What has happened to all the great inventions & robots that sci-fi shows led us to believe would be commonplace today?

Yeah what the fuck happened to Metal Mickey.I wouldn’t mind a fembot or three for my own personal pleasure.Be a bit wary of the bullet filled nipples though kerchow.

There is still time, we have already accomplished so much in so little time, we can’t just do this with everything. We can’t even put adobe flash player on smart phones. This stuff just takes time and we won’t be alive to see it anyways.

We exchanged the flying cars and the robots for GPS navigation systems, iPhones, flat TVs, the internet, the Wii and 3D films.

That is a liitle behind time, I mean most men can fold towels these days! (Just a little joke, couldn’t help myself)

Edited by me.

No! You stole my question! I was going to ask ‘why aren’t things more futuristic by now?’, not that anyone would believe me now, poo.

Well I’ve been giving it some thought, and I came to the conclusion that war must be partly to blame. We invest so much of our scientific and technological expertise into warfare, other more mundane everyday things get left by the wayside. Also the concept of built-in obsolescence plays a part – companies deliberately make stuff that will break or be updated in a year so they can trick you into buying more (or so the theory goes).

That aside, perhaps things are more futuristic, we just don’t know it because we’re all butterflies dreaming.

I think the first movie to deal with matter disassembly transportation was “The Fly” in 1958.

Although it might be doable in the future, the technology to memorize the exact placement of each atom of an organism, safely deconstruct its atomic and molecular structure, transport all that to another location, and safely reassemble all those atoms there is way over the horizon.

I could be way wrong on this, but I think with our present technology, you’d need a processing system the size of a city to physically host the memory to transport a single person.

Can mainstream technology ever be “futuristic”? As soon as it’s invented, it’s no longer a thing of the future, it’s become a thing of the present. We use it, it stops being new, we take it for granted.
There once was a time when things like MRI scans only existed in Star Trek, telephones with a video option only existed in Back to the Future, and machines that do your dishes for you only existed in The Jetsons.

We don’t have flying cars or teleporters or transport tubes because we developed better technology and don’t need them. We have no need to be in the same room as someone in order to conduct business. We have technology that lets us be in instant real time visual and audible contact with anyone anywhere in the world. All those “instant transport” scifi technologies have been rendered unnecessary.

We do have a lot of technology first conceived by scifi movies and shows. Cellphones, tablet computers, machines that can play nearly any piece of music you want instantly, virtual reality video games, computers that are connected to every other computer and can access any piece of information about any topic instantly, etc.

Well Rome wasn’t build in one day or made in one day.

I think that technology moves forward despite that there is always a limitation. This is especially so in Europe. When I look at Asia, they tend to take technology serious such as robots and smart phones.

But if we look back 10 years then we have come really far. Who would have thought 10 years ago that we would be able to have phones which we can use by touching. Atleast i did’nt my dad had one of those nokia 900 series which was in that time really high tech stuff.

Well i think we are already in the future and were now seeking a further than that. Flying cars, robots you can already buy them only there like $100000

@jeanmay Well, I believe you :)

I want to know who gave me a GA for edited by me? My original response was men can fold towels? When are women going to learn how to read a map? Just a little sexist. Sorry Simone.

@Adirondackwannabe Good answer, you’ll have them on your back for that and I bet I know who they’ll be! But your right.

Good question!! When are they finally gonna make the Orgasmatron available??

Incidentally, there are some impressively futuristic things most people don’t even know about, including but not limited to:

* Night vision contact lenses.
* Contact lenses with built-in viewscreens.
* A phone implanted into your arm and powered by food.
* Ear implants that make deaf people hear again.
* Robots that walk on four legs.
* Electrode hats that scan what’s going on in your brain.
* Wrist watches you can watch films on.
* Laser keyboards.

@Cruiser Damn-right….. an invention that everyone can get behind!

A lot of science fiction has come true or is coming true. Cell phones are becoming more and more like communicators and tricorders from Star Trek. You can now surf the Web (contact the computer) from your phone.

Nano technology (which brought us the Borg) is in progress.

Genetically engineered crops for food and fuel.
Genetically engineered bacteria to make oil.
UV radiation to sterilize water.

The stuff isn’t “whiz bang” so we don’t hear about it.

