As soon as the calendar rolled over into 2015, one question was on everybody's mind: Where is the future promised by Back to the Future? The year is officially 2015, yet there are no hoverboards in sight. No self-lacing Nikes. No ridiculous outfits.
So far 2015 is a bit of a let down. But the year is yet young! A real hoverboard is actually being made, and by year's end it sounds like we might actually be able to buy self-lacing shoes. Truly, the future is now.
Tinker Hatfield, who originally designed the iconic Nike Air MAG shoe worn by Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future Part II, says he and his team are working hard to deliver a fully functioning Nike MAG shoe by year's end. While a limited run of 1,500 Nike MAGs were auctioned off in 2007, with the proceeds going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the shoe has never been widely available to the public.
Those 1,500 shoes sold in 2007 also lacked one of the shoe's most futuristic features seen in the film -- the "Power Laces." As seen in the movie, the power laces tighten themselves, eliminating the need for you to ever tie your shoes again and making them the perfect shoe for hoverboard riding.
Hattfield is now looking to make the power laces on the Nike Air MAG a reality when the shoe releases sometime this year. You can check out the patent for the shoe of the future here. He is so far being coy about when exactly we might see the shoe, telling an audience at the Agenda Trade Show in South Beach, California that there are still "11 and two-thirds months left in 2015." Judging from the diagrams in the patent, Hattfield and his team have their work cut out for them, but it will be well worth the more than two decades wait.
