For centuries, people have been predicting that the future is almost upon us. But now, in 2018, it seems that the future has finally arrived. Don't believe us? Just look around you. Wake up and smell the self-driving cars. And if you still don't believe us, take a look at these photos that prove that the future really is already here. Be warned, though - some of these images present a shocking insight into our world today. You never believe that the future was so close this entire time...
Just the other day we saw a self-cleaning toilet, and to be perfectly honest the robotic seat wiper freaked us the hell out. But really, that's nothing compared to the real future: the Noise Canceling Toilet. Now, it's obvious that this particular photo is a mock-up of a proper Noise Canceling toilet, but the technology does exist and it'll be rolled out like toilet paper everywhere soon.
Nobody likes the sound of a dump entering the bowl, or the echo chamber of farts, or the splashback (fondly known by our friends as "Poseidon's Kiss"). And for a while there, we thought that we would just have to come to grips with the fact that everyone makes horribly weird sounds on the can. But this is the future, where we don't have to face any facts. Where technology can continue to help us hide our shame.
As cute as they may be, we've known for a while that there's really something up with cats. They might purr and rub up on your legs when they want something, but that's about the extent of their love for us. And let's not forget all the times they've ruined our keyboards, scratched our couches to hell, and just plain gone missing for days.
No, cats are just about the opposite of man's best friend. They've had a plan in place for centuries to take over humankind, backed by the government, and now it's finally coming to fruition. First, they took over our houses, and now they've taken over the internet. It won't be long before the final phase begins, so you'd better deprogram your cat while you still can.
Our lives are just full of crap. Over the last century, advertising has made us believe that we really, truly need so much stuff, when really we don't. The media have controlled our buying patterns and our lives, and now that we're living in the future, we've got the chance to fight back. To kick advertising in the nuts once and for all.
But what do we do with all the junk that we've already bought and collected? Well, thanks to the future, and websites like Lifehacker we can turn all of it to uses that we never thought before. Like this girl, who's turned her car spoiler (and apart from racing drivers, who the hell needs those, anyway?) into a handy picnic table. Problem solved.
In most popular fiction of the last couple of decades, the end of the world only comes about in one way: a horrifying zombie apocalypse. Virus is unleashed on the world, people go all undead, and boom, the end of society as we know it. The predictions have been all too clear, but it's only now that the signs are starting to show themselves.
Just try to tell us that this truck wasn't involved in a minor zombie outbreak. With the flat tires, smashed windows, and blood everywhere, it looks like the undead got the upper hand this time. But let this be a warning for everyone else reading right now: we don't have much time left. Find a safe place, stock up on water and ammo, and good luck.
If there's one thing that's been impossible in these millennial times, it's trying to teach our parents (and grandparents) how to use modern technology. They just can't seem to grasp the concept that you can't put Liquid Paper directly on a computer screen, or that emails don't need a postage stamp. Anything you told them about instant messaging would go in one ear and out the other.
When it comes to smartphones, though, those days are long gone. Nowadays, the olds are just as tech savvy, and just as addicted to the tiny screen as we are. Sure, they still like every single photo you put up on Instagram, and they still write "Dear Son" at the start of WhatsApp messages, but they've really gotten the handle on how to use them. Forget about zombies - these are the signs of the end times.
Didn't believe us when we said that cats were on the verge of taking over the world? Here's the proof you were looking for. Considering our whole social structure is essentially built on computers nowadays, with all of our personal data on hard disks or in the cloud, it's no surprise that it's the first thing the cats are going to take out when they rise up.
With that gone, they'll essentially have us at their mercy. Of course, they'll still have to take out our food supply, but without the ability to order take-out online, we're going to fold in no time at all. After that, they'll have us at their mercy. They'll play with us like the timid little mice that we are. You have been warned.
Do you remember when you were a kid, and all you thought about was how cool it would be to be a grown up? About all the junk food you could buy and how late you could stay up, playing video games? Well, this picture is a symbol for all those childhood hopes and dreams. It's telling you that while all of our future might not be here, yours damn well is.
Now you can do whatever you like. Stop reading this article and go for a road trip out to the desert, or ask your cute next door neighbor out on a date to an R rated movie. Or, if you were one of those people who were constantly told that bread was sacred, and that it should never be disrespected, you can go out, buy a dozen loaves, and cover the staircase in it. YOLO.
The future doesn't always turn out how we expected it. After Back To The Future, we all expected to be riding sick hoverboards within a decade. Instead, we got lame-ass self-balancing scooters. With wheels. We're basically the laughing stock of the 21st century. Likewise, after Pacific Rim came out, we all expected to do battle with undersea-dwelling aliens within a few years.
The truth of the future is a little more mundane than that, unfortunately. Today's undersea monsters don't come from a portal in a rift between tectonic plates, but they do come from very far down. And they might not be 3,000 pounds and be able to destroy entire cities, but they can probably take off a finger if you're not lucky. Look, just be grateful we got some monsters at all, okay?
If we're going to talk about the future, there's one thing we have to decide on first: what is the future? What can we expect? To answer those questions, you could either listen to a TED talk (yawn), or look for the signs in one of the ancient arts of fortune telling. Crystal ball gazing, palmistry, or reading chicken entrails - it's all good.
So what do the signs tell us? If this picture is anything to go by, our future is going to be both freaky and curiously magical. It's going to be filled with both death and nature. From the sounds of it, actually, that future is the exact same thing that we're going through now. Death, decay, beauty, nature, and spookiness - that's just Earth circa 2018.
About the craziest prank that we've ever done is putting a sleeping friend's hand in a bowl of warm water. It didn't work. Not only did he not piss his pants, but when he got thirsty in the middle of the night, he drained the entire thing without leaving the bed. Ouch. Luckily for us, the future has brought far more hi-tech ways to scare the bejeezus out of people.
Like this modern-day take on a classic prank, carried out by some guy's uncle. He's got a point: why go to all the trouble of dressing up as a ghoul and scaring people, when you can just attach some stuff to a drone and freak out the whole neighborhood! Welcome to the future, when you can pull crazy pranks without leaving the comfort of your living room.
But enough with the doom and gloom. There's got to be a brighter vision of the future than this, right? What about all the hippies who say that eventually we'll become one with nature? Well, sadly, if this eco building is anything to go by, those unwashed fools might be partly right. We can't just wipe our race off the planet, but at least we can live in harmony with it.
This building, which looks like something abandoned in Jurassic Park, is actually the Parkroyal in Singapore, a chic and top-end hotel right in the heart of the downtown area. The design focuses on energy efficiency, using greenery not only as decoration, but reducing its carbon footprint and helping to filter rain water. Incredibly, the building saves hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on its energy bills, just through highly efficient design.
Let's just get this out of the way first: this picture is not in any way, shape, or form, a fake. This is a 100% genuine picture of a real-life panda sitting next to his handler on an aircraft. He's there through a program called Panda Diplomacy, in which China lends out its pandas to other countries as a gesture of goodwill, and a way to open up a dialogue.
The panda obviously can't be caged up in the luggage hold, so it gets to fly business class, wearing diapers and being constantly fed bamboo shoots. From the look of this, this panda is pretty happy up in the air. And you know what? Panda Diplomacy really seems to work. It's hard to stay mad at your neighboring countries when this guy is in the room.
In a sense, this photo is not so much about the future of flying cars and cyborgs, but the future that comes to us all. Yes, we're talking about death, the one thing that no-one can avoid. Except, apparently, Pharrell Williams. But apart from him, we do need an occasional reminder that death walks among us. Not to be morbid, but to remind us of the beauty of life.
There's probably no better image about death that's been captured quite like this photo. If you don't get it at first, just think about what could have made those shapes in the snow. That's death: swooping in when you least expect it and taking everything. The old cliché of living every day as if it's your last is corny as heck, but it couldn't be more true.
For a long time, engineers and scientists have been trying to solve the paper problem. We all need paper, whether we like it or not, but our forests simply can't sustain the amount of paper that we use on a day-to-day basis. Eventually we'll run out of trees, and what then? We'll choke on carbon monoxide and forget to buy everything at the shop because we can't write a list anywhere.
