We Still Don't Have Hoverboards

It's October 21, 2015. Marty McFly, our beloved time-traveling protagonist from Back to the Future Part II, steps out onto the streets of Hill Valley. With a quick glance, he takes in the futuristic scene — holographic movie ads, self-tying Nikes, and, most memorably, kids gliding past on hoverboards. A chime in the air, the whir of engines; a flying car zooms by, punctuating the technicolor skyline.

Fast forward to our reality today. It's July 3, 2023. The year Marty traveled to is now eight years in our past, and yet our shoes require old-fashioned tying, our ads are remarkably two-dimensional, and our cars, much to our collective disappointment, remain firmly bound to the tarmac. Most starkly, there is a conspicuous absence of hoverboards under the feet of our youth.

There is a strange dissonance, a jarring incongruity between the future we imagined and the reality we inhabit. Where is this high-tech wonderland we were promised in all those movies from the 80s?

The Promised Futuristi…