You don't actually want the future you were promised

The other day my son struck up a conversation with me about how cool it would be if we had the robots from science fiction movies in real life. I asked what he would do with a robot and he thought for a moment and said that it could help out with chores. I pointed out that we have a robot vacuum cleaner that does just that. He thought about the boring beige appliance of a robot before telling me that what he really wanted was a cool robot. I pointed out to him that we literally have a robot that flies. He started to get exasperated and said that he meant a robot that does stuff on it's own. I pointed out his Cosmo robot toy that drives around autonomously, recognizes people's faces and will ask you by name to play games with it. I know what my son meant, he wanted a movie robot, not just any old robot that's efficient at doing it's job. Turns out we have most of the stuff that science fiction promised us, hoverboards: check, flying cars: check, military laser cannons: check. It also turns out that people don't really want that kind of stuff. Don't believe me? Lets look at hoverboards, a favorite bit of dream technology since the first Back to the Future movie. With so much development put into drones, it wasn't a big leap for companies like Zapata to develop real flying hoverboards like the Flyboard Air. Yes, you really can go buy a retail product that will let you fly around like the Green Goblin from the Spiderman comics, and nobody wants to. I hear many more people lamenting their lack of promised futuristic jet packs than I hear people volunteering to fly around on the real ones. The technology is here now and instead of facing the fact that there are other things holding us back (like fear of heights), it's easier for people to parrot the sentiment that the future they were promised wasn't ever delivered. Next time you get in your car, make a mental note of how many people have a burned out tail light in their car. Now think about how many drivers are past due for an oil change, or haven't checked their tire pressure in months. Think those people should be in a flying car? Think those people want to be in a flying car? Nope. They'd rather be on Facebook. It's like society sat down to dinner in a fancy restaurant 50 years ago and thought "ooh, calamari, that sounds exotic.", and then when the waiter delivered it we all thought "umm, that's deep fried squid, I thought I ordered something else."