10 Years Ago, NBC Predicted What Life Would be Like in 2017

It's always fun to go back in time and take a look at the predictions made in the past about what folks thought our present would look like. Last year the internet went gaga over comparing the vision of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale's 2015 as seen in Back to the Future II, with reality.

Works of fiction aren't the only media to take a stab at amateur prophecy. Ten years ago, a news segment during NBC Nightly News predicted that technology would have a much bigger role in identification. The story envisioned a scenario in which hospitals could simply scan a Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) chip implanted beneath your skin to gain access to your medical history.

 

The technology existed back in 2007, so the prediction was focused on the implementation of such devices becoming commonplace. And unfortunately for NBC, they seemed to have missed the mark. While a handful of individuals have chosen to have the chips implanted, implementation is by no means widespread.

But not every prediction NBC made was as off the mark. The video also discussed how facial recognition software will play a larger part in our daily lives. They used the example from the film Minority Report where the software was used to tailor marketing specifically to each identified individual. While facial recognition is not yet part of the system, proximity marketing software does exist using real-time location systems (RTLS) to provide location specific marketing through wifi or Bluetooth.