History Quotes / IWantMyJetPack

->'''Harvey Birdman''': (Looks at his clock, sees that it's 2004, smiles patiently at the Jetsons) Really.

->How can we breathe with no air? Where's Grandpa Max? If this is the future, does everybody have jetpacks? Who won the last five world series? No seriously, ''where are the jetpacks?

-->-- '''TheSpoonyExperiment''', during his riffing on ''Captain Z-Ro''

->It's a kind of Globalist fairy tale, a myth for the heady days of the early postwar era, when rational discourse in the Hall of Nations would solve all problems. Only [[StrawPolitical religious bumpkins]], with their kneejerk paranoid delusions, stood in the path of our new utopia. (Could Clarke had conceived of a day when his country would orchestrate the installation of [[UsefulNotes/SaudiArabia the world's most aggressive theocracy]] as chair of the UNs Human Rights Council?)

->''"Unless you're over 60, you weren't promised flying cars. You were promised an opressive cyberpunk dystopia. [[OppressiveStatesOfAmerica Here you go]]."''

-->-- Origin unknown; this trope in a nutshell.

->I feel sorry for those who think innovation will ever lead humanity to some new era of intelligence and social awareness. Hacktivists and crowdsourcing and cryptocurrencies and [=WikiLeaks=] are all proof...we’re not giving the elite much incentive to let us [[DemocracyIsBad keep these freedoms]], although mobile devices and the Internet are proving to be a [[BreadAndCircuses wonderful at pacifying people]] too.

->''"Boy, were we off base. It isn't simply that the predictions were wrong. No one with half a brain really expected that sort of accuracy. And true, though some marvels did not come to pass, others that were and weren't predicted did. We certainly live very different lives from that of our fathers and grandfathers. That is not in dispute. But what did not happen is what many expected, though never talked about much. Assuming that we dodged the ''[[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]'', ''Literature/BraveNewWorld'' bullet, our future was supposed to be a sort of technocratic, atomic-powered, computer-controlled, antiseptic, space-travelling Jerusalem that would at last free us from the curse of Eden and original sin...We expected a sort of bloodless, benign French Revolution with Hugo Gernsback as our Voltaire and Creator/CarlSagan as our Robespierre. And what did we get? The City of Man with Tivo."''

-->--'''LewisBlack''', ''[[http://www.cc.com/video-clips/3weeg7/comedy-central-presents-the-millennium Comedy Central Presents]]''

-->--'''LewisBlack'''

->I feel sorry for those who think innovation will ever lead humanity to some new era of intelligence and social awareness. Hacktivists and crowdsourcing and cryptocurrencies and [=WikiLeaks=] are all proof...we’re not giving the elite much incentive to let us [[DemocracyIsBad keep these freedoms, although mobile devices and the Internet are proving to be a [[BreadAndCircuses wonderful at pacifying people]] too.

->An actual life-sized robot, clearly influenced by Johnny Five from 1986' s ''Film/ShortCircuit'', or Paulie's [[{{Sexbot}} sensual butler]] in ''Film/RockyIV'', Kevin has such an advanced level of Artificial Intelligence that, for military applications alone, he'd be worth billions. Here we are, 25 years later, and AI still hasn't progressed past video game characters who spend their days running into walls.

->''Think of all the hate there is in Red China\\
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama\\
Ah, you may leave here for four days in space\\

->'''Leo [=McGarry=]''': My generation never got the future it was promised... Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don't even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.\\

->I walked up on to this stage, when we all know I should have '''''FLOWN.''''' Via jetpack! Who's with me?... Are my shoes electric? No. Does [[RunningGag my pillow comb my hair at night]], while I am sleeping? No, sadly, it does not. So where, I ask you, is the hoverboard technology we all saw in ''[[Film/BackToTheFuturePartII Back to the Future 2]]'' over twenty years ago!

