2. Minority Report

Released: 2002 | Set in the year: 2054

HITS

MISSES

UNDECIDED

Back in the hoary old days of Tom Cruise's superstardom, Minority Report was just another box office home run. The story was neo-noir, with a detective on the run for a murder he hasn't yet committed. But the convoluted plot line, full of psychic visions and nonpsychic betrayals, isn't what most people remember about this movie. They remember that scene where Cruise whips through images and data with his hands, and the creepy holographic ads that yelp from cereal boxes and greet you by name at the Gap. Minority Report is a vision of a sleek future that feels plausible, full of believable-looking gadgets and essentially free of all violent crime. The pushy ads and unnerving psychics are just part of the package.When we first saw Microsoft's innovative multitouch interface, Surface , I said what everyone says. "It's just like Minority Report." And it's what people say about Jeff Han's larger, wall-mounted touchscreens , watching him deftly shuffle through windows with his fingers. Microsoft is fine with the association-Han is not. He points out that, since Cruise's character is dealing with holographic images floating around himself, the interface lacks the tactile feedback of tapping and sliding your hands across a screen. That might be the case, but between Han, Microsoft and the iPhone , touch-based computing is here to stay. And 3D displays, which were a key trend at this year's Consumer Electronics Show>, are also on the verge of commercial viability. I'm not predicting a holographic, gesture-controlled computer in the near future, or even the less sophisticated holographic ads and camcorder footage that shows up in the movie. But if Surface is already available in 2008, it's hard to imagine that we'll be using mice and 2D monitors in 2054.Adaptive braking and autonomous cruise control are already a reality for luxury cars. So in nearly 50 years, will cars reach full autonomy? Scientists and automakers would argue that a driverless world is a significantly safer and less congested one, and that incremental improvements will eventually add up to robotic chauffeurs. The head of Stanford's DARPA Urban Challenge team, which placed second in the driverless race , predicts self-driven cars by 2030. That deadline might feel a little tight, but 2054 is much more forgiving.Without getting into a debate about whether psychic powers exist, here are some facts. Parapsychology has all but disappeared from academia in the United States, and is on a downward slide overseas. There is no significant government funding for any experiments related to psychic phenomenon. In other words, whatever you may or may not believe, state-sponsored precognition doesn't exist. To assume that the next two decades will see a sudden breakthrough in observable psychic ability, as well as the bureaucratic and budgetary momentum to install those psychics as part of a crime-prevention initiative, is about as far-fetched as believing that future presidential administrations will start relying on Ouija boards.Self-driving cars make sense. But magnetically levitating cars that climb buildings? It makes for a swell video-game-ish action scene, but has little to do with actual maglev technology, which is progressing at a glacial pace It's a sad fact of life, but the jet-pack industry is a phantom market . That could change, however, if enough people risk their incredibly rich and/or stupid lives in the coming years to allow jet-pack makers to improve on the basic design. So if jet packs were to, pun intended, take off right this minute, or within the next couple of years, it's possible that by 2054 they would be fuel-efficient enough to stay airborne as long as the ones in this movie, and light enough to not blow your ACL every time you land. It probably won't happen, but it could. And we all want it to, so it should.The mandatory, frequent iris scans, which serve as a security tool as well as a marketing one (the Gap holo-greeter has specific suggestions for Cruise's characters, based on the shopping history associated with his eyeballs) are completely feasible, given the increasing high-tech scrutiny of Americans. However, its more likely that the technology will have at least some failure rate, similar to tag-detection systems at retail stores, acting more as an aid to security personnel than a self-contained security measure.The wirelessly updated e-paper newspapers are considerably prettier and more flexible than the Kindle , but that technology could easily become commonplace within the movie's timeline. But if holographic technology is as advanced as it appears to be, why bother with any tangible display surface?