Techie Groomsmen Gifts: Where's My Jetpack?

When I was a kid, there was nothing more fun than imagining all the wonders that technology might bring us in the coming years. The future was wide open and jetpacks, hover cars, and robot butlers seemed just around the corner. While it is true that the science of groomsmen gifts has grown exponentially, the other sciences such as robotics have failed to keep up. I mean the Sony Asimov was a robot that could walk up stairs! Stairs, I tell you!

Time has passed and we all got older, but none of the wondrous inventions of the not-too-distant-future have yet materialized. Cars still require you to steer them by hand and the best we can do for robot housekeepers is a circular robot vacuum with attention deficit disorder. This all leads to one simple and enduring question: where the heck is my jetpack?

The excellent blog Paleo-Future catalogs bits and scraps of the gadget speculation of yesteryear, which promised such tantalizing treats as space hotels, weather control, personal helicopters and highways. Yet here we are heading into 2009 and none of these amazing technological marvels of the future have come to pass (except the highway, I have to give you that one).

There is a spot of good news, however, for us gloomy gusses sitting on our non-hover-couches eating chips out of a bag instead of in pill form. LG is set to announce what every kid who ever saw Dick Tracy has been clamoring for since its creation over 60 years ago.

The LG-GD910 wrist phone (via BoingBoing Gadgets) is perhaps the closest that science has yet come to fulfilling the childhood dreams of this humble blogger. A combination radio, mp3 player and (at long last) phone, this gadget is just about everything I ever wanted at age 7 and, who am I kidding, all I want now. The phone's official announcement will be at next year's Consumer Electronics Show in January. I plan to be first in line when this thing hits shops. Now about that robot butler...