This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Unfortunately, the video at the URL <today.reuters.com/tv> changes, so we have no idea what it showed when you posted this link.
Pteryx: Just as a general comment, I think we got really cool future tech. Even if the Challenger blowing up <i>did</i> apply brakes on space exploration...
Its late, but Where The Hell Are The Flying Cars would've been pretty good to. There's even some Truth in Television in it.
Duckluck: I know a lot of Fall Out fans are mad at what Bethesda is doing, but please there's a time (whenever) and place (here). Pulled: "** To bad Bethesda is so stupid that they are going to remove that element of charm from the seris."
Inkblot: Is there anyone willing to make an animated GIF montage of every Popular Science cover that displayed a jetpack?
Your Obedient Serpent: The flip side of I Want My Jet Pack is "How Did We Wind Up Living In The Future Max Headroom Warned Us About?"
BritBllt: Okay, I organized the page into folders, and added two movies. However, I've gotta admit to being confused on the trope premise. The way it's described, it sounds like fiction whose expiration dates have come and gone, without the world they described coming to pass. But the examples mostly seem to be people in fiction being disappointed by the future and saying variations of "I want my jetpack" (which seems like it'd be a subversion, not a straight example). The examples I added are taking the trope on the first level.
Twin Bird: I'm suspicious of that LHJ excerpt because of "The American will be taller." It's a reasonable (and correct) prediction on its own, but inside the paragraph where it says "he will live to fifty instead of thirty-five" shows a probable future hand with a misunderstanding of mean lifespan. Nowadays, we're used to the fact that deaths are heavily clustered just above the mean, which is in the seventies, with a few outliers pulling it down below, so the mean is a good guide of how long one lives. This wasn't the case for most of human history, when disease, violence, and less concern for children's welfare produced a more even spread, and a bit of a Lake Wobegon effect - it was assumed that you'd live to around seventy, even though something else was likely to get you before old age. There was never a sense that thirty-five years were any kind of allotted lifespan.
