technology and the ever-evolving digital world we live in means a lot of this technology is now part of everyday life for many of us to varying degrees.