When I was growing up, Back to the Future Trilogy was the biggest movie, so that was our main reference point for the high-tech future world to look forward to. (Thinking now, I don't think they got a single prediction right!) While there were no scientists predicting things like flying cars, there was a huge sense of excitement for future technology in general.
For me, the big surprises were:
* Overpopulation and costly housing have made life far harsher despite goodies like air conditioning, GPS and big TVs being democratised.
* Today's smartphones are beyond anything I imagined.
* ICE cars have barely changed since the '90s other than having screens, safety features and funkier styling.
* Idealistic predictions of society 'healing the world' were unfortunately as wrong as BTTF.
* Given the problems caused by Facebook, disinformation, political polarisation and loss of community, I learned that technology could actually make the world a worse place.
Most of all, I never would have expected that decades later, I would wish that I could go back to the '80s and stay there for good this time.
