# How can I make "the future" come to reality? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 20, 2014, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-make-the-future-come-to-reality/688803 "2014-05-20T05:15:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Earth001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a6a055/32.png) [@Earth001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earth001)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-make-the-future-come-to-reality/688803/1 "2014-05-20T05:15:53Z")
So I look at this trope here: > **[I Want My Jet Pack - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IWantMyJetPack)** > > Speculative Fiction always seems to think that the future is going to be a lot more flashy and interesting than it actually turns out to be. The Year 2000 was supposed to give us lunar and undersea colonies, holographic radios, holographic movies … And I am very dissapointed by the lack of cool Sci Fi things we have in reality. I would like to know what career choice do I have to pick where I can make reality look like the world of tomorrow? ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-make-the-future-come-to-reality/688803/2 "2014-05-20T10:58:08Z")
> [@Earth001](#): > > So I look at this trope here: > > [I Want My Jet Pack - TV Tropes](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IWantMyJetPack) > > And I am very dissapointed by the lack of cool Sci Fi things we have in reality. I would like to know what career choice do I have to pick where I can make reality look like the world of tomorrow? Did you read the XKCD comic in your link? In what way is a pocket-held all-in-one videophone gameboy encyclopedia GPS camera stereo **not** a cool SciFi thing? The only thing not cool about it is that you’re used to it. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-make-the-future-come-to-reality/688803/3 "2014-05-20T12:36:18Z")
While we’re mining tvtropes, the converse trope is [Zeerust](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Zeerust) – where the “vision of the future” is stuff that no one currently wants or cares about and is so obviously rooting the values if the time and place the work was written instead of being currently relevant. Jet packs and flying cars are visions of a future from a time when transportation was evolving in new and exciting ways, and people imagined the future as “more of that happening”. As noted in the XKCD, what actually happened was telecommunications took off instead and became the new, exciting thing. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-make-the-future-come-to-reality/688803/4 "2014-05-20T13:34:32Z")
I think you’ll find that “the future” has a habit of showing up whether we do anything about it or not. Is there a specific change that you’d like to help along? “Making stuff more futuristic” is a pretty vague goal. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-make-the-future-come-to-reality/688803/5 "2014-05-20T14:32:10Z")
The Future is never about the future. It is always about today. When Tim Berners-Lee invented the web he was solving a problem he had of communicating with other scientists. The jetpack and rocket belt were strictly solutions for military uses, to get soldiers over obstacles in the field. Every bit of the real future and every bit of the imagined future were solutions to the problems of the day, problems that were thought to be susceptible to improved technology. And the ones that worked worked far better than idiot cool SF toys. You want people flying cars over your house? People are idiots. Go into engineering technology of some sort if you want to do something for the future. Find a problem. Solve it. That’s it. Nobody’s ever done it differently. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-make-the-future-come-to-reality/688803/6 "2014-05-20T14:42:15Z")
Since the OP is looking for advice, let’s move this to IMHO. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-make-the-future-come-to-reality/688803/7 "2014-05-20T18:12:14Z")
> [@Earth001](#): > > And I am very dissapointed by the lack of cool Sci Fi things we have in reality. I would like to know what career choice do I have to pick where I can make reality look like the world of tomorrow? Business and finance. The reason why the world doesn’t currently look like a 1920’s sci-fi comic strip is financial, not technological. We already have sufficient technology to take trips to Mars, build permanent colonies on the Moon, building underwater cities, and so forth. However, doing so would require vast sums of money, and no one wants to spend that much on things with no apparent chance of profit. But if you became the next Warren Buffett and had $100,000,000,000 to toss around, you could build all that stuff. ---
**Author:** ![protoboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@protoboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/protoboard)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-make-the-future-come-to-reality/688803/8 "2014-05-21T18:50:55Z")
Join the Methuselah Foundation. Then you might get to live to SEE the future too. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-make-the-future-come-to-reality/688803/9 "2014-05-21T19:09:18Z")
Reality never looks like the future. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2014, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-make-the-future-come-to-reality/688803/10 "2014-05-22T04:41:45Z")
My signature, that I haven’t used in a while, answers the OP: