Today is being celebrated by Hollywood film fans in the United States as Back To The Future Day.
That's because in the second part of the Back To The Future film trilogy, released in 1989, a time-traveling teenaged character named Marty jumps from the 1980s to October 21, 2015.
Some of the most iconic devices imagined in the film by director Robert Zemeckis that had not been invented in the 1980s are now in the design or prototype stage.
Most notably among the increasingly sophisticated prototypes being developed are the hoverboard skateboard, flying cars, and dog-walking drone robots.
Remarkably, many of what were futuristic devices when Back To The Future II was released now actually exist in 2015. Here are some of them:
video conference-calling (via Skype, Google Chat, and Video Chat for Facebook)
thumbprint security-access identification
wearable computer-display-screen glasses (Google Glass and others)
voice-activated computer commands
thin-line, advanced digital cameras
multiple split-screen TV viewing
personal online data that include individual preferences (via Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace)