The Future Of (2022) User Reviews

Listen to Flashforward instead

[user-177-80375 · 6/10 · 22 June 2022]

Went into the show because I heard Rose Eveleth was in it and I'm a fan of the podcast Flashforward podcast, which is an intelligent show with deep and thoughtful analysis about possible futures and does an excellent job of talking to experts on the issues.

The show is not like that. It's trying to be more accessible to a wider audience. It winds up being mostly techno-optimistic fluff, with every so often a teeny bit of more nuanced commentary from an expert like Rose Eveleth. I wanted much more of the latter and way less of the former.

I get they're trying to make this really accessible to a wide audience through random-people-on-the-street commentaries and the like. I found myself wanting more depth, and I was dismayed at how many minutes of every episode are spent breathlessly showcasing random tech startups. It felt more like long-form advertisements than documentary journalism.

Flashforward fans: don't get your hopes up. For every minute of an STS-type scholar trying to invite a smarter conversation, there are five minutes of hyping up random tech CEOs advertising their latest startup.

The hate reviews are by people that don't want change.

[bryan-3-319872 · 6/10 · 5 July 2022]

The ideas presented are ideas worth discussing. Some ideas are 10 years away and others 100. Yes, the production values are poor. But the point is to imagine how life on earth could change for the better and to hear from those who are trying to make progress. Could you imagine trying to tell people in 1922 to imagine 2022? They would dismiss most everything that ended up happening.

I don't get it how did this get approved.. (and even made)

[onze-kris · 1/10 · 21 June 2022]

So basically it is drunken talk put into a semi science series with semi experts It is rated watchable by 9 year olds. In one of the features of how we would find our ideal partner one guy says he's in if it helps him to get laid.

This is the second episode after the episode with pets which has to be geared towards kids in elementary school.

This is worse than all the true crime drama. I hope Netflix pulls this and sends us a personal letter of apology of adding this to their recommendations.

Interesting speculative ideas

[stellarickhards98 · 7/10 · 8 July 2022]

Despite below-par and boring production, interesting ideas are presented, as another review pointed out. It's just creative theories and speculations yes, but that's all it claims to be. I liked it.

Woof

[mpomodoro · 1/10 · 22 June 2022]

Watched the first episode and all I can say is... woof.

Brain-numbingly void of any real science. And in true Netflix fashion, it seems like they overpaid for VO and underpaid for graphics. Evidently people in the future have no faces or fingers.

Overall, it felt cheaply made and geared toward a younger audience. I'm not entirely sure I would even call this a documentary series since it feels so over-scripted and cookie-cutter. But I guess that's what happens when you have EIGHT executive producers on a 20-minute video about dogs.

Once again... woof.

Superficial yet fun

[tomassenberg · 7/10 · 31 July 2022]

The show offers a superficial view into the possible future of technology. Allthough the show lacks any form of depth and is sometimes a bit too unrealistic (looking at you 'talking to your dog' episode) the show does offer some fun new visions for the future. Nothing too mindblowing, but enough to make you think.

The future of bad tv

[elwood187 · 3/10 · 21 June 2022]

Atypical netflix docuseries: nauseatingly multicultural...check, little to no research....check, semi professional experts who really aren't experts...check. The series talks alot about the future but provides no real detailed path or technology that is leading us there. The viewer learns within about ten minutes that it isn't really about the future but about inclusion (the message). I would pass.

Just as bad as their website

[eastbayrae · 1/10 · 21 June 2022]

This docu series is just as bad as the articles they have on their website. They really need to stick to the Apple fanboy stuff. Experts in what exactly?

Worth watching

[gbala-05324 · 8/10 · 7 August 2022]

It was a good watch. The Verge's meticulous planning and execution is clearly seen on every single episode. The topics are chosen well and the theories that are being discussed are legit with proper evidence. Definitely a worthwhile series if you are a fan of tech.

