I Want My Jetpack: Difference between revisions

'''Girl:''' Dude. You're complaining to me on a phone, on which you buy and read books. And which you were using to play a 3D shooter until I interrupted you with what would be a video call if I was wearing a shirt.

'''Boy:''' Can't I have a flying car, too?

 

[[Speculative Fiction]] always seems to think that the future is going to be a lot more flashy and interesting than it actually turns out to be. The far-off year of 2012 was supposed to give us lunar and undersea colonies, massive supercomputers, holographic radios, virtual reality, [[Flying Car|flying cars]], [[Food Pills|food cubes]], [[Robot Buddy|Robot Buddies]], [[Frickin' Laser Beams|laser weapons]] and most importantly, [[Jet Pack]]s! And [[And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt|all we got]] was the Burj <s>Dubai</s> Khalifa skyscraper, tiny supercomputers, HDTV, cars that look like [[Retraux|stylized versions of their 1970 counterparts]], average packaged food, unintelligent industrial robots, Roombas, and assault rifles made with plastic. Nobody thought about the Internet though nor extremely efficient fast food.

This trope is named for the punch-line to Leo's rant in an episode of ''[[The West Wing]]'' on how we did not get the future we were promised.

 

 

Actually inherent to [[Space Opera]]s; though all [[Real Life]] space development is based on unmanned probes, all [[FTL]] [[Cool Starship|Starships]] [[We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future|must have people on them]] because [[Anthropic Principle|it's hard to tell entertaining stories about unmanned probes.]]

 

Contrast with: [[It's a Small Net After All]] (In the aforementioned rant, Leo dismisses the Internet as "[[The Internet Is for Porn|A more efficient delivery system for pornography]]."), [[Tech Marches On]]. Compare with [[Zeerust]].

See also [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]] and [[Science Marches On]]. [[Godwin's Law|If Nazis get them]], [[Just for Pun|and you don't]], it's [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler]].

 

{{examples}}

== Advertising ==

* In a TV ad for IBM, [[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Avery Brooks]] says, "It's the year 2000, but where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars!" [[Crowning Moment of Funny]], given his stentorian delivery. Of course, he points out that we don't ''need'' flying cars; we have something better: The internet!

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsFfBB2W7IA Apparently, all it takes is a deal with a German mad scientist.]

 

* ''[[Astro Boy (manga)|Astro Boy]]'': A rather bizarre version of this occurs in the manga. In one of the introduction comics that [[Osamu Tezuka]] was fond of adding to the paperback collections of his work, Mustachio interrupts Tezuka's narration and pesters him about why, if it's supposed to be the future, does nearly everything aside from the robots look like the present, complains that he has to wear a threadbare old suit and bowtie instead of [[Space Clothes]], drives a beat up old 1950s auto instead of a flying car and lives in a dirty one-bedroom flat. In a possible [[Take That]], the [[Astro Boy (anime)|1980s anime]] did have flying cars, but they look rather [[Zeerust]]-y and often get into some rather horrific crashes, which cost the lives of two major characters on two separate occasions.

* The second opening song of ''[[Great Teacher Onizuka]]'' has a verse about how cars aren't flying yet.

 

* [[Scott McCloud]]'s indie comic ''[[Zot]]'' had the title character as a visitor to our world from a world where all the wonderful inventions and social progress we'd been promised by '50s and '60s sci-fi came about.

* In the DC comic ''Doctor Thirteen: Architecture and Morality'', Doctor Thirteen, in a rant, mentions he's still waiting for the shiny jetpack, and later <s>Grant Morrison</s> [[No Celebrities Were Harmed|one of the Architects]] shouts out "The Fewcha! The Shiny Jetpack Fewcha!"

* In [[Marvel Comics]]' ''The Twelve'', a character brought out of a sixty year stasis makes a remark similar to this; to which another character replies that the section of the city they are passing through may not be zoned for such devices. The irony is that the Marvel Earth is filled with technology that is futuristic beyond even our own standards.

{{quote|'''Jamie:''' So, do we all have flight rings or personal jetpacks?

'''Scott:''' Don't be an idiot.

