Top 10 movie technologies we're still waiting for

10)   Flying cars

Is this the future of travel? Source:   Wikicommons

Is science any closer to making this dream a reality?

The main problem with flying automobiles is that most of us all have varying opinions about how these vehicles should look.  In truth, flying vehicles have actually been around for several years, although they don't look anything like the utopian versions you'll see in Blade Runner or Back To The Future.

However, the promise of a personal flying machine has been with us since the earliest times in recorded history. In literature, Syrian manuscripts from 800AD speak of a 'flying carpet' in the Arabic folk tale, One Thousand And One Nights. So, the idea isn't exactly new.

The flying carpet. Source: Wikicommons

Even Henry Ford had a go at it during the twenties, before he later abandoned the project after his test pilot died in a crash. In the 1950's, the Ford motor company conducted a massive feasibility study and concluded that sky cars were ready for mass production in America, but the US government failed to see it that way due to safety concerns and put a kibosh on the whole idea.

Currently, there are dozens of flying vehicle prototypes in development, but most of these require a pilot's license for use, which is hardly convenient as a personal road transportation alternative. 

The Moller Skycar. Source: Wikicommons

The Moller is more Jetsons than Back to the Future, but it's the best of the prototypes 'floating around' out there. Unfortunately, demonstrations have not conclusively shown to fly without being tethered by a crane. There are six models in total, with the current M400 model expected sometime this century. 

Moller is currently taking deposits if you're gutsy enough to part ways with your money for a ride into the future. However, speculation has risen that the Moller doesn't really work. In 2003, the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued Moller for securities fraud, citing over forty years of failed development.

We predict it will be available in the year....

2035, at the earliest. So much needs to happen before we get there, including
 a overhaul of the current flight traffic control system and one heck of a learn-to -drive school for first time buyers.

Could you image the idiot drivers we currently have on the roads, suddenly drifting over your home in a drunken daze? That shudder you just felt is half the reason why this technology hasn't taken off.

Some have mentioned that all future flying cars would be driverless and driven by a central computer connected to a 'grid'. We agree. But for now, the world can't even manage a true driverless grid on the ground, much less one operating in the skies.

9)   Real-time digital effects (instant CGI)

Big Arnie battles big special effects. Source: IMDB

Why we're sick of waiting:

The Running man is ripe for all kinds of future technology spotting. The obvious ones are the onset of Big Brother security surveillance and the growth of reality television; dual themes that 1980's audiences may of have easily shrugged off at the time. 

However, there's one technology in Running Man that is often easily overlooked: instant special effects.  Virtual landscapes and humans are instantly added to existing news footage, to make it look like big Arnie has committed a series of violent crimes.

Part of the film is devoted to big Arnie getting himself tangled up in this evil double cross by ICS Studios, who use the effects wizardry to frame their running players.

The crux of the double cross revolves around a group of digital imaging experts who can render fake crowds and people in a scene to make it look like it really happened on the nightly news. 

S1m0ne sizzles as a CGI actress. Source: IMDB

Actually, it's not so far off what we're already seeing with today's CGI technology, except that none of what we saw in the Running Man can currently be done in real-time. That would require one heck of a supercomputer with oodles of processing power and memory. 

A technology like this could change the way we play games and watch films. Fake news casts have the potential to scare and terrify, in much the same way that Orson Welles pulled the same trick during his infamous War Of The Worlds broadcast in 1938.

The closet thing we have to ICS Studios (the TV network from the film) today are the Hollywood special effects gurus over at ILM and WETA studios. Though, we're still no closer to real time rendering of perfectly sculpted human beings. And not the way they looked in Running Man. That's been the Holy Grail of CGI for a while now - to create digital actors that will blend in with the lung breathing kind and not ask for breaks for bigger pay checks. 

Problem is though, most of the all-CGI creations in films so far, have looked fairly....bad.  Al Pacino tried the gag in S1m0ne using a combination of the real and surreal, while Gollum got scary in Lord of the Rings.  However, none of those creations took a few seconds to add to the screen. They all took months of painstaking rendering to complete. 

RIP: Jar Jar. Source: Star Wars.com

Perhaps the worst CGI creation of all time. Jar Jar drove audiences crazy in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

We predict it will be available in the year....

2030.  Long after the date that the Running Man film was set in (2019).

For now, we're all just  going to have to wait the usual 9 months for a film to get it perfectly right in post- production. Don't believe us? Just ask James Cameron how difficult it is to create virtual worlds and characters from scratch in his current cinematic opus, Avatar. 

