Futuristic movies that missed the real future

RUNAWAY is good sci-fi movie, for which I give a solid, two stars out of four, which means, FAIR and, WORTH A LOOK.

I believe RUNAWAY, released in late 1984 and early 1985, was meant to be a vision twenty years into the future, circa, 2004, when robotics became widespread and near indispensable. This was understandable. Film directors like to project a vision twenty years into the future because most people expect a lot to change in 20 years. Back in the very early 1980s, circa, 1980 to 1984, the word, "robotics" was all the vogue. It was supposed to be introduced into colleges and universities as a major of its own. Everyone assumed robotics' time had come or at least was on the threshhold and soon everyone would have robots of some sort at home, recreation, the workplace, public places, government, military...everything. But it didn't happen. The excitement for robotics outstripped actual demand for robotics. The worldwide robotics revolution didn't happen by 2004.

We shouldn't blame the film directors. Forecasting the near future is difficult because the predictions are supposed to be more or less follow in a linear path of what's happening today. It's far easier to fantasize three or four hundred years from now like Star Trek because anything is possible in deep time.

Film directors who try to predict the near future ten to thirty years from now almost invariably get it wrong. But again, it's not their real fault. Who could have foreseen the digital camera-especially how small and cheap it became so fast; the laptop computer of the 90s and 2000s, the iPod of the late 90s, the iPhone of the early 2000s, the thin screen computer monitor and the thin screen televisions of the first ten years of the 21st century. You can't; it's almost random chance if a director guesses right.

One of my favorite, made-for-tv, sci fi movies, CLONED (1997) took place in 2011. The movie predicted the world wide net correctly, but missed everything else that I mentioned above. Those things didn't exist in 1997 except the laptop and the first digital cameras, as big as a brick.

Now what can I predict for 2023? I can only extrapolate in a straight line like so many screenwriters and film directors. I have no idea of dreaming about something so vastly new, outside the box, that it blows the imagination. Based on what I see so far, everyone will be carrying their very own, small personal device to does virtually everything. People will believe that they cannot live a normal life without it. Without their augmented reality technology, they will feel blind, deaf, and dumb. People will carry their electronic communication, data transmission, and entertainment devices all over their bodies and clothing. These devices will do work, too, like activate other machines or devices. Perhaps devices will have piggyback capabilities, being able to physically link with another device to become a different function.