->The skies are always dark with airborne filth in this Los Angeles of the future. It usually rains. The infrastructure looks a lot like now, except older and more crowded, and with the addition of vast floating zeppelins, individual flying cars, and towering buildings of unimaginable size. When I first saw the film I was impressed by the giant billboards with moving, speaking faces on them, touting Coca-Cola and other products. Now I walk over to Millennium Park and see giant faces looming above me, smiling, winking, and periodically spitting (but not Coke). As for the flying cars, these have been a staple of sci-fi magazine covers for decades, but remain wildly impractical and dangerous, unless locked into a control grid.

->This Supreme Court is always a whisper away from outlawing blowjobs and allowing dead white Georgians to vote. They just overturned a portion of the Voting Rights Act, for shit's sake. We are a country that has the ability to build skytrains and have digital porn billboards, and yet, thanks to a divided Supreme Court and political stonewallers on both the left and the right, we're still gonna be arguing about the same, tired bullshit we always have fifty years from now instead of actually living in the future. What a load.

->[[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids I feel sorry for those who think innovation will ever lead humanity to some new era of intelligence and social awareness]]. Hacktivists and crowdsourcing and cryptocurrencies and [=WikiLeaks=] are all proof...we’re not giving the elite much incentive to let us keep these freedoms, although mobile devices and the Internet are proving to be a [[BreadAndCircuses wonderful at pacifying people]] too.

->{{The future}} had never really been built past [[TurnOfTheMillennium the change of the millennium]], and without that to anchor it there was just a vast, featureless present. Even technological advancement had become oddly fixed and predictable. The future came in regularly scheduled product launches headlined by SteveJobs, incremental, predictable, and mostly leaked to rumor sites a few weeks in advance. It was not even a hugely pessimistic historical moment. Rather it was one captured by a grim banality. Nothing changes. Humanity sits past the ghost point, [[ShaggyDogStory all the ideas and storming progress of the twentieth century ground to a point]]. For a hundred years now we had assumed we were building to something -- that there was some sort of stable endpoint that all the churn and upheaval pointed towards. Whether that endpoint was utopia or armageddon was up in the air, but the broad idea that history was going somewhere wasn’t. Instead, however, the wheels simply fell off, and the tow truck never came. We sat, abandoned on history’s roadside, left thinking, “is this all there was?” And, seeing no sign of civilization, we tweeted about it.

->The [[UsefulNotes/BillClinton Clinton Administration]] came in in early 1993. This administration had its focus on the domestic economy...With budget cuts necessary, NASA was an obvious target. Public humiliations like the revelation that the Hubble telescope was near-sighted did not help. The organisation found itself moving further and further away from pioneering space flight and opened the industry up to international or private efforts. The decline of NASA was such a public spectacle that even shows like ''Series/TheXFiles'' ('Space') and ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' ('Deep Space Homer') touched on it.\\\
The wondrous space-faring future of ''Star Trek'' seemed further away than ever. 'Jetrel' seems like a way top address these anxieties, exploring the legacy of splitting the atom. It feels like a reflection on early atomic era optimism, wondering whether the cost had been worth it. It was also perhaps a way of mourning the passage of that optimism and enthusiasm -- the idea that the future might find a way to turn destructive scientific advances into the gateway to a better tomorrow.
-->--'''[[http://them0vieblog.com/2014/10/20/star-trek-voyager-jetrel-review/#comment-83495 Darren Mooney]]''' on ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', "Jetrel"

->I walked up on to this stage, when we all know I should have '''''FLOWN.''''' Via jetpack! Who's with me?... Are my shoes electric? No. Does [[RunningGag my pillow comb my hair at night]], while I am sleeping? No, sadly, it does not. So where, I ask you, is the hoverboard technology we all saw in Film/BackToTheFuture 2 over twenty years ago!

->[[Film/BackToTheFuture In five years, we're gonna have flying cars and hoverboards and self-lacing shoes]]... it better happen. Otherwise they should have made it the year 3000. Even if they made it 2100, we'd all be dead! It wouldn't make a difference anyway! Better to be a mystery than to be '''wrong'''!