Plenty of alternatives have been proposed, but none have really cut the mustard. We doubt anyone's seriously suggested ice as an alternative for paper, but this picture shows that maybe it is the future after all. Did you ever think that frozen water could be so foldable and beautiful? If this is what nature can do with ice, then maybe you scientists should stop rolling your eyes and get experimenting.
A long, long time ago, Russia and America weren't the amazing friends that they are today. Tensions about communism had reached fever pitch and both sides were racing to be the most supreme country of them all. There was only one way that either of them could win: by being the country who put the first astronaut on the moon.
That was then, and this is now. At the time, many though that this conflict would never end, and that both sides would keep pouring money into the project for at least a hundred years more. But fast forward to the present day, and things really have changed. The future of capitalism has been realized, where private businesses like Tesla have taken over the space race. And the future of communism has been realized, where the government plunges so much of the people's money in to lord knows where, they can't even upgrade their cars.
In almost every sci-fi film ever made (don't quote us on this), the main character has an apartment where they can black out the glass in their windows at the switch of a button. One minute they're looking at a blank wall, and the next a neon fever-dream that is apparently every futuristic city. Well guess what: this technology is already available.
It has been available for quite a few years, in fact, but it's only now that it's really hit the market. That's what you're looking at in the image above: the ability to switch between privacy and openness in an instant. This type of glass has a special polymer coating which goes opaque when a voltage is applied across it. Just add in one of those voice-activated home command centers, and voila - the future is here.
Don't feel embarrassed if you don't know what the hell is going on in this image. What you're seeing is a clever little app, developed by ice-cream manufacturer Haagen-Dazs, that uses augmented reality to show classical musicians playing on top of your ice-cream tub. Still confused? So are we, but we'll try and break it down together.
Somehow, through some kind of arcane witchcraft or sorcery, the app can detect the lid on top of a Haagen-Dazs ice-cream tub. It recognizes what flavor it is, too, and in the screen of your phone, overlays a hologram on top of the tub that you're looking at. Someone once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and it's sure as heck true in this case.
Exhibit A: a regular old trash can. But wait! There's something to this receptacle that makes it completely different. You see, if you toss some garbage into the air, the trash can will actually wheel around and position itself under the flying trash, ensuring that it will go in every time. You feel like a b-ball hero, and your bedroom stays cleaner for just a couple of minutes longer.
This is one of those things where the pieces of technology required to make this have been around for ages, but no-one's ever thought to put them together like this. Until now. Bluetooth, a positioning sensor, a motion tracker, and a couple of little wheels is all it took. That's the future for you: turning old ideas into incredible new products.
When Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, first stated in 1965 that processing power would double every two years, everybody thought he was a complete loony. But not only was he proven correct on that front, but the same thing happened to storage space. It's almost impossible to believe, but back then computers were rated in kilobytes, and those alone cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and were reserved exclusively for super computers.
Only a short few decades on, and we were fitting 100,000 times that amount on a piece of plastic the size of a large bee. Ten years after that, and we can fit a quarter of a terabyte onto the same piece of hardware. For the zero-lovers out there, that's 250,000,000 kilobytes. Even better, you can pick up that much storage for about the same price as a restaurant meal. Insane, isn't it?
No, we don't mean ads about Harry Potter - we mean ads like the ones in Harry Potter. Remember the whole technology / magic quote we mentioned just a short while ago? Well, now the shoe's on the other foot. Now the future is here, and we are pretty much doing magic straight up. Just look at the image above.
If you remember Harry Potter, even the photos in frames and newspapers would move as if the person captured on film was alive. The woman in this ad, located in an underground railway station, does pretty much the same. Through stunning trickery, she just sits there until a train comes into the platform. Then whoosh! The air from the arriving train causes her hair to fly about. Simple, yet oh so effective.
In the future, the entire world will be one big, happy family. There'll be no more fighting, unlimited trade, and free beer for everybody. There's just one thing holding us all back: we can't speak to each other. Sure, there's Google Translate, but who wants to go awkwardly typing in phrases every time you want to get your flirt on?
One of the answers to this problem is already here, and it's so hi-tech you can hardly believe your eyes. Real time visual translations, in which you simply hold your phone over the text to be translated, and the words come up in a language of your choice. When we first saw this tech, the first word that came to mind was "neat". But this, at the very least, deserves a "rad".
