‘Back to the Future?’ It’s right now, says Israeli futurist

We may not have the flying cars or the cool hoverboards, but according to Arie Melamed, futurist and CMO of FST Biometrics, the future – as in the film Back to the Future II – is now.

“It’s true that some of the more out-there gadgets haven’t been invented yet,” Melamed said on the anniversary of “Back to the Future Day,” – October 21, 2015, the day Marty McFly transports to in order to save his children from becoming “nerds” in the second film in the Back to the Future series. “But many other things, like the technology for smart homes, access and identification, and especially communications, are far ahead than even what the movie envisioned.”

For the Baby Boom generation, Back to the Future has been a sort of standard by which they have measured scientific progress. The film, set in 1985, has Marty program Doc Brown’s flux capacitator-equipped DeLorean (a car that has long been off the market) to travel to the future, which features hydrogen-powered cars, wrap-around phone headsets, and hoverboards – sort of like a skateboard that flies on it own.

Thirty years on, said Melamed, the world is still not quite the way the film’s writers and producers imagined it – but they were a lot more spot-on than they probably realized. “A lot of the things in the future McFly home, as seen in the film” – the home 1985 Marty travels to in order to check out how his 2015 version is doing – “has come about, especially the issues surrounding communications.”

Arie Melamed (Courtesy)

In one scene, for example, Marty is approached by a donation seeker (trying to raise funds for the Hilldale clock tower, of course) who pulls out a device that allows payment using just a fingerprint.

“That’s a good example of identification technology that exists, and has actually been around for a few years already,” said Melamed.

Many businesses use fingerprints to allow access to buildings, and the new Apple Pay system, via Touch ID technology, allows users to process payments with a fingerprint.

Artist’s’ rendition of Doc Brown’s Delorean – with flux capacitator included (Pixabay)

But tech to identify people has gone way beyond the film. “We are coming to the point where we won’t need fingerprints or anything else to identify someone,” said Melamed. “Face reading tech will be powerful enough to identify who you are, and allow you access to buildings, or provide you with customized experiences based on your preferences.” That technology is already in use, at least to some extent; Facebook, for example, uses it to figure out who’s who in photos users upload to the site. The Facebook technology was created in Israel by Face.com, which Facebook acquired in 2012 for $60 million.

In one Back to the Future II scene, Jennifer, Marty’s future wife, walks into their home, and is immediately identified and welcomed by the house. She then asks for a light to be turned on – using voice control, another ubiquitous technology nowadays. But had the writers elaborated on that scene, they might have combined the identification tech with the preference tech (turning on the lights, or in other scenes using voice to ask for fruit, to prepare dinner, etc.).

“The identification tech is already at the point where it can associate faces with preferences, so theoretically you can have the lights go on and off as soon as you walk into the house – at the right brightness level, in the room you want to go into, etc.,” said Melamed. “You could also program it to turn on the air conditioning or heat, turn on the TV, etc.” The technology is already here, but it’s expensive, and it’s getting cheaper. “In five to ten years it will be everywhere, as the tech gets more common and less expensive.”

Melamed can talk about identification technology with ease because that is what the firm he works for, FST Biometrics, does. One of the world’s top biometric identification solutions provider, the company employs face recognition, body behavior analytics, voice recognition, and other biometric criteria to provide access solutions for businesses, face and fingerprint-based security systems, behavior analytics for worker evaluation and security, and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOoKaghhu0o

But there’s a down side to identification tech, also on display in the film. In one scene, Marty is seen plotting with another employee (via a video chat, another technology that has been around for awhile, in the form of Skype and others) to act against the boss – when suddenly, his employer, who apparently had been listening in the whole time, “hacks” into the conversation and summarily fires Marty.

Such surveillance – plus a hundred other hacks – is obviously only possible in a connected, smart home. It could be argued that Marty deserved it – after all, he was talking corporate espionage – but what if he had been, for example, talking politics, and expressing the “wrong” opinion? That kind of cyber-spying, in fact, could extend beyond larceny and politics; a company, for example, could use smart technology to figure our our consumption habits (for example, using sensors in a refrigerator to determine if we are out of milk), and other things we might not want to share.

In fact, that technology also already exists, and is being used increasingly in not only refrigerators and smart TVs, but in many other products. It’s all part of the Internet of Things, which will see almost everything people use connected in the coming years – providing more opportunity for corporations, nosy bosses, or teenage hackers to spy, sell, or otherwise wreak havoc with our lives.

“All true,” said Melamed. “But that could have been said of many technological innovations over the years. The fact is that technology is agnostic – it can be used for good or bad, and it is up to leaders, and the people, to ensure that it is used for positive purposes.”

If there’s one thing the film did not foresee, it was the Internet, and the massive explosion in ubiquitous communications. In fact, no one predicted it – not the doyens of popular culture, and not even scientists.

Why would an imagination that came up with “smart clothes” (another scene in the film, and another technology that has come about) not have come up with always on chat, Internet, turn-by-turn driving apps, and all the other things that advanced wireless digital communications have given us? “It’s because people who predict the future do so from an evolutionary point of view, building on what already exists and extrapolating to the future,” said Melamed. “The Internet was revolutionary. I was working in the telecom industry 20 years ago on the eve of the Internet revolution, and I can tell that nobody – even the biggest, most advanced companies – foresaw what we have today.”

But it works the other way, too. One thing the film foresaw that the world is waiting for is the hoverboard. Where are they? “That’s a good question,” said Melamed. “I’m looking for one myself.”