[[folder:fiction]]
->''I thought by now we'd live in space\\
and eat a pill instead of dinner\\
and wear a gas mask on our face, \\
a President of female gender.\\
Though progress marches on, \\
our troubles will grow strong\\
and my expectancies, become my fantasies.\\
You turn my blood to sand, the earth stands still again.''
-->-- '''Music/DanielAmos''', "(It's the Eighties, So Where's Our) Rocket Packs"

->''Where's my hovercraft?\\
Where's my jetpack?\\
Where's the font of acquired wisdom that eludes me now?''
-->-- '''Music/TheyMightBeGiants''', "The World Before Later On"

->Wait a minute, this is the future... [[NerdInEvilsHelmet where are all the phaser guns?]]
-->-- '''Simon Phoenix''', ''Film/DemolitionMan''

->'''Doctor Thirteen''': '''I'm''' waiting on that ''jet-pack'' they promised us in the ''sixties''. \\
'''Architect''': As'm I... still.\\
'''Doctor Thirteen''': Well, you're not going to get it. But you still cling to the promise. We all do.
-->-- ''[[Franchise/TheDCU Doctor Thirteen: Architecture & Morality]]''

->You can't say everyone's got a water buffalo when everyone does ''not'' have a water buffalo! We're going to get nasty letters saying 'Where's ''my'' water buffalo?' 'Why don't ''I'' have a water buffalo?' and are you prepared to deal with that?! I don't think so! Just [[PunctuatedForEmphasis stop. Being. So.]] [[CompletelyMissingThePoint SILLY!]]
-->-- '''Archibald Asparagus''', ''WesternAnimation/VeggieTales''

->I walked up on to this stage, when we all know I should have '''FLOWN'''. Via jetpack! Who's with me?... Are my shoes electric? No. Does [[RunningGag my pillow comb my hair at night]], while I am sleeping? No, sadly, it does not. So where, I ask you, is the hoverboard technology we all saw in Film/BackToTheFuture 2 over twenty years ago!

->Stupid [[OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness Department of Jetpack Suppression...]]
-->-- RunningGag in ''Webcomic/SkinHorse''

->''"Where are my robowhores? Bring me my robowhores!"''
-->-- '''The Perfesser''', [[http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2006/08/reynolds-universal-robots.html "Reynolds' Universal Robots"]]

->'''Boy:''' It's 2011. I want my flying car.\\
'''Girl:''' Dude. You're complaining to me on a phone, on which you buy and read books. And which you were using to play a 3D shooter until I interrupted you with what would be a video call if I was wearing a shirt.\\
'''Boy:''' Can't I have a flying car, too?\\
'''Girl:''' You'd crash it while texting and playing ''VideoGame/AngryBirds''.
-->-- ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'', [[http://xkcd.com/864/ "Flying Cars"]]

->It can contact nearly anyone in the world, locate me on aerial maps, and plot directions to any location in the country. It is unquestionably the future, and you would have crashed your stupid flying car anyway.
-->-- '''Webcomic/ThreePanelSoul''' on [=iPhones=], [[http://threepanelsoul.com/2008/11/05/on-advancements/ On Advancements]]

->'''Hobbes:''' A new decade is coming up.\\
'''Calvin:''' Yeah, big deal! Hmph. Where are the flying cars? Where are the moon colonies? Where are the personal robots and the zero gravity boots, huh? You call this a new decade?! You call this the future?? HA! Where are the rocket packs? Where are the disintegration rays? Where are the floating cities?\\
'''Hobbes:''' Frankly, I'm [[LuddWasRight not sure people have the brains to manage the technology they've got]].\\
'''Calvin:''' I mean, ''look'' at this! We still have [[WeatherControlMachine weather?!]] Give me a break!
-->-- ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes''