8) Advanced regenerative medicine

Luke Skywalker undegoes the Bactic tank for rapid healing. Source: Star Wars.com

Why we're sick of waiting:

This could revolutionise the way we bounce back from injury.  Bullet wounds? No problem.  Instant cell regeneration could change the amount of time we spend in hospitals and the way we bounce back from body trauma.

Remember how the terminator took all those bullets in the first and second films, but its skin would magically grow back without surgery? A form of advanced cell regeneration would be necessary for our organs and skin to heal so rapidly.  And it could provide a huge benefit for burns patients and victims of war.

Is science any closer to making this dream a reality?

A system like the 'Bacta tank' from Star Wars could be our best bet for future treatment.  During a scene from the The Empire Strikes Back, Luke is seen receiving treatment inside a Bacta tank.  

The Bacta tank contains rejuvenating 'bacta fluid' that helps to rapidly
heal wounds in much the same way we use compression chambers to heal breathing illnesses resulting from undewater diving.  

Bullet wounds are no problem when you can rapidly grow back damaged cells. Source: IMDB

Need to know:  Advanced regenerative medicine relies heavily on the need for embryonic stem cell research for much of its development. And up until the Obama administration's recent moves to support this important medical work, stem cell research was a big no-no under the previous Bush administration.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is a group of biotech companies, non profit organisations and research universities that are setting out to make this form of medicine a reality with over $3b in grants to spent.

We'll just have to settle for:  Something closer to home. Monash University and the Austrlalian Regenerative Medical institute

Monash and ARMI are aiming to become one of the biggest regenerative medical centres in the world.  Some of the disorders that it could possibly treat includes: Neurodegenerative disorders, diabetes, arthritis, musculo-skeletal and cardiovascular diseases. 

Perhaps one day this will help us create a stronger, more agile human. That gives way to all kinds of Bionic Man/ X-Men possibilities.

We predict it will be available in the year....

2017.  Even earlier breakthroughs are expected in this field, particularly with advanced tissue healing.

(7) Replicants /Androids

Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Source: Wikicommons

Why we're sick of waiting:

Ok, who wouldn't want a robot butler that looks like Alfred from The Dark Knight. Android girlfriend anyone?  And we're not talking about the blow-up kind either.

Since the earliest years of the twentieth century, the public have been clambering for the production of androgynous beings.  Most of our fascination with these robotic beings can be traced back to Fritz Lang's Metropolis on screen.  In fact, you can go all the way back to the Jewish fable of the Golem to get an early glimpse of our fascination with Androids. 

Fancy an android wife? Source: The Stepford Wives/Paramount.

Is science any closer to making this dream a reality?

In Japan and South Korea, the move towards creating robots that look like people has become something of a space race among the two nations. Both countries are facing a future crisis with a rapidly aging population and it's hoped that androids or replicants could be built to care for their owners as they grow older.

DER 01, coming an adult shop near you. Source: DER 01 file shot

Bonus Trivia:  There are already a bunch of amazing Japanese androids in existence today. For example, DER 01 looks just like a regular sized Japanese woman (165cm tall) and has 47 mobile points that give her improved smoother movements over previous models.  The smoother the movements the harder it becomes to tell these machines apart from real people.

In Korea, the android of choice is the all-singing EverR-2. It features 29 individual motors for enhanced expression.  Her entire body is covered with an artificial silicon jelly skin solution that makes her look more human and we all know what Skynet did when they figured that out that little tactical advantage.

We'll just to have to settle for:  Repliee Q1/Q2

Japanese Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro is something of a Doc Brown in android circles. His
Repliee Q1 is seen as the golden seal in android/cyborg design. Repliee Q2 is a more advanced model known for her movie star good looks and human realism.

His earlier works include Q1Expo. Q1Expo is a model of a five year old girl that still garners praise from cyborg developers all over the world for human realism.

Repliee Q1 in 2005 with her programmer creator Hiroshi Ishiguro

We predict it will be available in the year....

2024. The technology is quickly becoming more available each day. We're probably a good 15 years away from a believable human companion.  But whether they will think for themselves or be pre-programmed to give you a back scrub leads us to another technology worth discussing...Artificial Intelligence.