'''Jamie:''' ''(thinking)'' The future ''sucks.'' }}

{{quote|"There's no future coming. No-one thinks they owe you shit. You're waiting for a day that'll never fucking dawn."}}

* [[Carl Barks]]' ''Rip Van Donald'' has [[Donald Duck]]'s nephews pulling a prank on their uncle by giving him a fake beard while he sleeps under a palm tree, [[Faked Rip Van Winkle|telling him he slept for forty years]]. Donald doesn't believe and wants a proof that he really woke up forty years into the future, so nephews quickly make up stuff like winter homes on Venus or counter-gravitation devices. The story was originally released in [[The Fifties|1950]], which would place this far-off future in the year...[[The Nineties|1990]].

* In ''Marvel: The Lost Generation'', 50s-60s hero the Yankee Clipper arrives in the 1980s due to some time travel mix-up. He's baffled - "Where are the flying cars? The videophones? Things don't look ''that'' different... except for the ''fashions''!"

* Similarly, in ''The Twelve'', WWII era hero Captain Wonder's first reaction upon discovering he'd been in suspended animation for over sixty years was to complain about the near-total absence of rocket cars. This is the [[Marvel Universe]], so rocket cars certainly ''exist'' (like the [[Fantastic Four]]'s Fantasticar, for instance), [[Reed Richards Is Useless|but nothing like that's ever been mass produced.]]

 

* ''[[Back to The Future]]'' series

** ''Back To The Future'': The trope is played with in an alternate ending. Marty reveals to 1955 Doc Brown that the Delorean time machine is powered by Coca-Cola. When he gets back to 1985, he finds that it's been transformed into a [[Zeerust]] pseudo-future, essentially what people in the 50s thought the 80s would be like—complete with Coke-powered flying cars designed by Brown.

* In the movie ''[[The Thirteenth Floor]]'' a man in the 1990s discovers he's really in a VR simulation of the 90s created in 2024. At one point he gets to see what 2024 looks like, and the buildings are all bizarre "futuristic" things out of ''Buck Rogers''.

* The 1992 movie ''[[Freejack]]'' has the hero as a [[Fish Out of Temporal Water]] in a cyberpunk world where mega-corporations oppress the downtrodden masses and the wealthy elite use time travel to steal people from the past and swap bodies with them to remain immortal, all with the help of visored, laser-wielding mercenaries. And it's all going to happen in the dystopian future of 2009.

** So, really, pretty much the only thing we're missing are the time travel and the lasers.

 

== Literature ==

* Similarly satirized in the ''[[Strugatsky Brothers]]'' book ''[[Monday Begins on Saturday]]'' with a machine that allows the user to travel into future narratively imagined possibilities.

* Kibo's short story ''Spot's Third First Christmas'' parodies perceived time travel. A choose-your-own adventure set in 1993, the reader must either choose to go into the dim-and-distant future, or into the all-too-near future. Both paths end up in the year 2000, but with fixtures being either exciting (Man has figured out how to tint the sun a pleasant shade of blue) or dull (Beer was still nine cents a gallon).

* [[Stephen Baxter]]'s ''[[Literature/Titan|Titan]]'' (written in 1997) has in the year 2008 full [[Virtual Reality]] simulations as commonplace, people could go to cybercafes and interact with others using interactive masks that simulated the feeling of the wind, sun, smells and even tastes.

 

* The British panel show ''[[Have I Got News for You]]'' in the 2000-2002 era, comedian Paul Merton mused about the lack of jet packs at the present time which he had expected to see when he was younger. He then went on to speculate that only the rich and powerful had them, accusing the Queen Mother of having five.

* In an episode of ''[[That '70s Show]]'', Red muses on what he thought life was going to be like by that point when he was off at war, done in the style of a 1950's educational film. The fantasy ends with Eric asking to borrow the car and Red telling him to take the hovercraft instead. Back in reality Kitty gives him an odd look. "Hovercraft?" He then shouts angrily, "What? They promised us hovercrafts! Just another damn broken promise."

** Another episode has Red playing Santa Claus, a little girl says she wants a flying car for Christmas. Red's reply? "Yeah, so did I, when I was your age. But then the future came and took my dream away. Just like it will take away yours."

* Used by [[Stephen Colbert]] when interviewing Van Jones, an environmentalist advocating major changes in the job market to create a 'green economy':

{{quote|'''Colbert:''' But how do we know this is even gonna happen?... When I was a kid, they promised me a jetpack. Where's my jetpack? ''(pointing to wrist)'' Where's my little TV?}}

** In early April 2010, when discussing the cancellation of NASA's Constellation program to send humans back to the moon, Stephen Colbert switched to a pitcure of a guy wearing a rocket pack and yelled, "I want my jet pack!!"