->How can we breathe with no air? Where's Grandpa Max? If this is the future, does everybody have jetpacks? Who won the last five world series? No seriously, ''where are the jetpacks?
-->-- '''10 year old Ben''', ''WesternAnimation/Ben10UltimateAlien''

->'''Mark''': This isn't the future! THIS IS THE LOUSY STINKIN' NOW!\\
'''John''': We still have hope for 2030 or even 2020. I mean, people are working on humanoid robots as we speak!
-->-- '''A filler comic from {{Tropers/StongRadd}}'s webcomic-to-be'''

[[folder:real life]]

->Dear [[Creator/TheBBC BBC]]. Well it's now 30 years down the line, and I'm no closer to owning a robotic housemaid. ''Tomorrow's World''? '''''Tomorrow's Horseshit''''', more like!
-->-- '''Ed Byrne:''' , ''Series/MockTheWeek'', "Unlikely letters to be read out on ''Points of View''"

->Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that [[ScienceIsBad we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.]]
-->--'''Creator/KurtVonnegut'''

->The irony is that last century’s modernism cannot turn into a thing of the past without losing its identity, because it wanted so desperately to embody the future. Like the glass and steel cubes of modernist buildings, it cannot afford to become old, to become the past, because that is totally undermining its ''raison d’être''. When the future becomes the past, the one cancels out the other and the result is emptiness.
-->-- '''John Borstlap''', ''The Classical Revolution: Thoughts on New Music in the 21st Century''

->Today it is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy's edge. But in the process, [[JobStealingRobot we have lost the human element]]; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create 'one world.' Instead of one world, we have '[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan star wars]],' and a future in which dumb, dented human toys will drift aimlessly about the cosmos [[InYourNatureToDestroyYourselves after our small planet's dead.]]
-->--'''Creator/GoreVidal''', "On Flying"

-->--''from '''[[http://www.cracked.com/blog/man-comics-dick-whiskey-in-one-millionth-century/ Dick Whiskey! Drunk Cop in the One Millionth Century!]]''' by '''{{Seanbaby}}'''''

->[[Film/BackToTheFuture In five years, we're gonna have flying cars and hoverboards and self-lacing shoes]]... it better happen. Otherwise they should have made it the year 3000. Even if they made it 2100, we'd all be dead! It wouldn't make a difference anyway! Better to be a mystery than to be '''wrong'''!
-->-- '''WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd'''

->Wait a minute, ''those'' existed in the 50s?! What a rip-off! I want one! I demand one right now!
-->-- '''TheSpoonyExperiment''', during his riffing on ''Captain Z-Ro''

-->--'''[[http://www.philipsandifer.com/2014/03/pop-between-realities-home-in-time-for.html Phil Sandifer]]'''

-->-- '''DanielAmos''', "(It's the Eighties, So Where's Our) Rocket Packs"

-->-- ''{{Hsu and Chan}}''

-->-- ''TheWestWing''

-->-- ''[[TheDCU Doctor Thirteen: Architecture & Morality]]''

-->-- '''Archibald Asparagus''', WesternAnimation/VeggieTales

-->-- '''Shawn Spencer''', {{Psych}}

-->-- RunningGag in ''SkinHorse''

-->-- '''ThreePanelSoul''' on [=iPhones=], [[http://threepanelsoul.com/2008/11/05/on-advancements/ On Advancements]]

-->-- '''10 year old Ben''', ''Ben10UltimateAlien''

->[[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids I feel sorry for those who think innovation will ever lead humanity to some new era of intelligence and social awareness]]. Hacktivists and crowdsourcing and cryptocurrencies and [=WikiLeaks=] are all proof...we’re not giving the elite much incentive to let us keep these freedoms, although mobile devices and the Internet are proving to be a [[BreadAndCircuses wonderful at pacifying people]] too."''

!!!Fiction

'''Girl:''' You'd crash it while texting and playing AngryBirds.