Absolute make believe

[testbed · 1/10 · 22 June 2022]

I couldn't get through the first episode. Everything is pure speculation about how we could one day talk to dogs by having our smart phone analyse the dogs behaviour so that it can literally speak. Complete drek, the algorithm will just be surmising as best it can what the dog wants, which is A: never going to work properly, and B: a far cry from the actual dog speech we are promised trhroughout the program, and yet the the show optimistically floats from one man in the street to the other asking them "how cool would it be if your dog could talk!?"

Let me save the researchers the hassle, the dog is saying "I am hungry", "can we go for a walk", "please don't do that" and "please don't do that or I will bite you". Dogs aren't that complicated.

I was hoping for some actual science, all I got was "wouldn't it be cool if?" and even that wasn't fully explored. Step it up Netflix, this is dross.

Big fat yikes: boring, void of content, and repetitive

[tyschroeder · 1/10 · 22 June 2022]

I wasn't aware you could make a show with as little substance as this one. The episodes are a loose, poorly-based speculation on "the future of" a given topic. This idea has a lot of potential and apparently zero execution.

I would not recommend this show to anyone who wants to learn or has critical thinking skills. There are many other shows and better resources out there.

The future is bleak

[cscott2331 · 2/10 · 28 June 2022]

If this is any indication of the future. Lord help us. This wasn't interesting AT ALL!!!! It was actually very hard to get into then even harder to hold my attention. It's just a bunch of bs as far as I'm concerned.

Yawn inducing non substantial piece of junk

[Vetrrich_Chelvan · 1/10 · 28 June 2022]

Watched on 28-06-22 - Netflix - Dropped after Episode 2

They don't have enough facts. So, they talk, they talk and they talk. Even the talking doesn't make sense after a while. It's all like they didn't get enough footage so they just mushed everything together to deliver this crap.

Even the stock videos are of low quality, the narrator's voice is dull and indifferent and there's nothing to learn from here than you already know. It must be tiring to create such passionless content and to release these on your platform, only to lose subscribers. I empathize.

Get well soon, Netflix.

Useless

[kenfu-92099 · 1/10 · 19 November 2022]

This is easily the most useless thing I've ever seen. Uninteresting people talking about uninteresting things. It's like the 1950s shows that predicted we would all be driving flying cars and traveling to Mars on a daily basis. The topics discussed in this documentary and not only unattainable, but also as ridiculous as predicting that we would all be eating food in capsule form by 1990. Back to the Future had people still using fax machines in the future. It is more likely that the fax will make a comeback and be in every household than most of the stupid things presented in this show. Total waste of airtime. Scrap it. No one should have to watch this.

Absolutely fantastic series!

[lynnkerew · 10/10 · 7 July 2022]

Really great series..I have learned so much and helps me to know what to future invest in as well as how technology collides with real life application.

Disappointing

[Tech_enthusiast · 1/10 · 13 July 2022]

I really like the Verge's YouTube reviews and videos and I was excited to hear they were working with Netflix on a show given Netflix's propensity for high budget/quality. Not sure what happened with this show but the budget and quality were obviously lacking.

The information given is more like imaginative speculation than any scientific facts or research. The format of the show is like one of those "educational and informational" shows on network TV after the news on the weekends, overly simple to the point that it seems childish.

Not good

[rurounikz · 1/10 · 29 October 2022]

It's not a documentary. It's more like reality TV documentary. Light content that could have been better.

There are barely any credible professionals to back up what is envisioned as what the future could look like.

People with weird titles such as futurologists and thanatologists alienated me a lot . There was no substance in their ideas.

If anything they were all advertising their weird business and that's what this series felt like. Like an opportunity to promote a business that might have a bright future.

We watched 3 episodes during our quarantine and we couldn't handle another second of it's vagueness.

Lacks credibility and a lot of what we saw was far fetched.

Interesting... Until you find the elephants stampeding in every room.

[Sotalo · 3/10 · 22 January 2024]

This docu-series covers many individual's ideas of the future, and futurists, but not science to determine what is possible. For instance, bioluminescence requires too much energy from a plant to ever be bright enough to be as functional as what's described. More egregiously, the docu-series completely brushed off VR and focused on novel AR as the future of gaming for the entire episode. Anyone who plays VRChat knows this is not the case. The best parts promised about the future of gaming are here right now in VR, and new advancements are being made every day to make that experience better.