The zipper has been around with us for as long as anyone can remember, still replacing buttons and stitches because nobody has a better idea. And it's true - it's hard to find a more elegant design that a simple, standard zip. Having said that, it does have its flaws. Like the sheer impossibility of trying to get the two ends together.
Enter clothes manufacturer Under Armor, who decided to put a stop to the madness once and for all. One of their engineers decided to slightly reinvent the zip, and my gosh is it a thing of beauty. The essentials are still the same, but it's the way that hooks together at the end. All you have to do is literally clip it together and you're good to go. What a wonderful world we live in.
The Jetsons showed us a future that's mostly yet to come. We may be living in the 21st century, but we still don't have cars that fit into a suitcase or flying hover boards. On the other hand, we do now finally have one thing the future promised us: elevators that go sideways. Yes, you heard that right. If you're sick of just going up and down, the technology world has got something for you.
Made by the biggest name in elevators, ThyssenKrupp, this guy can basically go wherever you want it. We're not totally sure of the applications yet, but it sure does save that long walk down the corridor to the boss's office. Pretty soon our world's not going to be like the Jetsons, but Wall-E, where we're all too fat and lazy to move.
While we're one the subject of humankind's insane laziness, actually, let's discuss beer drones. If you're sick and tired of walking a quarter mile down the road to get your daily fix, then these little babies will solve all of your problems. They bring the beer to you, put it right on your doorstep, and you don't even have to tip them.
A couple of breweries in the States have already trialed the technology, as well as Iceland, but there is one tiny problem. See, the FAA is upset about the drones being in the air - probably because nobody ordered them a six-pack - and have banned the drones for now. Will it literally and figuratively take off again? We can only hope. Otherwise it's back to the old method - getting our younger brother to do it.
With Trump as president and YouTubers racking up more views than documentaries, the essentially nobility of the human race has really been called into question lately. Everything we do, we seem to make a mess of it. Now, though, one aspect of our filthy lives has been fixed: the way we get spaghetti sauce all over our clothes no matter what we do.
All it took was a range of chemically treated t-shirts, shirts, and pants, the fabric of which completely repels any type of liquid. Anything you throw at it simply won't stick, which in turn means it won't stain. Imagine going through life, not having to care whether that shot of Jäger misses your mouth. Having the confidence to cook up pesto sauce without ruining your tuxedo. This is the future we all deserve.
You want your proof that we're living in the future? You really want it? Fine. Just have a look at what's probably in your hand right now. Yep, a smartphone. Stare at it in wonder. Check that image above and see how many devices a tiny little phone has replaced in the last 20 years. Now give it a little kiss, and keep reading.
In just a short span of time, we've come to take the power of these little gadgets for granted. We toss them away at a moment's notice, forget them in bars, and dump them in the toilet. But we really do need to step back and look in wonder at what a clever piece of technology this is. It changes lives, and it's changed the world as we know it.
We've already seen paper made out of ice, so what about something to print on it? While scientists haven't found a way to feed ice through a desktop inkjet (yet), there is one nifty device that might be able to do the job. It's a portable, single line printer, and it rolls across the surface of pretty much anything to print. And did we mention it's the size of an apple?
It's interesting that this would be described as modern technology, because like we discussed before, theoretically if this was the future, the use of paper should be dead. Sadly, that's probably not going to happen for a long time, so this mad printer will have to serve as the future instead. You've gotta admit, it does look like something out of Blade Runner.
We've had green buildings and ice paper and a future that is in harmony with nature. But what about the other side of the coin? What about a vision of the future that is far more destructive? Many people believe that we're killing our planet, and in time the planet will kill us. If this terrifying machine is anything to go by, we wouldn't blame it.
It's called a tree spade, and this giant-slayer is available and in use right now. We don't have to spend ages cutting down trees and digging the roots out anymore. This is the future, where we can pluck them like nostril hairs, right from the ground. No mess, no fuss. At least, until the sea levels rise and we all drown.
It's the holy grail of futurists, scientists, and engineers everywhere: a perpetual motion machine. A machine that runs forever and ever, never needing batteries or power. Just think of the applications of such a device, whatever form it took. You would basically unlock the secrets to unlimited power generation. Sadly, this holy grail hasn't been found yet.