!!!RealLife

->The future ain't what it used to be.
-->-- Origin unknown; this trope in a nutshell.

->''[The iPhone] can contact nearly anyone in the world, locate me on aerial maps, and plot directions to any location in the country. It is unquestionably the future, and you would have crashed your stupid flying car anyway.''
-->-- '''ThreePanelSoul''', [[http://threepanelsoul.com/2008/11/05/on-advancements/ On Advancements]]

->'''Mark''': This isn't the future! THIS IS THE LOUSY STINKIN' NOW!\\
'''John''': We still have hope for 2030 or even 2020. I mean, people are working on humanoid robots as we speak!
-->-- '''A filler comic from {{Tropers/StongRadd}}'s webcomic-to-be'''

->''"Where are my robowhores? Bring me my robowhores!"''
-->-- '''The Perfesser''', [[http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2006/08/reynolds-universal-robots.html "Reynolds' Universal Robots"]]

->''"I thought by now we'd live in space\\

You turn my blood to sand, the earth stands still again."''

->''"Where's my hovercraft?\\
Where's my jetpack?\\
Where's the font of acquired wisdom that eludes me now?"''
-->-- '''Music/TheyMightBeGiants''', "The World Before Later On"

->"''Wait a minute, this is the future... [[GenreSavvy where are all the phaser guns?]]''
-->-- '''[[BigBad Simon Phoenix]]''', ''Film/DemolitionMan''

->'''Leo [=McGarry=]''': My generation never got the future it was promised... Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don't even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.
->'''Josh Lyman''': The personal computer...?
->'''Leo [=McGarry=]''': A more efficient delivery system for gossip and [[TheInternetIsForPorn pornography?]] Where's my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?
-->-- '''''TheWestWing'''''

->'''Doctor Thirteen''': ''Ugh''. Universe and future, like they're ''one and the same''... it's so bright and shiny sci-fi. '''I'm''' waiting on that ''jet-pack'' they promised us in the ''sixties''.
->'''"Architect"''': As'm I... still.
->'''Doctor Thirteen''': Well, you're not going to get it. But you still cling to the promise. We all do.

-> ''You can't say everyone's got a water buffalo when everyone does ''not'' have a water buffalo! We're going to get nasty letters saying 'Where's ''my'' water buffalo?' 'Why don't ''I'' have a water buffalo?' and are you prepared to deal with that?! I don't think so! Just [[PunctuatedForEmphasis stop. Being. So.]] [[CompletelyMissingThePoint SILLY!]]''

->''I walked up on to this stage, when we all know I should have '''FLOWN'''. Via jetpack! Who's with me?... Are my shoes electric? No. Does [[RunningGag my pillow comb my hair at night]], while I am sleeping? No, sadly, it does not. So where, I ask you, is the hoverboard technology we all saw in Film/BackToTheFuture 2 over twenty years ago!''

-> ''Stupid Department of Jetpack Suppression...''

->'''Hobbes:''' A new decade is coming up.
->'''Calvin:''' Yeah, big deal! Hmph. Where are the flying cars? Where are the moon colonies? Where are the personal robots and the zero gravity boots, huh? You call this a new decade?! You call this the future?? HA! Where are the rocket packs? Where are the disintegration rays? Where are the floating cities?
->'''Hobbes:''' Frankly, I'm [[InYourNatureToDestroyYourselves not sure people have the brains to manage the technology they've got]].
->'''Calvin:''' I mean, ''look'' at this! We still have [[WeatherControlMachine weather?!]] Give me a break!
-->-- ''CalvinAndHobbes''

->''How can we breathe with no air? Where's Grandpa Max? If this is the future, does everybody have jetpacks? Who won the last five world series? No seriously, ''where are the jetpacks?''

-> ''"We've all got gadgets coming out of our ears; ipods, satnavs, an electrical item for every job. To many, it must seem like we're living in the future. But to others, the cry has always been: "Well if this is the future, then where's my jetpack?" Well today, those people will definitely have a smile on their face."''

