It has been 26 years since the release of “Back to the Future Part II,” a movie that introduced futuristic ideas such as self-tying shoes, flying cars, compact digital cameras and hover boards.
Oct. 21, 2015, is the day Marty McFly arrived in the future within the movie. The date recently passed in our current reality, causing many people to speculate if the gadgets seen in the film would ever become real.
One popular futuristic innovation from the movie is the hover board, where flying skateboards could cruise over any surface and be navigated just like a skateboard, inspiring many people to try and recreate the board’s technology in the past two decades.
“It would be really cool if we could get (actual) hover boards,” said Madison Haugland, freshman English major. “There are some that are similar, but cost way more than an average person wants to spend.”
Today’s “hover boards,” which resemble hands-free Segways, have become popular and are replacing many non-electric modes of boarding transportation. Lexus and a few other companies have created boards that closely mimic the technology seen in the movie, but lack the ability to be free beyond a magnetized surface, unlike the movie.
In addition to the boards are the iconic self-tying shoes that Nike will be producing to look and act identically like the sneakers from the movie, which perfectly molded to the feet of McFly in seconds.
“It is really cool but at the same time it is just for show and does not need self-tying laces,” said Paul Reyes, sophomore architecture major. “People can wear what they want, but I do not feel like being in debt by buying (the Nikes).”
Flying cars were a well-liked creation from the movie. Although they haven’t been mass produced, Terrafugia, an aircraft manufacturer, has made a flying car called the Transition that has wings and looks like a plane when in flight.
The price to reserve the Transition is $299,000.
The technology in the movie compared to technology today is worlds apart, and yet, closer than it ever has been previously, especially considering how far digital camera technology has come in the past three decades.
Although much of the predicted technology is not present in 2015, the possibility of new innovations in the near future is not a far-fetched idea and may be Back to the Future soon.