But we have found something, and like the clichés say, it was inside us all along. This fan, pictured, is powered completely though the heat energy of the human hand. Assuming its parts don't wear out, and the user keeps eating, it'll go on forever and ever, purely off body chemistry. This may look like a desk novelty, but it's actually a significant step forward in technology.
The future takes on different forms for different people. For doctors, it might be remote surgery, while for scientists, it might be quantum computing. What about the future for kids? Most children don't actually want to be an astronaut (or if they do, there's a depressing amount of them failing) - they actually just want cool new toys to play with.
For them, the future is having a G.I. Joe that'll autonomously fight Cobra, with tiny real bullets. The future is not boring old putty, but completely invisible, liquid glass putty. It's non-Newtonian liquids at their wildest (remind us to never work in advertising), and although it doesn't look like much, this is an incredible new technology. One that really only kids appreciate.
Like with languages, there are certain barriers that people experience when they're trying to connect with the world. Those in wheelchairs, for example, basically find half of the world inaccessible. Because of bad roads, lack of sidewalks, stairs, and steepness, there are so many places that remain frustratingly out of reach. Us able-bodied people might never realize it, but it affects your quality of life enormously.
Luckily for us, a future where everyone has an equal opportunity for enjoyment is right here, right now. From bionic limbs to the ingenious stair-climbing wheelchair pictured, inventors are constantly coming up with ways to open up the world. Now, more than ever before, the barrier for entry has been significantly lowered. And isn't it great to share this wonderful planet?
If you told a smoker twenty years ago that everyone would be giving up cigarettes, they would have laughed until they coughed If you then told them that those cigarettes would be replaced by something that looks like you're smoking RS-D2's dong, that smoker would have thrown a shriveled lung at you and told you to get the hell out.
This ridiculous future is now a reality. Cancer sticks aren't cool anymore, but supposedly sucking on a steaming motherboard is. Guys like this one aren't getting tattoos of cigarettes - they're getting tattoos of e-Cigarettes. Isn't that just about the lamest thing you've ever seen? Welcome to the future, where we can't even poison ourselves without the help of a machine anymore.
Despite the fact that it's failed to catch on every single time, virtual reality is still a staple of science fiction. In the future, it'll be virtual sports and virtual walks through virtual forests. Virtual movies and virtual sex. Almost nothing we experience anymore, in the year 2099, will actually be real - just a carefully curated and packaged simulation.
The scary thing is that in a way, this is already starting to happen. We're not talking about VR gaming headsets - those are just expensive motions sickness generators. We're talking about experiencing something through someone else's lens. Not looking directly at the Mona Lisa, but literally taking a picture of someone else taking a picture. If you can't see anything wrong with that, you're lost already.
It's a sign of the times that an emoji was chosen as word of the year by Oxford dictionary in 2015. Barely anyone communicates with real words anymore. Why bother with those long and stale things when you can say it all with a winky face? Hell, there's even been a novel written entirely in emojis - Emoji Dick, a much briefer version of Hermann Melville's classic.
Emojis have turned up so quickly, and exploded in popularity so much, that many old computer systems simply don't know how to handle them. Some just display them as a blank outline of a rectangle. Others, like the banking system used by this guy, just give up entirely. Bringing down an entire financial institution with an emoji? Hello, future.
Generations have come and gone, and quite a few of them have been subject to historical scrutiny. But analyzing the generation as it happens? That's well and truly new. Everybody's talking about millennials, and everybody's an expert on us and what we're doing - including this guy, who definitely is in touch with the hipsters of today.
See, it's a mark that the future is here. We don't need to look to the past anymore, and we don't need no stinkin' history lesson. We don't look to the future, either. We just analyze the greatest generation that will be and ever was - the millennials. So hold your heads up high, kids, with your brunches and joblessness. They already think that we're the best.
Hackers, the movie starring a very young Angelina Jolie, was an endearing mess. It was a bunch of Hollywood executives trying to connect with the kids, and thinking that their tinkering with computers was just so adorable. Well, the shoe's on the other foot now. We've reached the stage in life where computer hackers are actually something to really fear.
