Growing up, TV, movies and comics, not to mention credentialed scientists, were always telling us that the latest innovations were just around the corner — by the year 2000 we would be living on the Moon, relaxing while robots did all of our work and world peace would be upon us. Sure we have smart phones and a global communication network, but we're missing the really cool things — like control over the weather or a house that will talk back.

To be fair, some of our future dreams of yesteryear have come to pass, but in different ways than we expected. Here we look at some of the "retro futurist" predictions of the past and try to figure out where we've gone right or wrong.

House of the Future
Epcot Center and others promised us all a chatty, customizable house that cleaned up after us and had dinner waiting when we got home. Today, though, the field of automating housing seems to focus only on a specific tax bracket. People like Bill Gates do have smart houses that respond to their personal desires and follow their movements from room to room, piping music and atmosphere controls as wanted. And Italian architect David Fischer revealed plans in late June for a rotating skyscraper in developers' paradise Dubai, to be completed by 2010.

Monorail
In the city of the future, skyscrapers will have grown so high that elaborate monorail systems will transport the 21st-century denizens to and from their places of business, leisure and domestic life. Right? Despite initial enthusiasm and the creation of monorail systems in Germany, Sydney and parts of Southeast Asia, the car became the preferred global alternative. As people start to exhibit more environmentally friendly attitudes towards their transportation, though, we might see renewed interest in the "genuine, bona fide, electrified six-car monorail" as urban transportation. India, one of the world's burgeoning economies, is currently vetting bids on a Mumbai Monorail. After all, as the Monorail Society says, they "aren't just for zoos and theme parks."

Flying Cars
As gridlocked highways add an increasing burden on modern society, the terrestrial-bound nature of the basic car makes it only so interesting to the futurist. And it's understandable — anything that doesn't fly doesn't belong in the future! Luckily, there are quite a few companies working on flying cars. For instance, Moller International is taking pre-orders on its M400 Skycar, which will set you back roughly $1 million. Meanwhile, the company awaits FAA approval. The Skycar takes off like a helicopter, flies like a plane and makes you proud to live in the 21st Century. Meanwhile, NASA prefers the term "personal air vehicle" over "flying cars."

Hoverboards
Back to the Future II introduced the hip skateboard successor, the hoverboard, as Marty used it to escape Griff Tannen and his gang and get back to 1985. Despite director Robert Zemeckis joking hoverboards were real, which then caused an unlikely huge influx in consumer demand, none materialized until the opening ceremony celebration at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, when inventor Kevin Inkster unveiled the Airboard. (In fact, according to HowStuffWorks, the hovercraft depicted in that movie served as an inspiration to Inkster.) Looking more like a scooter than a skateboard, the Airboard does share one trait with its fictional counterpart: it doesn't work on water!

Airships
The prescient designers of the Empire State Building were so forward thinking they included a dirigible docking station on its spire, obviously predicting a wonderful future where lighter-than-air travel was the mode of transport for Americans. And not just air travel, but air living: in 1922, the Modesto Evening News printed an op-ed opining, "Did it ever occur to you, that our photographs are also going to get 'the merry ha-ha' when future generations discover them in some obscure nook of the airship-houses that will be in use 75 or 100 years from now?" However, following the Hindenburg disaster, the public soured on blimp travel. The point was moot, anyway, as dangerous winds prevented safe docking attempts. A bit more forward thinking was the 1952 replacement for the station, a broadcast tower.

Jetpacks
Airship travel or the monorail would be fine for John Q. Future's commute to the moisture trading floor, but what about perhaps the past's most-hyped future technology? Surely, the jetpack would be the personal transportation system of choice for both the discerning civilian and classy hero. There are actually quite a few jetpack projects in the works today, but the practical applications are limited. As such, most jetpacks or rocket belts are leisure equipment for novelty value and entertainment. Besides, if you don't have a couple hundred-thousand dollars lying around, your options are limited, unless you want to enter Jetpack International's competition in the search for a new pilot.

The Internet
Way back in 1995, astronomer and author Clifford Stoll didn't quite predict the Internet was a fad, but he didn't have the kindest words for it. "Do our computer pundits lack all common sense?" he asked. "The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works." While the Internet had yet to canonize its social networking, marketing and database capabilities at the time, Stoll might have underestimated its relevance, disallowing for some future ability to function as a marketplace: "The network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople."

Moon Colonization
Extraterrestrial settlements were so sure that Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey foresaw U.S.-Soviet cooperation on Moon bases as early as 1999. You might notice at least two mistakes in that prediction. However, America did at least visit the Moon one year later, and in 2004 President George W. Bush announced intentions to send Americans back there by 2020, in order to establish a lunar base by 2024 to use as a launch pad to Mars. Even though scientists contend more information can be safely gathered from other heavenly bodies with robots, it's hard not to get excited about people actually living on the Moon. Think of all the stuff you could do there.

Esperanto
As globalization continues full tilt, bringing people from multiple nations increasingly closer in work and life, a universal language might make communication easier. Enter Dr. L.L. Zamenhof, who was hoping to bring about World Peace with a language anyone could easily learn. Instead of forcing non-native speakers to learn other languages, he hoped to create a grammatically simple language that he described as the equivalent of extending hands for a handshake. The result: Esperanto. Unfortunately, the two great totalitarian regimes of the 20th century — the USSR and Nazi Germany — killed off many European Esperantists, and growth has been lackluster since then, despite the work of many dedicated speakers (not to mention the publicity of a William Shatner flick). Other invented languages have been proposed for utilitarian purposes, but so far the world has relied primarily on English and its lingua franca status.

Resources

Dude, Where's My Jetpack?
by Daniel H. Wilson
Discover, Feb. 26, 2007

Paleo-Future

Top Ten Flying Cars!
Gizmo Watch, March 22, 2007

The Internet? Bah!
by Clifford Stoll
Newsweek, Feb. 27, 1995