* Also used by Lewis Black in the Back in Black segment of ''[[The Daily Show]]'':

{{quote|'''Black:''' New rule, no combining old gadgets when you ''should'' be working on something new. Like a jetpack! Or a teleporter! {{smallcaps| IT'S 2003! Why can't I teleport?!}}"}}

* The BBC Two programme ''James May's Big Ideas'' uses this question as a template to investigate real life [[Flying Car|flying cars]], [[Robot Buddy|robot buddies]], and energy sources.

* ''[[Quantum Leap]]'': The viewer rarely gets to see the "present" (the late 1990's), presumably to avoid this trope. Usually when it is seen some odd technological advances pops up. Many of these are justified by the Project being a top-secret research facility utilizing the latest technological advances not available to the public yet, but some are not, like an episode with a voice-controlled hotel room.

* Referenced in ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'' when Ned says that he thought the car of the future would fly.

* An episode of ''[[Seinfeld]]'' had Jerry and George wondering about what happened to moving sidewalks.

* On ''[[The Flash]]'', this is pretty much how the Ghost, a villain from the 1950s, reacts when he awakens from cryogenic sleep in 1990 expecting a [[Raygun Gothic]] world.

* 'I want my jetpack' is the basis of a Mitchell and Webb sketch. [[It Gets Worse]].

 

== Music ==

Here in my house upon the moon

Visiting Uranus really soon, in 2010 AD!

 

Music is all on cassette

The rain never falls, so we don't get wet, in 2010 AD! }}

 

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** Note that one Shadowrun novel lampshades the fact that the world isn't even ''more'' advanced, blaming it on the Data Crash of '20 and other disasters.

* The book ''[[GURPS]] Alternate Earths'' (a supplement for the roleplaying game ''[[GURPS]]'') includes an [[Alternate Universe]] that looks like 1930s pulp SF. It diverged from "real" history when Nikola Tesla married Anne Morgan, the daughter of J.P. Morgan; the marriage stabilized him emotionally and financially, and let him develop all the devices that died with him in the real world. And of course, it's called "Gernsback".

 

== Video Games ==

== Web Comics ==

* Used hilariously in Andrew Kepples' ''[[Goodbye, Cruel World]]'': A character triggers the Y2K virus by activating an old VCR, which causes the characters' immediate surroundings to turn into the setting of ''[[The Jetsons]]''.

* Parodied in ''[[Penny and Aggie]]'' in 2020 Pennies, where one of the allegedly possible Pennies is using a jetpack to commute, even though it starts a fire when she takes off.

* ''[[Three Panel Soul]]'' makes [http://www.threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2008-11-05 a convincing argument] that [[Truth in Television]] actually subverts this trope.

* [http://www.arthurkingoftimeandspace.com/1563.htm This] ''[[Arthur, King of Time and Space]]'' strip.

** And of course, this page is mentioned in [[The Rant]].

* In a strip made in 2000, Conrad from ''[[Capt'n Crazy|Captn Crazy]]'' complained about this.

** The [[Alt Text]] ''does'' call in for the [[Jet Pack|JetPacks]], sort of.

* When the Elf King in ''[[8-Bit Theater|Eight Bit Theater]]'' wakes from his illness, the first thing he wants to know is what kind of advancements has Elfland made during his slumber. When he learns that ''nothing's changed'', he demands, "What the hell have our scientists been doing?"

* ''[[Amazing Super Powers]]'' [http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/2009/12/back-in-my-day/ chose] hover cars, fancy-schmancy ray guns and cities on the moon (see also comment, [[Alt Text]] and hidden comic).

 

== Web Original ==

* The first half of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsFfBB2W7IA this sketch] by [[Kevin Smith]] features Dante and Randall from ''[[Clerks]]'' discussing this trope while sitting in traffic, with a [[Flying Car]] instead of a jetpack. Then it has Dante asking Randall [[Squick|what he'd do for a flying car]]...

* Buy your "[http://shop.webomator.com/retropolis/retropolis_pf/retro-future/I-Still-Want-My-Flying-Car-T-Shirts/_s_61768 I Still Want My Flying Car!]" T-shirt at Retropolis.

