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Tuesday 6 July 2010

Back To the Future?

Many of you might have seen stories floating around on the Internet, over the past couple of days, saying about how today was Future Day.
This all stems from the movie Back To The Future. The story being that today, or yesterday, depending on which story you read, was the date programmed into Marty McFly's De Lorean sports car.

Well, it's not true...
Apparently this all started when a UK based movie magazine reported the story. They then realised their mistake. But, they still produced a photo-shopped picture, supposedly showing the read out in the car, with the date as "Jul 05, 2010". I guess they were just having a bit of fun? But, you know how the Internet is these days. Stories like this spread like wildfire. Sites like Twitter & Facebook just help to fan those flames & spread them ever further. Maybe that's because we all want the stories to be true. It's almost as if we're willing them to be real, in some instances anyway.
I saw the story myself yesterday, via Twitter as it happens. I tried, in vain, to find out if this was true, as it seemed like aa amusing little story. Now i know why i couldn't prove it.

This whole episode made me think of two things.

Firstly, this re-inforces the fact that you just can't believe all that you read, or see on the Internet. As if you should do so anyway! So many people want to start a hoax, or just don't check their facts in the first place. In these cases & before you know it, that "fact", or deliberate falsehood, has become the "truth".

My second thought was that the future just isn't what it was made out to be. If i'd bought the future in a store, i'd have taken it back by now & asked for my money back.
In Back To The Future, Marty McFly was zooming around on a hoverboard. Well, i haven't seen anyone doing that in my neighbourhood yet & i don't expect to do so for some time to come. Even the De Lorean car seemed too revolutionary & disappeared into the sunset.
I remember watching "2001 A Space Odyssey", all those years ago & thinking, "Wow this is going to be happening in my lifetime. I'll be able to visit the Moon when i'm older" It sure beats some terrestrial resorts i can think of (Insert joke here about visiting the Moon & not liking it, because it had no atmosphere...)
In July 1969, we landed a man on the Moon. Now, we don't seem to be able to get any futher than orbiting the Earth.
I'm sure we can all think of many more examples of those exciting promises of what the future was going to hold for us.

So, what happened? Were we all lied to?
And, maybe most importantly of all. Who stole my future? I want it back.

2 comments:

  1. The biggest lies thus far have been all the 'world coming to an end on such-and-such date' stories. Frankly, I'm in no hurry for the world to end, but it would've been cool if we could zip around on hover boards by now.
    Oh well...

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  2. Funnily enough, i did think about the bad things that we were "promised" as well. That Nostrodamus guy didn't really know anything did he? ;)

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