10 Things You Won’t Find in the Future

1. Fancy, swooshy doors at home. Let’s face it—door technology hasn’t changed much ever since man figured out how to stick some wood in front of his cave 10,000 years ago. Do you think in in the future we’re going to have fancy auto-sensing swishy round doors everywhere? Will doors slide aside with loud hisses? Will they be decked out with swathes of red and blue lights? Or will you open your bathroom door the same way you always have, with the reliable squeak of a wooden frame on three hinges?
2. Skimpy outfits. As much as it’s a visual feast, women aren’t going to sleep alone in skimpy, uncomfortable leather pajamas. Neither will they wear miniskirts on the spaceship’s bridge. Neither will they wear one-piece vinyl motorcycle suits.
3. Awesome names. If there’s one thing about the human race, is has the amazing ability to give mundane names to everyone. Nobody’s going to get a kickass name like Aeon Flux, Lando Calrissian, or Zaphod Beeblebrox. They may end up with James Kirk, though.
4. Buckets on heads. Guards won’t wear helmets that completely block their vision. If you have to wear so much gear that you can’t move or see, chances are you aren’t going to take over the galaxy. The Empire might be evil, but they did successfully run a multi-planetary alliance for years. You can’t do that by aiming blasters at people and missing 100% of the time.
5. Small colonies on large planets. Five million people won’t live in a utopia, ever. Earth’s entire human race is incapable of being stuffed into a tiny city with high walls and staying put. Neither will small colonies be sprinkled throughout the galaxy, each on a different planet. While that base on Yavin’s moon might seem like a great place to vacation, traveling billions of light years to get there isn’t good logistics.
6. Lack of vulnerability assessment. If the entire survival of the human race depended on a cloning process, the DNA information to do it won’t be stored in a flying blimp. Neither would the Empire’s only major weapon have a vulnerable two meter-wide thermal exhaust port. Nor would the Empire build another weapon the size of a planet with virtually the same vulnerability.
7. Stuff that hurts you doesn’t really hurt you. Bullets still tend to kill people. If a single bullet can permanently make a guard go bye-bye, so can a single bullet to Trevor the Studmuffin or Quadrinity the Hot Chick. Good looks don’t make bullets hurt less. Similarly, humans won’t be able to practically fly or fall fifteen stories without saying “ow” upon landing.
8. Hovercars that provide good MPG. The energy depletion cost of a hovercar will always exceed one that doesn’t attempt to fight gravity. Wheels will continue their long tradition in the transportation industry.
9. Aliens which look like humanoids. If there are life forms elsewhere in the universe, they certainly did not evolve from the same common ancestors as humans. Why would they have two arms, two legs, or appendages for the same sensory experience as us? Why would they use sound to communicate? Why would they have eyes—usually two of them—to see the same color spectrum as humans? Aliens aren’t simply language-speaking humans with facial prosthetics that make their brow ridges bigger.
10. Sounds in space.