20 Movies from the 70s, 80s, and 90s That Predicted the Technologies We Use Today

The futuristic films of the last few decades have tried, explicitly or implicitly, to predict what technologies we would use today. Many were wrong, but many others were successful and seem to have come straight from some time capsule. Although we still don’t have cars that fly or teleport, many things we use, in a way, have already appeared on the big screen.

O awesome.club listed 20 movies that will surprise you because of their accurate predictions of what the future would bring. Watch with us and tell us if we missed any movie you’re a fan of.

In the 1995 film Johnny Mnemonic: The Cyborg of the Future, an incredible invention was anticipated: the augmented reality glasses. The feature features other novelties that the author believed would be part of life today, but the most striking are these glasses. Today, many companies already manufacture equipment for games, movies and videos from cell phones or computers.

The animated series The Jetsons, which was a hit in the 60’s and 80’s, shows the routine of a family in 2062. prediction that caught a lot of attention are video calls. All very similar to what we have today by Skype, FaceTime and WhatsApp.

In the 80’s a futuristic movie showed the story of a man who became a Cyborg Cop. Yes, we’re talking about Robocop, a big hit at the time. Okay, we still haven’t been able to create something that’s part human and part android like in the movie. But the prostheses made for those who have lost limbs are increasingly evolved, providing movements very close to the real thing.

The series Agente 86 was launched in the 60s and was very successful in Brazil on Record, Bandeirantes and Globo. He was a good-natured version of a secret agent, the bumbling Maxwell Smart. He had several accessories to help with missions, including a mobile phone attached to the sole of his shoe. Would it be a prediction of the Cellular Age?

The 1990 movie The Avenger of the Future, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, takes place in the year 2084 and brings to viewers some innovations that we already use today. Among them, the one that draws the most attention is the car that has a virtual driver driving it. Today, companies like Tesla and Google itself are already testing autonomous vehicles and promise that the novelty will be on the streets very soon.

In the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, the famous detective from the comics displays a watch that makes it possible to talk to other people, as if it were a radio transmitter. Today smartwatches are a reality. They can be used as a phone and have infinite other features such as: heart monitor, access to social networks, temperature indication, sleep monitor, etc.

GPS, in the 60s, was still not part of the routine of ordinary people (it was first used in the Gulf War, in the beginning of the 90s), but for the best known secret agent in the world it was already a reality. . In the movie 007 Against Goldfinger Bond’s car was already equipped with a geopositioning system. In addition to it, other innovations such as the water resistant camera and the pager also existed in the franchise before they appeared in the real world.

The movie 1984, based on George Orwell’s 1948 book, suggested a government that had TV screens everywhere so people could be monitored. It was called Big Brother — in English, Big Brother. Today, one of the most watched television attractions are reality shows that deal with the same theme, surveillance with the most varied themes: cooking, artists, amateur singers and dance. And guess what the name of the most famous of these shows is? Yes, Big Brother, a reference to Orwell’s work.

The 1999 film Smart House tells of a smart home that receives voice commands and performs household tasks. The program that managed all this was called Personal Applied Technology, and it got used to the family’s tastes and habits. Today there are already many similar technologies, smart homes, capable, for example, of turning on home theater, air conditioning and turning on lights. In addition, Artificial Intelligence (AI), increasingly present in our lives, has precisely the characteristic of “learning” a user’s habits and improving their experience of using a certain technology or product.

The film Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, brought in 2002 the futuristic world of 2054 and although the story does not speak directly about the innovations, it brought good tips. One of them was advertisements capable of “reading” the retina to create advertisements according to a person’s interest. Today, digital advertising is programmed to offer products according to what you search for on the Internet.

The movie Tron: An Electronic Odyssey, from the early 1980s, shows a computer engineer who ends up being transported into the computer system. In this virtual environment he is attacked by a program that is responsible for ending intruders. Something very similar to the powerful antiviruses that we have on our computers today.

A 1985 film, Woman Note 1000 comically shows how two teenagers end up creating a woman out of a computer and a printer. It basically predicted the age of 3D printing, capable of creating everything from toys to human fabrics. An innovation capable of printing almost anything. One less Lisa, to the dismay of some teenagers.

The film The Other Face, starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, from 1997, tells of an FBI agent who seeks to capture a terrorist. Until, at a certain point, the two characters change their physical appearance and live each other’s lives. The work, at the time, was criticized for dealing with a situation that was very unlikely to occur. But just eight years later, Frenchwoman Isabelle Dinoire became the first person to receive a face transplant.

The movie Her predicted in 2013 a situation that would become real just 5 years later. The film is about a lonely man who ends up falling in love with his computer’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) system. The film’s virtual assistant has a female voice and personality of its own, allowing them to interact. A story very similar to that of Japanese Akihiko Kondo who married the hologram of a virtual singer named Hatsune Miku.

The movie The Specialist, starring Sylvester Stallone, shows, still in 1994, the use of fingerprint reading instead of passwords for everyday use. At that time technology was still in its infancy and was not accessible to ordinary people like us. Today, fingerprint reading is part of our daily lives, in banks, voting machines and cell phones, for example.

Espionage has always been the subject of many movies. But even this theme ended up incorporating questions and reflections on the use of technology. The movie The Origin (2010) deals with the most modern ways of getting secret information.

The 1970s film The Island of Dr. Moreau told the story of a doctor who experimented with mixing animal and human DNA, creating aberrations. A very recurring theme at the time and that, in a way, predicted important advances in science. Of course, as is characteristic of works of fiction, the film takes its toll. But the fact is that today we have many benefits when it comes to genetic manipulation in disease prevention, for example. And, for those who fear the use of these technologies, the bad news is that, in August of this year, Spanish scientists announced the creation, in a laboratory in China, of a hybrid being between humans and apes.

The movie The 5th Element, starring Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich (1997), showed a super advanced computer system for cars, something similar to what we have in our vehicles today. In Brazilian automobiles, the technology debut took place in that same decade. At the time, computerized functions were quite simple, but since the 2000s, this technology has seen a huge leap forward.

A 2001 movie called The Replicant tells of a criminal who is cloned so that the police can predict his steps and even movements and thus capture him. Of course, copying human beings is not legally possible, but today genetic engineering mixes a technique similar to cloning with artificial insemination. By this technique the egg is manipulated to help people who cannot have children.

The film Mission Impossible (1996) was a blockbuster and brought a series of technologies that we use today. Biometrics in general began to be developed in the 70’s and 80’s, but it was accessible only to specific applications and had high costs. In the last two decades, however, the technology gained scale, had reduced costs and, as a result, came to be seen more and more frequently in day-to-day applications. Today, it is in the entrances of the buildings, in the banks and even in our cell phones.

Did you like the trivia about these movies? Did I miss any on this list? Tell us.