 

== Western Animation ==

* Parodied in ''[[Family Guy]]'' where Stewie is transported into the future and sees the buildings: "Everything looks the same?" "Of course! It ''has'' only been thirty years!"

* ''[[American Dad]]'' uses the same joke as ''[[Family Guy]],'' showing the year 2045 that looks almost exactly like the present (save for a random pet robotic dog, IIRC).

* This is actually a major theme in ''[[The Venture Bros]]''. To quote co-creator Jackson Publick:

{{quote|"This show is actually all about failure. Even in the design, everything is supposed to be kinda the death of the space-age dream world. The death of the jet-age promises."}}

* In a ''[[Recess]]'' episode where the kids find a $100 bill they each have an [[Imagine Spot]] showing what they'd do with the money. All of them end with flying a jet pack. The episode ends with them returning the money to the original owner, who in return for passing his [[Secret Test of Character]] lets them ride his jet pack.

* In ''[[Iron Man: Armored Adventures]]'', this is the main reason Pepper wants to join SHIELD. Well that and arresting people all over the world.

 

== Real Life ==

*** [[Fridge Logic|...Then what would the jetpacks run on?]]

**** Nuclear-powered plasma.

** Pocket-size phone? They may build one, but who would want it?

*** I disagree. In fact, every ''city'' may one day have one of these pocket-sized phones.

* [http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/04/what-may-happen-in-next-hundred-years.html These 1900's predictions] were ''scarily'' accurate. See [[What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years]].

*** Impressively accurate for the most part, yes, but I want my lightning-throwing blimp!

* [http://www.threadless.com/product/63/Damn_Scientists This shirt] sums up the trope pretty poignantly.

** As they say in certain card games, [http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=DC-PREENACT&Category_Code=DC "See you."]

*** [http://www.jetpackinternational.com/ "And raise."] Take THAT.

* Someday in the future we'll have [[wikipedia:Concorde|supersonic jets]] and [[wikipedia:Apollo program|rockets to the moon]] ''again''.

* Fusion power. Maybe in about 50 or so years. Maybe not at all.

** In 1979, the fusion research group at Princeton were reasonably sure that commercial fusion power was 30 years away. Thirty years later, commercial fusion power is now 50 years away. The future is actively ''receding''.

* In 1958, Louisville, Kentucky radio station [[wikipedia:WKRD (AM)|WAKY-AM]] [http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/17/us/after-29-years-no-moon-trip.html sponsored an essay contest]. Winners were promised an all-expenses-paid trip to the moon, with a pay-off date in 1987. As the radio station changed ownership in the intervening 29 years, those who attempted to claim their prize weren't able to press a civil suit against it for not fulfilling this promise.

* In the photo anthology, "[[Genesis (band)|Genesis]]: [[Peter Gabriel]], [[Phil Collins]] And Beyond", written in [[The Eighties|1984]], Gabriel is asked about where music was heading. He mentions a whole new kind of "emotive technology" featuring a "big library of sound" and that you will be able to "treat things as sounds" and "be able to forget about where they came from and how you got them". He discusses how every home will have a computer and that such a dream instrument will be "an attachment that will also be as common in every home as a piano". He also predicts how musicians will one day "bring a studio into (their) bedroom and (they'll) get (their) tapes released on vinyl...the week after (they've) finished it". Essentially, he predicted the rise of MIDI, digital Portastudios, affordable digital workstations and independent distribution of music, though he still believed tapes and vinyl would remain the norm in music media.

* [http://www.cracked.com/article_17127_5-deadly-sci-fi-gadgets-you-can-build-at-home.html Cracked's 5 Deadly Sci-Fi Gadgets You Can Build At Home.] The jetpack is on the list. I Want My Jetpack, indeed.

* Incidentally, TVs that could tune into six channels (or indeed, ''nine'') simultaneously does exist in the early 2000s, courtesy of Sharp Electronics. It turned out to be as impractical as one would think, and even more useless given the TV only has two tuners to save costs- how it worked was the first panel of the bunch would be run by the main tuner with sound, while the remaining 5 panels would be picture-only and powered by the auxiliary tuner, who would flip channels and update the respective panes every 5 seconds while the other panels except the first primary pane froze. You could probably imagine how well that worked.

 

{{reflist}}