The reason futurists don't get it right is because if you are truly thinking an have an epiphany, you don't write about it, you have a idea that can be developed into a patent or patents, or a business. Once you put that idea into the public realm in a piece of literature, the idea becomes everyone's. Jules Verne's ideas like submarines and spacecraft were more general and could see the way things were heading. We have machines that operate on land and on the sea, why not in the sea, in the air and off the planet. The hoverboard won't be practical like the jet pack was. The jetpack could be built, but it couldn't stay up long and it was dangerous. Hovercrafts require substantial energy output from combustion energy. An internal combustion engine with its accompanying fuel supply wouldn't be that great for a single man, foot only interface overboard. Small flying remote control vehicles work. But having a teenager at a minimum of 115 lbs. payload won't work.
As an author, I can assure you that is not how the process works. Writers and other creative types will often have brilliant ideas, sometimes even working them out in great detail so they can be thoroughly described within the creative work, but rarely take these ideas to development. Sometimes, it's because other technological advancements have to be made first (like how we had to miniaturize computers before the cell phone could be made, which was based on Star Trek communicators). Sometimes it's because business or engineering is outside our ability or comfort zone. Sometimes it doesn't happen because we just don't have the time (being under a three book contract can make writing a full time job with no extra to spare). And often, it's because creative types just don't want to go that route, being obsessed with our art and wanting to move on to another inspiring project rather than getting tied down to one project for years trying to work out the kinks to something that may be ultimately unprofitable. I'll admit, it's frustrating sometimes. For research, I'll read physics textbooks and get so passionate about it, even to the point of wanting to really go do it myself, but ultimately I know I'm a writer first and would be doing myself a disservice by dropping my career to start all over somewhere else.
I am also a writer, but do technical writing and ghost writing for trade publications. I don't disagree with you in the area of sci-fi/fantasy in which the work is a vehicle as the English professors say to "explore the human condition." That and entertainment are the initiators and the "futurists" concepts are something made necessary in their creation. What specifically is being discussed are "futurists." A futurist is someone who projects what they see as what will possibly happen in the future because of the evolution of scientific know how and the resulting evolution of technology. A futurist such as those who create World's Fair exhibits of "The House of Tomorrow" are not Sci-fi based futurists, but still are futurists and get things wrong. There are sic-fi futurists, who use science fiction such as time travel to arrive at the future and then project on how they see the future in their works. A futurist proposes things without really any epiphany. A scifi writer often is one who wants to create an interesting situation for his readers which necessitates creating a futurist situation to drive his story concept. Generally, those who are sitting down playing with the nuts and bolts and/or have great insight into solving a problem aren't in the previous categories and instead of writing a fictional work or merely opining what the future will be like, they actually take concrete steps to create that future. Futurists in BACK TO THE FUTURE didn't see e-mail, but saw fax machines. If the futurists had looked at the existing technology of teletype machines, they might have projected e-mail. A code for a letter is sent from one machine and the machine on the other end interprets that code into a letter. It isn't necessary to send a huge amount of information like in the fax, because the machine on the other end knows how to reproduce a letter when it just sees a small little piece of code. It sounds so familiar.
I don't know. Anyone could be a futurist, including screen writers trying to figure out the future. I know you mean people who professionally write about future technology. I'm not sure they sought them out. It would be easy for the screenwriters to flip through magazines like POPULAR MECHANICS for ideas. What probably happened was that the screenwriters do what they usually do, they take regular things and then try to create bizarre situations by evolving them. Some concepts follow each other like in the first one when he goes back in time and creates a skateboard in the past, because he had a modern skateboard in the present. When he goes to the future, the writers are thinking, we have to continue this.