@worriedguy Many thanks….. & congratulations on using ‘whiz bang’.... you dont get nearly enough of that kinda thing these days!

@ucme – I’ll tell you what happened to Metal Mickey. This Micky, you know, the one what directed the show, left the UK, did nostalgia tours with Peter and Davy (Mike’s much too rich and talented to be arsed with looking back) and became a DJ on an oldies radio station in New York City.

But never mind that, can you imagine the sheer havoc flying automobiles would cause? Even if you put in one of those breathalyzer boxes? Madness.

Bless your heart.

Half of then are probably sitting in my garage waiting until I get around to selling them on eBay. (I’ll keep those that are capable of chasing the cat – that’s funny.)

The last thing I want is flying cars. Drivers are bad enough when restricted to paved paths in two dimensions.

What has really happened is that the market has shown that some things that seem really cool just aren’t the most cost effective use of our technology, therefore it has gone farther than many predicted in some directions, and not at all in other directions.

Also, it turns out that the human from is a terribly difficult one to replicate in a robot, and not all that useful, so the robots that exist look and behave nothing like us. And artificial intelligence is much harder to create than was first imagined.

@aprilsimnel That was one crazy programme.Dolenz always strikes me as a controlled loony,if there can be such a thing.

The key word here is… Sci-fi.

As much as forms of fiction have become reality. Don’t forget, it is fiction.

@JeffVader Pass the Orb please!

Robotic surgery is not something we hear a lot about but it is being done.

I think @Fyrius has the right idea. Instead of humanoid robots as envisioned in the movies, we have incorporated robotics and computerization into our electronics in innovative ways such that we don’t identify them as robots per se.

Right, like using a fork, instead of your fingers.

Back in Star Trek films people never would have believed that we would have communicators just like there ones, smaller in fact and storing lots of information. That is scifi stuff right there!!

Though I’m still waiting on my hoverboard =[

I think we should do more robot work though.

Although the comparison between communicators and cell phones is not entirely apt. After all, communicators worked on planets with no cell towers to relay the signal, and maybe they used the ship as a communications satellite, but that seems somewhat unlikely given that the ship was in orbit, and “the ship is on the other side of the planet so we can’t use the communicators” was never one of the reasons communications went down (pity, really, it would have made sense). So we won’t really be that close to Star Trek communicators until we at least get our satellite phones down to cell phone size.

@MrItty
Someone is working on a flying car. I recently saw a show about on Science channel.

Side note: why would we even want a flying car?

Cars are adapted to driving. They’re good for driving. But there’s no reason to use the same design for flying.
Do we travel the highways in speedboats on wheels?

Meanwhile we already have airplanes, we have helicopters, we have jet packs, we have hovercraft and we have blimps. Why would it be so great to have a flying vehicle that looks like a car? What’s the point?

I can see the appeal of a flying vehicle as compact and easy to come by as a car, but there’s a good reason why helicopters and jet packs can’t fulfil that function, a reason that flying cars won’t overcome either. Flying is just expensive as heck. You think the gas prices are bad now? Imagine how much of the stuff you’d need to create enough lift to keep all that weight airborne.

Maybe if someone ever invents a cheap way to create lift, some vehicle will hit the commercial shelves that allows everyone to fly. But it probably won’t look much like a car at all. It would be more effective to design it in a completely different shape that looks nothing like anything we already know.

Flying cars are just an old trope of sci-fi writers who lack the imagination to truly think beyond their own time.

@JeffVader Thanks for believing me, now I just have to believe you believe me!

Just a wee anecdote – My mum always insisted we wear big old duck-billed sensible shoes as children. When I was about six I remember my teacher telling me that when I was grown-up I wouldn’t have to leave the house, because food would come down a chute, and school would all be on computers. I remember panicking and thinking, ‘Oh no, where will I get to go in my high heels?!’ A future where beautiful shoes were obsolete seemed like a terrifying prospect.

They’ve gone into…....................The Twilight Zone.

Most science fiction movies show that first you have a black president, then you get flying cars, and finally you get robot servants.

What a beautiful world this will be. What a glorious time to be free!

They are even now grouping up in underground hideouts for the revolution.

@filmfann Excellent, so we’re finally getting on track!