Is there an android in the building? Bishop takes a hit in Aliens. Source: Aliens DVD shot

Continued on next page : Movie technologies 6 - 4:   A.I, Death Ray, Cloning

6) Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Film(s):  Terminator, 2001, A.I.

Why we're sick of waiting:  

HAL 9000: Hello Dave.... Source 2001: A Space League/IMDB

Ever since the world was given the name HAL 9000, we've been obsessed with a computer that has the power to control itself without human instructions. Even though Hollywood generally focuses on the negatives (an emotionless killing machine is hardly a technology we'd look forward to), there are plenty of good reasons to usher in our AI overlords.

For instance, computational problems that take scientists years to figure out may be solved in a matter of seconds by an artificial intelligence.  Climate change predictions? No problem.  Swine flu vaccine?  Easy. A swift cancer and HIV vaccine; now we're talking.

How close has science come to making this dream a reality?

True AI Machines must be able to plan, learn, manipulate and perceive a way to act upon their environment to be a understood as a true AI machine.  

The study of Cybernetics goes some of the way towards building a cognitive thinking machine, but so far, the level of processing power and programming required to give a machine the power to think on its own has stumped most scientists.

Is the humble chess computer a  primitive form of AI? Source: Chess computers archive

""Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it."

In the mid 60s, it was assumed that the A.I would be figured out within a generation, but those predictions came and went with the 80s.

The Turing test is probably the best gauge for AI superiority, although as yet, no computer has ever fooled the human scientists into thinking they were anything but a clever machine in disguise.   There's probably a few awesomely amazing creations being hidden from us in the Military.

We'll just have to settle for:  IBM's chess computer, Deep Blue.
Although, that may let deflate the expectations of a few AI enthusiasts. 

IBM's Deep Blue vs. Garry Kasparov. Source: IBM

Deep Blue is often considered the closest thing we have to true A.I technology. In 1997, Deep Blue drew world headlines when it beat chess champion Garry Kasparov, even though programmers were allowed to reprogramme the machine in between games to learn Kasparov's strategy and tactics.   To be honest, a chess champ is hardly the supreme mechanical being that we imagined it to be in the movies.

We predict it will be available in the year....

2050. Even now, the very mention of the word 'Skynet' brings uncontrollable shuddering to geeks everywhere.  However, if robots did learn to think by themselves, we'd have more to worry about than Austrian muscle impersonators.

5) Lasers: Death Ray

Is this what a death ray would look like? Source: Wikicommons

Why we're sick of waiting:

Why use bullets or bombs when you can vaporise your enemy with one directed pulse of energy?  Any country with a death ray could make the need for carrying nukes unnecessary.  Yes, it should be used a peaceful deterrent and that's why we're still waiting for it.  

However, if some guy dressed in a black cape and a breathing problem gets a hold of the thing, we're all pretty much doomed.  

How close has science come to making this dream a reality?

Archimedes is usually considered to be the first guy in history to
propose the idea of a death ray. His idea of an 'burning mirror' to set
fire to Roman naval fleets as they invaded Syracuse was A-grade ancient genius.

Death Ray or Russian snow maker? Source: Wikicommons/Flickr

It was also believed that Tesla tried to sell his 'weapon' to the US government and European countries before his death in 1937. As Tesla saw his device as a deterrent to end all wars, we can't help but imagine what might of happened had Tesla lived to see the start of the second world war and found a willing governemnt to purchase the device.   

Bonus Trivia:  The Regan-era Star Wars imitative was actually a kind of death ray in disguise. It was designed to shoot missiles down, but ultimate failed when it could only shoot bits of the missiles metal casing away.  A 4 tonne
nuclear missile is a tough target to hit and the laser required would have to be very powerful indeed.  

 

The Death Star from Star Wars is the ultimate laser weapon

We'll just have to settle for: Pulse weapons.

Current laser devices currently being researched by the US military include Pulsed Energy Projectile (PEP) weapons and the Pulsed Implosive Kill Laser (PIKL). These have been designed to be used on enemy targets in the battlefield with the potential for lethal and non-lethal use.

We predict it will be available in the year....

2013. This kind of technology is just around the corner. Will the next big war play out with lasers instead of bullets?  

4) Genetics:  Extinct species cloning

Dinosaurs can make great pets too! Source: Jurrassic Park still

Why we're sick of waiting:

Who doesn't want their own pet Brontosaurus? If the Flintstones taught us anything, it's that dinosaurs have plenty of useful purposes, including the ability to provide a great shower head and an excellent children's slide.

