Hey Nerds, Where’s My Hoverboard?
And other technology promised in 90s films that should exist by now
I’ve got a bone to pick with the nerds — where’s my hoverboard? I’ve been pining for one since I saw Marty McFly defeat Future Biff in an escape scene of epic futuristic magnitude. That scene was set thirty years in the future, 2015.
It’s 2024. Where’s my damn hoverboard?
We’re clearly technologizing wrong. E-scooters are littering every corner of my town, but not one of them makes futuristically ‘wooshy swooshy’ sounds. Some cars drive themselves now. But I can drive. I even like it most days. You know what I can’t do? Hover like I’m a human hummingbird.
I’m not being ridiculous here. It’s not like I’m asking for a DeLorean — although that would be cool. All I want is to hover like a disembodied spirit coming back from the future to haunt you. It’s a humble hover request at best.
‘Robin, hoverboards exist…you can buy them at Walmart’
Current hoverboards don’t hover — those are just futuristic-looking skateboards with sidewheels. Pfft, they only get the side-eye from this hover purist. I want to hover mid-air like Slimer did in the Ghostbusters. But with less slime and ectoplasm and more swishy sound effects.
‘Maybe hoverboards aren’t possible, you know…physics n’ shiznit’
They are. I follow developments in the hovering community. We all got hover stiffies back in 2014 when the Hendo hoverboard managed to fly 2.5cm off the ground, but only around a track of non-ferromagnetic metal. Ditto for the Omni board and the Lexus hoverboard in 2015. But they both fell flat.
It’s a bit of a timey-wimey physics gobbledygook explanation, but to hover without a magnetic track, you need quantum mechanics, magnetic fields, and superconductors, like in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
There’s a not-so-cool problem with superconductors, though; they need to be at -230 degrees Fahrenheit (-145 Celsius) or less to function. This isn’t a problem for CERN, but the average shmuck like me doesn’t have access to supercooled liquid nitrogen.
Enter — the ArcaBoard. ARCA’s super cool spacey nerds managed to make a functioning prototype and opened their ArcaBoard waitlist. But that was in 2016, and we’re still waiting. Also, they’re priced at $19,900, and this poor writer’s car isn’t even worth that much. So, I think I’ll hover over that purchase for a while.
Technologies That Should Exist By Now
My divaesque technological demands go beyond hovering like I’m a human helicopter. Why don’t I have a closet like Cher from Clueless? Surely AI could match my outfits for me so I don’t have to dress in basic-white-dude like Mark Zuckerberg. Then robotics could swooshify them around my closet to present to me like I’m Queen of Closet Sheba.
For anyone not born in the 1900s (a phrase that made me cringe as I wrote it), here is a blast from the not-so-distant past — Cher’s outfit-matching machine, which was accompanied by a carousel closet:
Ok, my demands are sounding a little vain and godlike. Perhaps I should focus on something more practical. Where’s my tricorder?
For anyone who isn’t a Star Trek nerd, it was a handheld device used to scan the environment and bodies and interpret the data in real time.
There’s a tricorder in development from one of the geektacular companies I’ve ever seen, The Wand Company. Adam Savage from MythBusters tested the prototype this past June, but if you watch that video — “Danger, Will Robinson!”, it gets nerdalicious. They also have the 10th, 11th, and 12th Doctor Who’s Sonic Screwdrivers.
Good job geeks, we’re getting closer.
However, I’m still on a 3-month waitlist to get my next MRI (thanks, Canada). We are making progress with tricorder-like functionalities, though, with things like the MedWand that takes at-home health readings.
Alas, we’re not there yet. And my Apple Watch reminds me every day that I don’t have a tricorder, and it makes me want to beam myself off this planet.
Why Aren’t ‘The Nerds’ Working On These?
What exactly are we keeping our genius freaks and geeks busy with? We need to keep them busy with something; otherwise, they’ll use their dissertation on boundary functions in combinatorial mathematics to light the fuse for their unibomb.
Speaking of anoraks, we need to keep busy — specifically, what are the NASA nerds working on?
Also, what does NASA stand for — Not Another Shitty Acronym? Nerds Avoiding Science Always? Not A Sphere Association? ‘Need Astronauts, Someone? Anyone?’? Not Aliens Stop Asking? Not All Sapiens Ascend?
My theoretical supposition is that it's Not Another Smart Asshole.
Anyhoo, NASA — one hoverboard, please.
We’re Technologizing Wrong
If the movie The Matrix taught me anything, it’s that we’ve reached the peak of human civilization — we’ve given birth to AI. But so far, it’s less apocalyptic and more anticlimactic.
What I really want the robots working on are my dishes. AI should be doing my taxes. And a combination of the two should be making my food like that magic microwave from Spy Kids. I want a clothes washer and dryer that can separate my delicates and fold laundry — not a Bluetooth connection that lets me start the pre-loaded washer from the couch.
I want a smart robot that will clean my house. I was quite excited about Roomba’s — but let’s face it, they aren’t the panacea we thought. Albeit, they do keep my dog entertained.
Summabitch, I want Rosey the Robot from The Jetsons. Not Roomba, the half-arsed floor cleaner that gets foiled by an errant pillow.
We’re technologamizing wrong people.
We want robots and AI doing our laundry and cleaning our crappers so that we can spend our time making art, wrangling butterflies, and teaching our dogs to surf. Or whatever rich people with more money than brains do.
But instead, we have AI making our art while we mop the floor like Cinderellaesque peasants.
Whoever coded this shitty Matrix-like simulation we're living in, you did it wrong. One hoverboard, please.
The reason we don’t need hoverboards is for the same reason we don’t need flying cars. Just LOOK at the people crying about flying cars as they drive, occasionally looking up from TikTok to avoid plowing through a KFC, and then ask yourself “Do you REALLY want to give them a third dimension of space to terrorize?”
I think NASA nerds are working on Nobody Actually Smokes Anymore.