From this day forward, the entire Back To The Future Trilogy takes place in the past. As you undoubtably have heard, today, October 21st, 2015, is the day that Marty, Doc, and Jennifer traveled forward in time to and it is arguably the most significant day in pop culture history. Set in the not-to-distant future, Back To The Future II offered a mostly optimistic vision of what was to come. Cold fusion, flying cards, hoverboards, and dehydrated pizza. Wearable technology was also prominently featured in the 1989 movie, but how does our current day 2015 stack up against the alternate timeline of Hill Valley’s 2015?
Back To The Future II assumed some of the worst trends of 80s fashion would continue and the film depicts the logical progression of those styles. Thankfully that did not come to pass; we are not wearing transparent ties and neon plexiglass caps. Instead, there has largely been a reversion to classic styles, looks, and colors. The inside-out jeans from the movie also did not happen, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have. In theory it is not much different than saggy pants or Kris Kross’s backwards jeans.
One of the most iconic items from Back To The Future II were the Nike Mags with “power laces.” The self lacing, LED laden sneakers have long been lusted over by fans of the film. Nike finally made the sneakers a reality in 2011, when it auctioned off hundreds of pairs of the shoes. While they lacked the power laces, they did include LEDs and were visually spot-on. Nike was widely expected to release a 2015 version of the Nike Mags today. Instead, at the exact time Marty appeared in 2015, Nike and MichaelJFox.org unveiled a video of the star putting on a pair of fully functional, self lacing Mags. The shoes look identical to those in the movie, including the light up ‘Nike’ on the ankle strap and the noise the power lacing mechanism makes. The tweet also declared a Spring 2016 release date…which is going to feel like a long wait! So while real and fictional Marty got to pull on a pair of self lacing Air Mags at the exact time in both 2015s, the public will have to acknowledge the timelines are not identical and wait a few months longer.
Staying squarely in the fictional 2015 timeline is Marty’s self-sizing, self-drying jacket. While iconic, this was never one of those items in the movie that you would hear people clamoring for, which, honestly, is likely why no one has wanted to create it. But the idea behind the one-size-adjusts-to-fits-all jacket is becoming more and more pervasive. Technologies such as Back To The Future II’s self-sizing jacket allow for a reduction in manufacturing and waste and an increase in the chance of the clothing will find a second life. With growing awareness and concern regarding fashion being one of the top polluting industries in the world, designers and consumers are looking for new ways to produce fewer garments. In the IRL 2015, this is being done by exploring new ways to recycle and repurpose clothing and innovating new technologies to one day 3D print what we need at home (possibly from recycled materials).
When we visit the 2015 McFly household, we see a world where everyone is wearing some sort of augmented reality type of glasses. Marty’s children are able to watch TV and take phone calls from the devices. While we have developed wearables with similar functionality to the ones depicted, such as Google Glass and Oculus Rift, they have yet to find a mainstream audience. Virtual reality tech such as Oculus Rift is the most likely version of this augmented reality tech to succeed but it will largely be used as a gaming and entertainment device, not something you sit at the dinner table with.
While Back To The Future II depicted a future full of change, perhaps the biggest failing with the movie’s vision of 2015 (ignoring the fax machines everywhere) is in how communication occurs. We live in a largely interconnect world; devices can talk to each other, apps know where we are, and we have most of the world’s knowledge at our fingertips. The movie ignores the idea of the Internet and networked devices. There is no web, no cell phones, and no smartwatches. The Internet and mobile computing have proved to be defining technologies of our culture over the past 15 years and continue to shape our technological development. It is one of the few oversights of the fictional 2015 timeline. Also, the McFly’s seem to only have a single landline!
Back To The Future II shows a world where fashion tech is common place and wearable technology is so prevalent people are consumed by it at family dinner. Like most other tech depicted in the movie, the filmmakers were a bit too optimistic as they imagined a world nearly 30 years in the future. We are just getting to the point where technology is aligning with fashion. Technology and miniaturization needed to reach a level that we are only now beginning to achieve. Even the self lacing Nike Mags barely made the Back To The Future Day cut off. But fashion tech is evolving quickly (it is even the theme of the upcoming Met Ball) and we expect to see it and wearable tech grow rapidly over the next few years.
People are thrilled about October 21st, 2015, because Back To The Future II depicted a future we all wanted to be a part of. The technology was exciting, everything felt new, and, most importantly, it was a world we wanted to be in. Like Star Trek, a filmmaker’s idea of what could be, often inspires what comes to exist. Few movies since Back To The Future have created the same type of positive vision of the future. I hope that as the next generation of writers and directors find their voice, they are also able to imagine a not-so-distant future we all want to be part of! Hopefully the future they depict will continue to inspire people to push the boundaries of technology.
