We're in 2015 now - so why aren't we all flying around on hoverboards, asks the Echo's Richard Mason.

IF YOU’RE a bit of a movie buff, or you were born in the 1980s, Wednesday holds much significance.

It is Back To The Future day. October 21, 2015 is the exact day in the future that Marty McFly travelled to in the Delorean in Back to the Future 2. There have been many internet hoaxes over the years where gullible folk have wrongly celebrated the day, but this is the real deal.

In the film, McFly travels with Doc Emmett Brown to the future in order to help their future children, and their vision of 2015 America, 30 years ahead of the original film’s 1985 setting, is somewhat different to the reality we see now.

Out of the technology that was introduced into the film, how much of it is being used in everyday life now? Flat-screen TVs and hundreds of channels are the biggest thing, but that was hardly difficult to foresee back in 1989.

It’s more of a surprise that the innovations have not been realised. In the film, there are billboards for Jaws 19. Jaws 19! We stopped at Jaws 4, two years before Back to the Future 2 was made. No sign of Huey Lewis and the News, either.

It is an absolute scandal that we’re not all gadding about on hoverboards, either. They’ve had 26 years to make this a reality and we’re still faffing about with prototypes. It’s a disgrace.

Among the other inventions not to make it to 2015 are: a robotic dog walker, barcode number plates, cars that drive in the sky, actual weather control, automatic clothing, including an automatic drying jacket, automated petrol stations, the Scenery Channel, broadcasting beautiful views on to massive TVs 24 hours a day.

We can put a man on the moon, yet we can’t work on technology that automatically fills your car with fuel.

Then, there is the robotic journalist, who records audio, video, interviews people and creates stories from that. Steady on. I’m not too comfortable with a robot coming in and taking my job. Yet.

Cinemas are showing the entire Back to the Future trilogy to mark the occasion. Unfortunately, no cinemas will be showing all 19 Jaws films.