Back To The Future Day: 2015's not what it was cracked up to be

Power laces, clothes that adjust themselves, hover boards and flying cars – the future's not what it was cracked up to be.

For today's the day that Marty McFly went to when he travelled forward in time in a modified DeLorean powered by rubbish to stop his own children's lives going drastically off the rails, writes Daniel Wainwright.

To anyone watching Back to the Future II when it came out in 1989, the world of October 21 2015 seemed a heck of a long way off.

For the past few years people have been counting down to 'Back To The Future Day' and tens of thousands of people have 'liked' a Facebook group dedicated to it.

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But what came true and what's about as likely as using a lightning bolt to generate the 1.21 gigawatts needed to power a flux capacitor?

Here are some of the things Back to the Future II prophesised we would have by now:

1)Hoverboards

Skateboards that floated without wheels, like miniature hovercraft only much cooler. Marty McFly gets hold of a little girl's board to make his escape from some future bullies, triggering one of the film's best known and most iconic chase sequences. In the movie they're made by the toy manufacturer Mattel (maker of Barbie and Hot Wheels). Something called a hoverboard does indeed exist, but it's basically a Segway without a handle.

They're banned from the roads. Car maker Lexus has, however, developed a real one. But it involves the use of magnets so it's not quite the great means of escape Marty would have needed.

2)Hovercams

Floating, automatic photographers. Not exactly the all seeing eyes of the paparazzi that the average red top tabloid would dream of, but drone cameras are available from a few hundred quid. And it looks as though drones are increasingly becoming an issue for the police, with a spike in the number of incidents reported over the past year.

3)Video glasses

When Marty Junior sits down to eat dinner with the family, he complains that his video glasses only let him watch two TV channels at the same time. Meanwhile his sister wears a pair around her neck that light up with the word 'phone' when a call comes in.

Of course we already have the Google Glass, which does all of this and a lot more. Google stopped working on its prototype in January this year, however, but said it remains committed to producing other versions of the Glass. But at £990 each, they just made it look as though the wearer had more money than sense.

4)Fax machines making a comeback

In 1989 a fax machine would have been the height of sophistication and a must for any self-respecting business person. To emphasise just how fired Marty senior was, his boss sent him a fax that printed out on machines all over the home. This was an era when the internet was in its infancy, of course. But the same sequence also predicts, accurately, the rise of video conferencing. Skype and Facetime have made it much easier to speak face to face from far away. Not that Marty senior will have appreciated that at the time, given what he was being told.

5)Automated petrol stations

We may have to wait a little longer before we can have our cars filled up for us by a robot without having to get out and do it ourselves. And the chances are we'll all be driving around in electric cars by then (OK maybe not) but for now we're just going to have to console ourselves with the 'pay at pump' facility and just hoping the details register so the forecourt's anti-bilking spikes don't accidentally trigger.

6)Power laces

Forget Velcro. When it comes to tying your trainers, the power lace is the only way to go if you're too lazy to do it yourself, but in too much of a hurry to do some exercise. It looked as though we might have to just chalk this one up to 'fantasy' but Nike refused to be beaten.

Designer Tinker Hatfield is working with a patent involving a weight sensor triggering a tying mechanism. He already created 1,500 pairs back in 2011 which sold online and raised millions of dollars towards the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, but those ones could not tie themselves. Fancy paying thousands of pounds for shoes that don't even tie themselves. Mugs.

7)Computer games without controllers

"You mean you have to use your hands?" The kid in the 80s themed café was about as disappointed with the Wild Gunman game as one who had just been handed a ball in a cup with string attached. Yet the prediction of how computer games would turn out in 2015 was spot on thanks to the likes of the Xbox Kinect and its motion sensors.

8)Flying cars

Nah. No chance. But I'm yet to meet anyone who hasn't sat in traffic on the M6 at least once and fantasised about sticking on a pair of reflective sunglasses and saying: "Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads."

There's a company in Massachusetts called Terrafugia that has been working on a design for a car that can take off vertically. But it's been in the design stage for a decade. As a bit of a stop gap the company has a car with folding wings.

9)Food hydrators

"Boy, oh boy, mom you sure know how to hydrate a pizza." Imagine bunging your dinner in your back pocket, then shoving it in a little oven not much bigger than a George Foreman grill and having it come out a perfectly formed, piping hot pizza. Alas this final nail in the coffin of the concept of a home cooked dinner is still little more than a product of the imagination, which is probably a good thing.

10)Power clothing

Marty's jacket talks to him, adjusts its size and dries itself when it gets wet. But if you want to replicate the look of 2015 you need to wear your jeans inside out. Or if you're feeling a bit more mature and want to be like future, grown up Marty you could try wearing multiple ties. Or maybe be like Doc Brown and wear a transparent plastic one. Great Scott.