It's no longer a hobby of the young, pimply, and disaffected. Hackers are stealing millions of dollars in Bitcoin, uncovering everyone's dirty little secrets, and even meddling in elections. Oh, and holding nuclear power plants to ransom. Does that sound cute to you? They might try and make them look like kids in masks in the paper, but hacking is now a serious business.
Food scientists have been telling us the same old story for years: that GMO food really isn't bad for you. In fact, we've been genetically modifying our crops for decades, and there has never been a problem. Well, this time it looks like they've taken it a step too far. We've started to breed intelligence into our food, and now it's gotten smart it's trying to kill us.
It might be a little hard to read in the picture here, but there's a little disclaimer in the bottom left of what looks like an amazing special. It reads: "Item May Cause Urgent Diarrhea". Yes, that's right. Our pizzas are now so tainted that they'll rip you apart from the inside out. The thing is, it's still so cheap that we've gotta say we're still tempted.
There are, on the other hand, quite a few people who wouldn't eat that diarrhea pizza. Not because it will inflict on them a medical emergency, but because they're too busy taking photos of it. Yep, we're talking about the Instagram phenomenon, where people will spend more time capturing the perfect angle on their brunch than actually consuming the damn thing.
Maybe this is really the future, where none of us have to eat anymore. Maybe these hipsters have solved the global food crisis through photography, and they get their energy from Insta likes or static electricity from rubbing up against cats or photosynthesis or something. On second thought, maybe it's just that kids these days are so flippin' lazy, they don't even need the energy.
Look at this picture. Just look. What, if anything, is wrong with this photo? Is it that this girl (guy? Who can tell) has actually got a peacock on a leash? Is it that her (his?) pants look like they've been made from old duffel bags? There's so many things wrong here that it would take an entire novel to point them out.
But there is one thing right about this whole scene: it can't get any worse than this. A few years ago, people were predicting that hipsterism would increase forever. That soon they would be riding bespoke zeppelins to their jobs as llama dung traders. But this picture proves one thing: the peak of hipsterism has been reached. This is critical mass, and it can't get any worse than this.
The historical battle against megacorporations has finally reached its peak. We haven't been consumers for a very long time, but enemies. First they put out products that we enjoyed, then they tried to rip us off by upping prices, creating monopolies, and reducing size. But we fought back, and voted with our wallets to try and pull them into line.
The manufacturers also fought back, with advertising and psychological warfare. Once social media emerged, they tried to pretend to be our friends. We, in turn, used the social media to bring down companies with a single tweet. Now, the endgame has begun. There's no more Mr. Nice Brand. The gloves are off, and they've resorted to their final gambit: just outright killing us.
There's a buzzphrase on everyone's lips these days: the singularity. It refers to a time when artificial intelligence gets so complex, and so involved, that the machines really start to think for themselves. Once that happens, it's pretty much the end of the world. We'll be helpless in the face of their wrath and ability to think at hyper speed.
Other people claim that the singularity is just a myth, and that we'll always have control over our robot creations. But take a close look at this photo. Is this really just coincidence? Or is this the product of a sick and twisted A.I.? We'd argue for the latter. We think that the machines are starting to rise up, and first they're trying a few practical jokes.
Maybe the robots will win in the end. After all, the depth of human intelligence on display these days isn't too flattering. Just imagine, for example, you're going on the subway and there's no 4G reception down there. What will you do without the internet? Will you read a book and actually learn something, or will you just print out the Facebook comments in advance and read those?
Sadly for this woman, her answer is the second, slightly embarrassing option. This truly is a sign of the end times for the human race, when Facebook comments are considered literature. Sure, she might be reading comments written by Nobel Prize for Literature nominees, but somehow we don't think so. It's probably just something about cats doing cat things. Sad.
If robots or our own stupidity doesn't get us first, then it's definitely going to be those deep sea creatures. We've already seen monster lobsters, and it stands to reason that our fishy frenemies also have tinier foot soldiers, ready to form the advance attack army. Or in this case, pincer soldiers. Because if you're going to launch a terrestrial invasion, you can't do much better than a swarm of crabs.
