BACKTRACK TO THE FUTURE
Scientists postpone space age Utopia YET AGAIN!
BACK in the last century, the year 2000 was held up as the year when we would all be in the future. Hover cars, silver suits, robot butlers and three course dinners that came in the form of a tiny pill were all predicted to be with us by the turn of the Millennium. As 2000 approached, however, it quickly became clear that science was simply not advancing quickly enough to serve us up the technological tomorrow’s world we had been promised, and so that original deadline was put back to the year 2020. But with 2020 fast approaching, scientists are now facing the uncomfortable reality that even this second target date may have been too optimistic. “It’s time to face facts. We’re going to crash this new deadline for the future too,” said Professor Tibor Szakacs, of Hull University’s Department of Advanced Technology. “The products that scientists have been promising the public for decades just aren’t going to be ready in the next three years. It’s as simple as that.”
He told Radio 4’s Dr Adam Rutherford: “Granted, progress is now being made towards introducing driverless cars to our roads, but the ones we’ve got are frankly a bit shit.”
“If I’m being honest, they’re like glorified golf buggies pootling round university campuses at two miles an hour. They cost millions of pounds each and spend half their time running into flower beds,” Zsakacs continued.
“The idea that the car of 2020 will take you from London to Edinburgh at 150mph in perfect safety while you have a kip in the back is frankly bollocks,” he said. “And you can forget about getting a three course dinner in a pill. We haven’t even started thinking about that one yet.”
And the Professor was equally pessimistic about the space age silver clothes that we were all supposed to be wearing in three years’ time. “Only if you make the fuckers yourself,” he said.
In a bid to confront and head off the crisis, 200 top scientists last week met in Geneva to revise the deadline once again. In charge of the British contingent was Professor Brian Cox, UMIST’s head of particle physics.
Cox told us: “Some of the lads initially thought that 2040 was doable, but what with Brexit and everything, we eventually decided to go for 2050, just to be on the safe side.”
And the former keyboard player with D:Ream, whose hit Things Can Only Get
Better topped the UK charts for 4 weeks in January 1994, made this promise: “I know us scientists have let you down in the past, but believe me, by the year 2050 you’ll have anti-gravity hover shoes, you’ll be able to beam yourself on holiday to anywhere in the world, your pets will be holograms and sex robots will be even better than the real thing. They’ll have three, count them, three holes and they’ll be always ready, always willing.”
“And you can take that to the bank,” he added.