Back to the Present: A Glimpse Into Future’s Past

Great Scott!

So, it's finally here. After countless viewings, a thorough contemplation of the space-time continuum and a soft-spot in the hearts of an entire generation, the date at which Back To The Future's Marty McFly arrives in the future is here: Wednesday, October 21st, 2015.

That's right, from here on out, there is no future in Back To The Future. Everything is in the past and the future isn't quite the portrayal we've come to expect from the movie. There are no flying cars or public skyways, no power-laces in our shoes (although Nike claims to be developing the product), no hover-boards (yeah, we've seen the ones that are out there... they're NOT up to B2TF standards), no sleep-inducing alpha rhythm generators, and lawyers have not yet been abolished. But oddly enough, there are some "predictions" that do hold true...

In one futuristic scene, Marty McFly's daughter Marlene (oddly and creepily portrayed by Michael J. Fox) is seen answering phone calls on an optical, head-mounted smartphone. Google Glass released its high-tech glasses to the public on May 15, 2014. The weather service has become much more efficient since 1989, the year that the series' second installment was released. Many households do have flat-screen televisions that hang from their living room wall, complete with video conferencing, Internet and multi-functions. And although the fax machines we see in the film aren't exactly relevant in our 2015, the integration of technologies to receive instant communication on several devices at once has become so commonplace that we take for granted its role in our daily lives.

The nostalgic Cafe 80's isn't a far cry off from reality either. The youth of our 2015 love the 1980's for its music because, let's face it, Talking Heads and Michael Jackson crushed it back then. 1908’s fashion is becoming popular again, classic arcade games can be found in bars and venues across Denver, and automated self-checkouts are the norm in today's retail stores and supermarkets. And perhaps the craziest parallel? The Chicago Cubs actually have a shot at the World Series! Scary, right? Will the Cubs sweep their opponent in 5 games, as B2TF predicts? Mmm.. probably not. 

But okay, maybe today's reality isn't quite as glamorous as Hollywood once predicted it to be. It is possible that society fell short of our potential, but perhaps the inaccuracies depicted from one realm to the other are a positive. After all, nobody should know too much about their own future, right? The consequences could be disastrous! 

In other ways, technology has far exceeded that which is portrayed in the movie. Hand-held devices containing the entire history of the world’s collective knowledge are nowhere to be found in B2TF. The United States government currently claims a 95% Confidence Interval on horizontal accuracy for civilian GPS. That's astounding. And in a chillingly advanced experiment, scientists in Switzerland are planning to use the Large Hadron Collider to detect and possibly create black holes, hopefully giving mankind its first look at a parallel universe. It could be that October 21st, 2015 inherently contains some sort of cosmic significance... Almost as if it were the temporal junction point of the entire space-time continuum. Critics of the LHC and doomsday theorists claim that the experiment could bring about the end of the world. The encounter could create a time-paradox, the results of which could cause a chain-reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe! Granted, that's the worst-case scenario.

So where do we go from here? To us, that answer is obvious: Forward. But it's back to the past that we must look for answers to the future. As they say, those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them. With much turmoil at home and abroad, we as Americans and indeed, humanity in general have always persevered in the face of wretchedness. No matter how destitute, regardless of deprivation, misfortune, trials and tribulations, we've seen ourselves through the worst. It is education that drives us forward to transcend the strife of policy, of poverty, quarrel and disaster. Education drives innovation which creates new areas of industry, pilots the pursuit of new technology and unites humanity through a better understanding of one another. It is our greatest weapon to threats natural or man-made. Where we are today proves that our future hasn't been written yet. No one's has. Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one.