The good news is that technology won’t stop anytime soon, giving us new things that we can use for a good purpose. The bad news, however, is that certain technologies should be available by now but they are not. The following list of 20 Technologies We Were Promised That Should Exist By Now is clear proof that we have not come as far as we wished we had. The next attempt was conducted by the Soviets in 1942. They tried to allow a tank to glide onto a battlefield after being towed aloft by an airplane, to support airborne forces or partisans. A prototype was built and tested, but the whole idea didn’t get off the ground (no pun intended). Automaker PAL-V recently exhibited a demo car that costs around $621K. This car is supposed to fly but, well … have you seen any flying cars lately? We sure haven’t. Researchers once claimed that we would be able to do the same with humans but, as you can see for yourselves, this still happens only in Star Trek movies. Despite what popular science articles may tell you, this kind of Trekkie teleportation is not likely to happen any time in the foreseeable future, simply because our technology cannot transmit human atoms from one place to another. Physicist and astronomer Freeman J. Dyson first explored this idea as a thought experiment in 1960. Dyson imagined a solar-system-sized collection system of solar power. He pictured it not as a power source for us earthlings, but as a technology that other advanced civilizations in our galaxy would, inevitably, use. Dyson proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the discovery of advanced civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy. Sixty years later, however, this remains a theory. However, the fact that time travel has even been discussed as a “realistic” possibility of the “near future” (and failed each time) makes the whole subject comical. So, the question remains: Is time traveling possible? Of course! We’re doing it right now, aren’t we? We are traveling into the future … one second at a time. In other words, one could argue this is a form of immortality, which could be a good (and scary) thing. By 2045, humans should be able to achieve digital immortality by uploading their minds to computers, or at least that’s what some futurists suggest. The only problem is that some other futurists from the 1980s predicted that mind uploading would already be a thing right now … but as you can see, it isn’t. The obvious issue here is that we don’t have force fields. While this might change in the future, the force field would need to be able to contain heat from the plasma arc, but consume very little energy. Of course, we do have the ability to generate super-heated plasma arcs, but we do not currently have a good way to efficiently turn it back into electrical energy. We would also need more efficient power sources. The energy required to cut through a thick wall or bar is more than modern batteries can handle. Until this changes, any form of lightsaber will die after a momentary cut through a thick solid object. Last but not least, we need a very efficient way to recharge the batteries. Being able to re-convert plasma arcs into energy is useless if you can’t store it. So, is it achievable in the real world? The answer is, probably not. Why? Just like in “Star Trek teleportation” those damn atoms are to blame. See, if you wanted to shrink a-la Ant-Man, either your atoms would have to shrink too, or you would have to be made out of fewer atoms. And atoms don’t shrink. The average distance between the protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus of an atom and their surrounding electrons can’t be changed. Sorry to ruin it for you, but we just can’t shrink, fellas! The basic principle on which a rocket pack is supposed to work is Newton’s Third Law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The hot gas produced when fuel is burned in the combustion chamber shoots downwards, which produces an upward thrust. For the record, the only human I’ve ever seen using these was Michael Jackson during his epic concerts back in the 1990s. And according to the rumors, Michael had a few accidents … which was the reason he had to stop using them. In astronomy, superluminal motion is the faster-than-light motion seen in some radio galaxies and other space “objects” that are thought to contain a black hole, responsible for the ejection of mass at high velocities. Several researchers and experts claimed that humans would be able to control superluminal motion and use it to travel to other galaxies. Ummm, I don’t think it will be happening in this century. Or the next. Or the next after the next … Putting ethics aside, most experts agree that science can’t apply the current technology used in cloning cows or cats to cloning people. So, even if the world were dominated by a bunch of unethical leaders, we still would not have the ability to clone humans. The motto back in the 1970s was that the moon and even Mars would be our colonies sooner or later. The sad truth, however, is that we haven’t been able to even visit the moon again since 1972. Bioprinting has also been used to fabricate heart valves for possible use in patients with heart disease, as well as to build muscle and bone tissues and help repair nerves. So, one could say that bioprinting is successfully established and shouldn’t be on this list. This would be only partially right, though. See, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is attempting to further enhance this technology. Their aim is to create mini-organs such as hearts, livers, and lungs with the use of 3D Bioprinting to test new drugs accurately without having to test them on animals first. Instead of relying on bulky helmets and goggles to provide vital battlefield data, DARPA has promised to create contact lenses with built-in systems that would allow soldiers to focus on distant targets and overlay their vision with tactical information. The so-called “Superman” vision was supposed to be a reality by now, but I guess we will have to wait a little longer. The so-called data-driven healthcare promises to accumulate, analyze, evaluate, standardize, and improve the use of accurate and appropriate data from all over the world. It hasn’t happened yet, obviously. That was definitely wishful thinking, taking into consideration the scientific and technological progress of his time. This statement was actually part of his political campaign. He was visiting Buffalo’s Gratwick Laboratory, now Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, when he made that statement. More than a century later, it’s reasonable to ask what’s taking so long, right? What is a self-driving car? It’s a connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV), a.k.a. a driverless car (robocar for the true geeks out there), which is capable of sensing its environment and moving safely with little or no human input. Not sure if this will happen anytime soon. There are too many bad human drivers out there already. Bad robocars would make traffic on the streets even crazier. It’s amazing how this list is literally full of unrealistic “technological promises” when it seems nearly impossible to develop what theoretically should be an “easy task.” The self-cleaning textiles developed at RMIT University in Melbourne only need a spot of sunshine to get rid of those spills and stains. The method is supposed to be a really cheap and efficient way to grow special nanostructures, which can degrade organic matter when exposed to light, directly onto textiles. Almost four years later and this technology hasn’t conquered the markets yet. Where is it? The current technological vision is to develop “Emotion AI” – or emotion recognition technology – that can detect emotion just the way humans do, from multiple channels. We’re not sure if machines will ever be able to detect human emotion with accuracy, though. If humans can deceive other humans, they will definitely be able to deceive machines.
