mhg83

I remember Minority Report had a scene where we see someone reading a newspaper on a Tablet. Also the Tech where Tom Cruise uses to navigate through touchscren/hand gesture and voice commands is very similar to Xbox One's Kinnect.

dugan

The Island predicted the Kinect. It even predicted which platform would have the Kinect.

Jory

2001, released in 1968, shows Dave and Frank using what look exactly like iPads.

dhmac

And the tablets in 2001 also have the images framed in portrait mode instead of widescreen mode (or landscape mode), something that happens now in a lot of videos people take with their smartphones.

(I personally find it inexplicable why so many people film that way. Do they not know the videos will end up looking better if they just turned their smartphones sideways?).

RocShemp

Some people I know simply prefer them that way. Even with pictures where they are trying to get multiple subjects in one shot. I've had people get upset with me if I take a shot for them with their phone held sideways.

Eddie W

I recently had a former employee attempt to take a picture of her final check to send to me. She took four pictures on her phone in portrait mode in order to capture the check info all the way across. Instead of, you know, just turning her phone sideways & getting the entire check in one shot.

For some people, thinking really isn't an option.

joliom

Well Star Trek had the communicators which are pretty similar to cell phones (especially older flip phones). There are also lots of older sci-fi movies that show some form of video messaging eerily similar to Skype and the like. Demolition Man and Minority Report had self-driving cars that we are pretty close to now with emergency braking and self-parking and whatnot.

Drexl

Robocop (1987) had what was essentially a DVD.

hanshotfirst1138

It also has a hilariously far-fetched premise about Detroit going bankrupt. Wacky sci-fi writers . Who comes with this? Like that would ever happen .

Jory

I remember watching RoboCop as a kid and thinking the police cars looked futuristic. Today they all look like that. Something that's most likely totally lost on young people who watch it today.

Double_Oh_7

This has always been a chicken or egg thing for me. Did movies predict the technology, or influence the creation of it??

Jaymole

In Conquest of Space (1955) they are watching a flat widescreen TV:

JumpCutz

In Ben-Hur they race chariots.

joliom

If anything they undersold it too. Their "terrifying" portrayal of a future Detroit bankrupt and overrun with violent crime actually looks preferable to the real life Detroit we have now.

hanshotfirst1138

. You're sadly correct, it turned out to be even more tragic than they predicted in some respects. Goddamn sad .

Verhoeven and his art department spent a lot of time and money designing what were supposed to be "futuristic" cars, and apparently wound up with something which didn't look very good. They saw a Ford Taurus, decided "That looks futuristic!" And wound up going with it. Turned out to be fairly prescient.

joliom

Was there ever any widespread adoption of Ford Taurus police cars? If they had gone with Crown Victorias instead, they would have really hit the nail on the head. They dominated the market for about 20 years starting in the mid-90's. Of course the Taurus police cars in RoboCop are more reminiscent of the sportier squad cars that are becoming popular now, like the Dodge Charger. So maybe they were forecasting further into the future than I am giving them credit for.

hanshotfirst1138

I think that the police have almost always used Crown Vics, though at least in my neck of the woods, they use new Taurus now, which a lot more upscale. I had one of those old upside down bathtub Taurus for years and years, apart from the transmission problems, it was one of Ford's best. It was used to hell when I got it, I used it to hell, and it ran remarkably well, all things considered. That particular body style stuck for a long time, and they're still fairly ubiquitous on the road.

fumanstan

Because that's the way people normally hold cell phones so they're used to that position.

hanshotfirst1138

It would seem to me if you've ever watched a video on a smartphone, you'd know that it can adjust orientation. That said, I took a video once and then related the phone for a moment before rotating it back, and it seems that it locks one or the other during playback, and turning it shrunk it down.

Shazam

The first time I watched Robocop, it was with a bunch of friends. When the Tauruses appeared someone said "Are those... Ford Tauruses?" And then we all had a good laugh.

dhmac

Star Trek (both TV and Movies) predicted verbally asking computers questions in natural language in order to look up information, just like we do with Siri and Google Now ("OK Google").

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/fJfkYjrbPS4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

(according to Wikipedia, Google Now had "Majel" as a development codename, named after Majel Barrett, the voice of most Star Trek computers)

Jory

emachine12

The Running Man pretty much shows how most of our current reality television is digitally manipulated and how some contestants can be given a "villian" or "hero" edit.

Rockmjd23

We are basically living Timecop right now.

devilshalo

Why am I not banging a smokin' hot Mia Sara?