->''"Dear [[Creator/TheBBC BBC]]. Well it's now 30 years down the line, and I'm no closer to owning a robotic housemaid. ''Tomorrow's World''? Tomorrow's horseshit, more like!"''
-->-- '''Ed Byrne:''' , ''Series/MockTheWeek'', "Unlikely letters to be read out on ''Points of View''"

->''"The future ain't what it used to be."''
-->-- Attributed to Yogi Berra; this trope in a nutshell.

->''"Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that [[ScienceIsBad we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.]]"''
-->--'''KurtVonnegut'''

->''"Today it is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy's edge. But in the process, [[JobStealingRobot we have lost the human element]]; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create 'one world.' Instead of one world, we have '[[UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan star wars]],' and a future in which dumb, dented human toys will drift aimlessly about the cosmos after [[InsignificantLittleBluePlanet our small planet's dead.]]"''

->''"[[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids I feel sorry]] for those who think innovation will ever lead humanity to some new era of intelligence and social awareness. Hacktivists and crowdsourcing and cryptocurrencies and [=WikiLeaks=] are all proof...we’re not giving the elite much incentive to let us keep these freedoms, although mobile devices and the Internet are proving to be a [[BreadAndCircuses wonderful at pacifying people]] too."''

->''"[[Film/BackToTheFuture In five years, we're gonna have flying cars and hoverboards and self-lacing shoes]]... it better happen. Otherwise they should have made it the year 3000. Even if they made it 2100, we'd all be dead! It wouldn't make a difference anyway! Better to be a mystery than to be '''wrong'''!"''

->''"Wait a minute, ''those'' existed in the 50s?! What a rip-off! I want one! I demand one right now!"''

->''"The [[UsefulNotes/BillClinton Clinton Administration]] came in in early 1993. This administration had its focus on the domestic economy...With budget cuts necessary, NASA was an obvious target. Public humiliations like the revelation that the Hubble telescope was near-sighted did not help. The organisation found itself moving further and further away from pioneering space flight and opened the industry up to international or private efforts. The decline of NASA was such a public spectacle that even shows like ''Series/TheXFiles'' ('Space') and ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' ('Deep Space Homer') touched on it.\\\
The wondrous space-faring future of ''Star Trek'' seemed further away than ever. 'Jetrel' seems like a way top address these anxieties, exploring the legacy of splitting the atom. It feels like a reflection on early atomic era optimism, wondering [[WasItReallyWorthIt whether the cost had been worth it.]] It was also perhaps a way of mourning the passage of that optimism and enthusiasm – the idea that the future might find a way to turn destructive scientific advances into the gateway to a better tomorrow."''

->''"{{The future}} had never really been built past [[TurnOfTheMillennium the change of the millennium]], and without that to anchor it there was just a vast, featureless present. Even technological advancement had become oddly fixed and predictable. The future came in regularly scheduled product launches headlined by Steve Jobs, incremental, predictable, and mostly leaked to rumor sites a few weeks in advance. It was not even a hugely pessimistic historical moment. Rather it was one captured by a grim banality. Nothing changes. Humanity sits past the ghost point, [[ShaggyDogStory all the ideas and storming progress of the twentieth century ground to a point]]. For a hundred years now we had assumed we were building to something -- that there was some sort of stable endpoint that all the churn and upheaval pointed towards. Whether that endpoint was utopia or armageddon was up in the air, but the broad idea that history was going somewhere wasn’t. Instead, however, the wheels simply fell off, and the tow truck never came. We sat, abandoned on history’s roadside, left thinking, “is this all there was?” And, seeing no sign of civilization, we [[{{Twitter}} tweeted]] about it."''
-->--'''[[http://www.philipsandifer.com/2014/03/pop-between-realities-home-in-time-for.html Phil Sandifer]]'''

"''Wait a minute, this is the future... [[GenreSavvy where are all the phaser guns?]]''