Six Reasons Why the Future Is Now

For a while the future we were promised from science-fiction looked like it was never going to materialise. We waited and we waited, we couldn't just jump in a time machine and get there because science had failed us on that too. Science, damn you! All we got was a dystopian increase in CCTV and corporations tracking our every move. Where was the cool stuff? Where were our hoverboards? Our mind/gesture controlled technology? Our teleportation booths? Holodecks? Spray on clothing like in Futurama? They must've just been teasing, because technologies like those listed below are, finally, making the future present. About time.

Life imitating art imitating life imitating a Robert Zemeckis movie. Who doesn't want that? (As long as it's not Polar Express, that movie sits in Zemeckis's oeuvre like a floating turd in the public baths). Remember in Back to the Future II, the Nike Air Mag that has automatic lacing? Of course you do, well now that fiction may well become a reality. Nike have filed a patent over at the World Intellectual Property Organization website for an automatic lacing system.

It's like Nike have rapped on the head of the future, teasing "Helloooo, McFuture? Think, McFuture. Think!" Great Scott, indeed.

Portable Holographic Videos

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You know, when life is getting more like the movies then a) the world is losing its grip on reality or b) science is catching up with human imagination. Take this example which will take a giant holographic shit on video conferencing. It brings us one step closer to making portable holovids a reality, and then we can finally play holochess like in Star Wars. And what's great is Aircord labo who've created it use nothing more than a glass prism, projector, and an iPad to create a 3D image using OpenFrameworks and MaxMSP. Plus you can also make it respond to sound.

Light Painting

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

The iPad, it has its uses. If you can't be bothered to create a holovid with it, no worries. Why not just use it to paint with light instead? Yeah, what the hell. You might need a degree in pretentious marketing asswipery to understand how to turn it into electronic paint brush, but so what? Look how cool the end result is. It's like word apparitions have invaded the earth. I suppose this is what happens when you can't watch porn, you have to find other uses for the device.

Gesture Controlled Software

Yep, another movie. This one's Minority Report. Way back in the dark days of 2002 who'd thunk Tom Cruise waving his tiny Munchkin hands in fancy gloves to browse some footage of a murder would ever become a reality. Becoming a master of couch-jumping mega-douche-ology, yeah. You don't need to be a precog to have foreseen that. But with the advancements of touchscreen technology it's literally only a matter of minutes (OK, maybe a bit longer) before we're all waving our hands about poking our friends on Facebook like a conductor leading an orchestra.

Mind-controlled Video Games

It won't be long before you'll be looking like you're straining for a shit when actually you're battling alien terrorists in a post-apocalyptic Bowser's Castle. Using something called electroencephalography--which reads electronic activity by the brain--you'll be destroying cities by the power of your thoughts. You can already buy the MindSet-a brainwave interface headset-by a company (which sounds like a corporation from RoboCop) called NeuroSky, used in a game called NeuroBoy where you can control things using telekinesis, set cars on fire, throw benches around. Explode heads? Not yet. But no doubt it'll be on the cards.

Spray on clothes

What can be said, when life starts imitating a satirical cartoon TV show then it's time to give up smoking weed. Life just got weird enough. Mind = blown.