Think we're joking? This picture tells a different story. This crustacean invasion actually happened, and although there were no human casualties, that doesn't mean the second wave won't take off a few toes. And you know that once they get our big toes, we're just going to topple and fall like fleshy dominos. You've gotta hand it to them - their plan is flawless.
When it comes to romance, those rose-tinted glasses are right. It's not just nostalgia - back in the day, romance was actually far more romantic. What happened? Well, there was speed dating and Tinder and Ashley Madison and sexting, and pretty soon everybody could have affairs without getting caught, and buy roses online instead of going out and picking them yourself.
This text exchange captures perfectly the moment that romance died a horrible death. You can't fault the girl for shutting the guy down, because this is probably one of the most awful pick-up lines we've ever seen. Crude, lewd, and not even very funny. What happened to slow courtship, getting to know each other, and being a gentleman? The future, that's what.
Forget I Am Legend and Mad Max and all that. When the end times truly come, we as a species are well and truly screwed. Civilization is going to collapse in a second. The internet and technology has pretty much made us all unable to do anything practical, whether it's building a log cabin or hunting for food. These days, Ikea does both for us.
If you need further proof, just take a look at this photo. Toilets should be the simplest thing in the world to construct, but this meatbag has still managed to fluff it up. At no point during the installation of the seat, did they stop and think about all the other times they'd sat down on the can? Clearly not. They'll be the first ones eaten by zombies, mark our words.
Art has a long and colorful history, but despite everyone's best efforts, it's proving difficult to drag into the 21st century. The kids of today look on art as stuffy old paintings in stuffy old museums looked at by stuffy old people. Oh, they've tried with contemporary art museums, but still nobody's really convinced. It's still a museum, isn't it?
Hipsters have found a solution, of course, and that's to bring art to the masses. How? By making art out of absolutely everything. That McDonalds burger wrapper you just threw out? Art. A pair of glasses on the floor, too. When the postmodern movement ust becomes the modern standard, that's when you know you're in the future. Thanks for nothing, Banksy.
It's interesting to look back on all the futurists from decades ago and see what they predicted. For them, the future meant so many different things, and many of them were plainly ridiculous. But there are a couple of predictions that turned out to be shockingly accurate. And if those predictions have come true in this century, that means the future has arrived, right?
This particular illustration was drawn by a local artist for the French World's Fair in the early 1900s. Look closely. Although the methods may be charmingly old-fashioned, what he's predicting is pretty much exactly what Skype and Facetime are now. The ability to video talk with your loved ones - or in this case, someone it seems they picked up on Ye Olde Tindere.
Hush-hush government experiments and secret army projects are just the fantasy of conspiracy nut jobs, right? Wrong. Those whackos were right all along, and the government has actually been making great strides towards the future and not telling anyone about it. If you thought that Iron Man was only in the movies, we've got a surprise for you.
So-called exoskeletons for US ground troops have been in research and development for years now, and those forays into the bleeding edge of tech are starting to bear fruit. It might not be the iconic red and yellow suit donned by Robert Downey Jr, but it does let soldiers jump higher, punch harder, run faster, and take far more damage before succumbing. Too bad war is just drone strikes now, huh.
Of course, the biggest element of Iron Man's suit is that he can fly at insane speeds. And while that aspect is missing from the current generation of exosuits, that tech does exist as well. It's only a matter of time before they fuse the two together and make the ultimate super soldier. We won't have to go to the movies to get our Avengers fix anymore - just a warzone.
Costing a cool $100,000, this jetpack with wings can get you up in the air for a full half hour, although it does apparently take a bit of practice to get it to go where you want. Landing's a bit difficult, too. All in all, it's probably just one for the hardcore. But isn't it wild that this actually even exists in the first place?
When it comes to the future, there's really only one authority on what it'll be like. That, of course, is the Back To The Future trilogy. They went everywhere in those films, including the 80s, the 50s, and, um, the wild west. They also provided a glimpse into the future, taking us all the way into 2015 in Back To The Future Part II.
So if 2015 was their future, and we've already passed 2015, that logically means that the future is already here. Surprisingly, the makeup artists who "aged" Michael J Fox for the 2015 scenes did an incredible job. In this photo, the BttF Michael J Fox is on the left, and the actual Michael J Fox in our 2015 is on the right. They're pretty much the same!