And apart from the obvious cultural benefits of a theme park full of extinct species, imagine the thrill of returning the Woolly Mammoth back to the plains of North America? Or the fun of watching a Sabretooth tiger perform circus tricks through hoops at some Russian circus. Okay, maybe not the last one.

A mosquito found in amber

Although you may have watched Jurassic Park back in 1994 and thought that all you need is the right chunk of prehistoric amber to clone a dinosaur, you'd better think again. It's definitely not that easy, otherwise some crazy guy living on a James Bond style island in the Caribbean would have already made it happen.

Instead, we're left with two of the more recent examples of extinct species genetic advances: the mammoth and the Australian thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger).   

But, the race to clone the mammoth from extinct specimens found in ancient permafrost is probably the best known example.  Scientists in Japan and others from Penn State in the US, are leading the way towards being the first to make this impossibly difficult task
happen.

This baby mammoth was found only recently, perfectly encased in ancient permafrost. Source: AP

However, trying to mix ancient DNA Genome sequences with its modern relative the Indian Elephant, has not been an easy task for either team.

As yet, the team has failed to produce workable DNA from the mammoths they've found, although 20,000 mammoth genes can take a lot of time and a lot of money to decode.  It's believed that there are around 4 billion DNA codes in the mammoth, similar to that of the modern day elephant. 

Bonus Trivia: Bessie the cow was the first animal to give birth to an endangered species ox clone, Noah the Gaur. Though Noah died two days later, it was seen as a rare feat for scientists in this field of genetics.

The Tasmanian Tiger may soon make a comeback. Source: Wikicommons

Australian scientists have been working on sequencing DNA from various Tasmanian tiger specimens found in museums across the world for the last 7 years now. It's been reported in the journal of Genome Research that the project is coming along very well and it's assumed that this might actually be the first animal to be cloned from an extinct species within the next decade or so.

We predict it will be available in the year....

2016. In about another seven years, we predict that one of the teams working on this
technology will be the first to clone an extinct animal.

Continued: Movie technologies 3 - 1 on next page

3) Human Teleportation

Film (s):  Star Trek, Jumper

Why we're sick of waiting:

You can't watch any of the Trek movies without wanting your own Teleport system.  It's the ultimate in geek cool. There's a multitude of reasons why we wish this would happen and not the least, because it's just so nifty travelling the globe in microseconds. 

Imagine spending your weekend in a Tapas bar in Spain, followed by a brisk hike up the Himalayas and a swim around the Pacific islands. All this in a single day, without the over-cramped flights, jet lag or hulking price. 

The problem is, if everybody could access this technology, what would the world start to look like? Tourists crossing borders without visas might prove be a little tricky.

We may still be a long way off from human teleportation just yet. Source: io9.com

If you count the ability to send tiny molecules across the air, then yes, it's here: time to celebrate. But if you realise that we're not any closer to beaming humans just yet, you'll probably want to hold the champagne just yet.

Fun fact: Teleportation is derived from a Greek prefix and Latin verb relationship, after American writer Charles Fort made first use of the term in 1931.

There are three different types of teleportation that we might find useful in the future: teleportation of the mind (known as 'jaunting' or 'psychoportation'), teleportation of matter for transporting goods and products around the universe and of course, human teleportation - the one that we would Scotty to beam us up for. 

Enjoy a picnic on the Sphinx: jump from one location to another in seconds. Source: Jumper press movie still

Quatumn mechanics current forbid making exact clones or replicas of things, so the issue of trying to defy certain quantum laws to teleport a human from place to place might prove a little difficult.

We'll just have to settle for:  Quantum entanglement.

Aussie scientists have managed to teleport billions of photons in one lab and sent it to another, via making copies of the photons and destroying the originals.

Though this dosn't get us any closer to viable human teleportation, it is a great start. Scientists performed a similar trick in the Canary islands, transporting photon matter over 89 miles - not quite the Star Trek distances we had in mind.  

We predict it will be available in the year....

2150. This is very, very far off. The human body has so many bits and pieces to unravel, that the amount of data and processing power it would take to complete a successful teleport is just mind boggling and beyond any conventional system we have in place today.

2) Space / planet colonisation

Film (s):   Star Wars, Star Trek, Red Planet, Mission to Mars, Total Recall and many others.

