Why did the 1950s vision of the future never came to be?

[Earth001]

I am 20 and I guess I grew up on way too much science fiction as a kid. But in the 1990s I thought the future(2000s onward) would be like that of th Jetsons or Back to the Future Ii. I fully thought we were going to have hover cars, jetpacks, food pills, Interplanetary travel, underwater and lunar colonies, robots, and so on by 2000. But that didn't happen. So far the only thing that has blown my mind about the future is: smartphones, tablets, video games, computers, HDTVs and that is about it. What ever happened to the rest of the future I was promised?

 

[Outlander_04]

The energy usage is impossibly high

 

[RaDiKaL_]

I'd say bad management of global economy, the invention of the cold war came and the great powers of the world invested (and still do even though the cold war is supposedly over) in weapons instead of that technological future that some dreamed back in those days.

 

[swiftleeo]

The energy usage is impossibly high

Or rather the lack of use of a safe, clean renewable energy source Notice how I said "lack of use" and not "lack of existence"

Also, the governments seem to keep a lot of scentific news away from the media/public, so there very well may be such things that they are just holding back from us because they are a-holes

 

[boosted1g]

Hey, they still have 1 more year till 2015 to make flying cars, hoverboards and mr.fusion.

In all serriousness though, one huge aspect is that durring the early 1900s technolgy doubled every 5-10 years so they assumed we could continue that indefeinatly. Energy limitations slowed us down, and then it just comes down to what is profitable for a business to invest in.
As far as flying cars, so many people cant handle 4-way stops and round-a-bouts, im scared to think about stacking layers of traffic and not having hard lane restrictions.

 

[Titillating]

Well, it was never promised; all of those shows and movies were works of fiction.

That being said, just give it some time. Technology is still advancing at a breakneck pace, much faster than any other era in history. During the early 1900's, the 90's were portrayed in cartoons and drawings as having machines that would feed us all the information from a book, directly to our brains; obviously, this did not happen.

I think you need to reassess what is worth being impressed by. We have a fully functioning robot on Mars! He might not look like the Terminator, but it's still a robot. 3D printing has spurred amazing advancements in a variety of fields, including medicine through the creation of prosthetic limbs and organs. Virtual reality continues to make steady strides, although some people would argue that it is not advancing fast enough.

Just gotta temper expectations. Just because it was in a movie, doesn't mean it was promised or is in any way factual. If we went with that line of logic, then pretty soon we would all be eating reprocessed humans a la Soylent Green!

 

[USAFRet]

Hover cars - wildly impractical. Any crosswind, and you're all over the place.
Jet packs - Small enough power source, and absolute reliability
food pills - Have you been in a Walgreens lately? And given the choice between a steak and the equivalent nutrition from a pill....guess which I'll take.
Interplanetary travel - Space travel is a lot harder than it looks

Star Trek and its followers spoiled all of us.

What do we have??
Robots building your car
We're almost to the point of self driving cars
A pocket size thing that uses a constellation of satellites that can tell you what end of your house you're in
Solar power for your house, or solar heat for your pool
A solar powered, motion detector porch light that I simply stick on the wall, and will last for years. $10.

The internet - nuff said. The totality of human knowledge, literally at your fingertips.

There has been a whole host of 'small but important things'. The big ones will get there.
Remember...the Star Trek universe starts a couple hundred years from now. And only after a major nuclear war.