Well, I just seem to be puttering away here today, don’t I, posting up my little bits of nothing? Here’s some more, courtesy of Lileks:

[Back to the Future], which I still think is a perfect little thing, was made in 1985. Marty was sent back to 1955. If they made the movie today, he’d go back to 1977.

 

Think about that. 1977 would look like today, minus computers. Same clothes, same Pink Floyd tunes on the classic rock station, same smear of gimcrack commercial architecture interspersed with stalwarts from the 20s. Color TV, Star Wars, angry Iran. Marty could order a Pepsi Free in 1977, and they’d think it was a sugarless brand they hadn’t gotten yet.

How’s that for a scary thought? I, and I daresay most of the people reading this blog, are now the age of Marty McFly’s parents in Back to the Future, a movie that came out when we were about Marty’s age.

This actually parallels an equally scary thought I had the other day: in Back to the Future II, Marty travels 30 years ahead to what is, to him, the fairly distant future. That distant future was the year 2015… which is only eight years away from us now!

On the positive side, maybe this means that self-adjusting sneakers, hoverboards, Mr. Fusion, and the Cafe 80s aren’t very far away. That would be nice…