Why we're sick of waiting:

Consider the limitless possibilities of colonising other worlds and how that could help the human race or bored geeks dreaming of finding Ewoks.  If Star Wars has taught us anything, it's that cold, frozen planets make great rebel bases.

The planet Hoth makes a great rebel hideout, but the winter goes on a little long. Source: Star Warss V: The Empire Strikes Back still

The Mars Landrover is all we  have for now. Source: NASA

Umm.....can we count the moon? In actual fact, you could treat the Mars Landrover as a step in the right direction. However, the technology required to sail across the universe brings up all kinds of tricky questions. Least of them is, how do we even get there?  

Nuclear fuels are the most likely, but even then, we're talking about some extreme distances to cross and the time taken to get there, is going to take a toll on the mental and physical capacities of the astronauts.

Breaking the speed of light would be handy, but unless the US Military have successuflly backward engineered those Roswell saucers from the 1930's, then there's probably little 
chance of that happening.

Greetings Earthling. Source: NASA

Bonus trivia: The Google Lunar X prize offers big financial rewards to those who can pull off the first privately funded robotic lunar landing.  This might be he start of privately funded space race to launch man further into the cosmos.

We'll just have to settle for:

In the future, we may visit a 'Space hotel' for a relaxing vacation.

Most likely, we'll see space tourism blossom much sooner than we'll ever be hearing about viable planet colonisation.  Space hotels on the moon could be the next big thing in romantic getaways. And mining new and useful minerals from our closest planets and moon might be prove to have enormous advantages for us here on earth.

For now, we're just going to have to stick with the International Space station and a future outpost on the moon.

We predict it will be available in the year....

2050: For a human mars landing. Space hotels in the next decade or so.

1) Hoverboards

Film:  Back to the Future: Part 2

Why we're sick of waiting:

C'mon, it's a hoverboard - who dosn't want one of these?  This has to be one of the most talked about movie technologies of all time.

Sure, you can have your fancy flying cars, teleport machines and cuddly androids - but the hoverboard is cherished amongst geek culture for its ability to incite incredible jealously in any audience who watches the second Back to the Future film and wishes they could hover on air and glide over park benches.

In geek speak, the hoverboard is sacred
among all other movie props.


Is science any closer to making this dream a reality?

Sorry, hoverboards don't work on water. Source: BTTF.com

The floating Maglev trains are all the rage in Japan and if the hoverboard was ever likely to make it from concept to mass production, we'd bet that the way maglev systems utilise magnets could possibly work for a hoverboard.

However, hoverboards seem to more about levitation than magnetism. And to successfully levitate, you need to defy that little force known as gravity. Indeed, to make
it float without effort and without motors or loud whizzing parts is going to take some serious gravity tinkering.

Fun to know:   There are all kinds of hokey websites out there on the web selling charlatan hoverboard do-it yourself kits, in addition to anti-gravity nonsense and water fuel car add-ons.  Remember boys and girls, those home kits don't work on water either.

At one stage, director Robert Zermekics started rumors that the boards were actually real and not a special effect, after he got and sick and tired of being asked how they made the hoverboards work in the second Back To The Future film.

In one episode of Mythbusters, the team managed to build a so called 'hoverboard' from a leaf mower engine, so anything is possible.

Mattel wasn't just the genius toy maker behind Barbie and Ken... Source: BTTF.com

A theory of quantumn mechanics, some scientists have argued that to make
objects levitate, then the legendary Casmir force will need to be figured out first. 
And it all comes down to objects repel or attract.

In 2007, physicists worked out to reverse the force at a nano-molecular level. It's predicted that this could one day hearld the shift towards hover vechiles of all shapes and sizes. 

We'll just have to settle for:  Personal hovercraft

For now, the next best thing to a hoverboard is a probably a personal
inflatable hovercraft. But a quick glance at one of those things and you'd realise that Matel had no say in their look or creation.  Big, bulky and certainly
not as portable - the hovercrafts are hardly a real alternative to geek science fiction.  

So for now, If anyone tells you they have a hoverboard to sell you, they're likely full of hot air.  

Hoverboard gangs are a thing of the future. Source: BTFF.com

We predict it will be available in the year....

2015. Just kidding. As much as we wish it would be sooner, it'll probably happen in another two to three decades at the earliest. Till then, it's back to wheels for us boring gravity types.

If you can remember being the first to buy a failed technology, then you might recognise a few of these products in our article: The Top 10 techologies that Burned Early Adopters.