The Future is Now! or Where's my hover car, jet pack, and standard issue laser gun?

I'm 28 years old and I can remember when I was little basically being promised by “them” (the media, popular science, etc.) that hovercrafts, jet packs, and laser guns would be a common thing in the year 2000 or soon after. The year 2000 (if you didn't think the world was going to end) was The Future, you know, like in the Jetsons; but I'm still wanting for my hover car and there's no robot to do my chores.

Yes, I don't have those things and the prototypes that do exist are not very functional, but here are some things we may have forgotten and taken for granted. Some of the first computers weighed around 30 tons (that's 60,000 pounds!) and Popular Mechanics made the prediction in 1949 that they may someday weigh only 1.5 tons. Even science fiction, the genre which imagined up the jet pack, laser gun, and even more wondrous things, dreamed rather small (or more accurately big) when it came to how small a computer would be in the future. Isaac Asimov wrote a story first printed in 1953, entitled, Nobody There But - which was about two men who built computers. They were making a revolutionary small “calculator” which was “about three feet high, six feet long, and two feet deep.” The smallest Asimov dared his characters to dream of someday making the calculator was one that an “automobile” could carry. I remember reading another story that, even though it was based in the future, they were still using microfilm because, I guess, the author thought that would be the medium which replaced paper books.

Just a few years ago CDs were a pretty big deal. We thought the fact that they could carry, what, like 20 songs was pretty awesome. Now we have devices which are around an inch and a half wide and under a half inch thick that can hold around 4000 songs. Also, thanks to e-book readers, you can now hold thousands of books in your hands at one time.

Kids, I know the things I mentioned above may not seem like a big deal to you, but just imagine, a few years ago if you wanted to take music with you on a trip you had to take a bunch of CDs and if you wanted to take a bunch of books, well, your only option was to take paper books (which, I can tell you from experience, is quite heavy) .

As much as I wanted a hover car, I think these capabilities are even cooler. 

Can you think of any other ways in which we have gone beyond what was predicted as the future? Share in the comments.