This egregious and insulting omission tinted the episode, biasing it towards something very novel that doesn't match our actual desires, nor our most likely future. Rather than talk with developers who are working to make VR better, who know what people like/dislike about the current technology and what they want to make, the show presents a biased and completely separate track. This issue carries over into many episodes, including an entire episode on the future of houseplants of all things, which includes the aforementioned bioluminescence issue.

I very much love researching the future, even skeptical futures unlikely to happen. But a befitting or better future, this is not. The future of dating is not going to be a magical algorithm better than our current apps... with AR. The future of houseplants is not Avatar, or a plant that "protects you from the rain." We have those in Florida: they don't work! And the future of Gaming, where most people really want to sit down and chill with their international friends, or have fun playing a game together, is not going to be AR!

Let's talk about the dog episode. Any conversation we could ever have is predicated on the intelligence and complexity of a dog's brain, which scientists are surmising are about as intelligent as a two-year-old toddler. They have feelings and thoughts for sure, but not complicated ones. And smarter dogs get bored quickly and fare so much worse in domestic environments. These two facts make the concept of conversing with our pets impossible. While the episode does take care to avoid the notion of dogs sounding like Einstein, the omission of these facts in an entire episode about communicating with dogs is a "plot hole" that looms over the entire episode and swallows it whole. They discuss "problems," for sure, but they never mention the elephant in the room stampeding over the entire room. And with each episode, you find more and more of these elephants which are ignored to allow the series to speculate, speculate, and speculate some more without ever once considering whether or not all that speculation is accurate, or even the kind of future most people want.

The benefits, of course... it's a docu-series about the future. It presents a lot of interviews with people and futurists who all have a very optimistic view of what could be possible and are working hard to make that happen. They ponder the potential problems of such concepts, as though they could be genuine, and I can certainly appreciate the effort to gather such an eclectic group of people to ponder such a ludicrous future. I can certainly watch this series with optimism and suspension of disbelief... but on the inside, it's a tragedy. Or, perhaps, just not the kind of future I'm interested in. If you like pondering the concept of dog communication, Avatar houseplants, and citywide AR, then this is the series for you. But if you are actually responsible for the future and want to know more about the genuine developments that are exciting, this series is not what you're looking for.

A documentary that says nothing

[gergelyjandrasits · 1/10 · 24 July 2022]

I don't actually know how I got through 3 episodes. I should've just left it after the first 20 minutes of pseudo scientific bs, that leads nowhere and explains nothing. It's baffling how something like this gets approved and aired. If you can get paid creating stuff like that, then please hit me up.

very little substance, nothing but superficial nonsense

[tallyho-34810 · 22 September 2022]

For everyone who thinks Netflix is too woke, this series is a perfect example why. Sometimes I feel like Netflix is trying to shove their "mandatory diversity" agenda down everyone's throats, no matter how cringey and tacky it seems. Forced multiculturalism at its worst. I mean let's be honest: this program is by millennials, for millennials. Leave it to the godless heathens Netflix to do an entire 1/2 hour show on "Life After Death" and not ONCE even mention the word heaven! People already think these coastal elite liberals are a bunch of atheists; its propagranda like this that perpetuates this stereotype.

Has nothing to do with science

[stramkajonas-33961 · 1/10 · 9 February 2024]

So when I started to watch this series I thought they would really talk to serious scientist and make educated guesses based on that but it is disappointing. They talk to semi-scientists and just talk about really far fetched things. All of that pressed into 20 minutes, to really try to find visions of the future you need more time and serious people. It's like a guessing game with no base, or better no scientific base. They make jokes, ask people how they like the far fetched ideas the producers had and it's always one person that likes the idea and makes a joke ( the guy which wanted to get laid with a dating app) and another person that doesn't like the idea.

Do not watch this show.

Great ideas!

[christineballone · 9/10 · 11 August 2023]

Oh mei! So many have no imagination here. It's like when I tell my husband about this he'll just shake his head and call it nonsense! Me on the other hand I'm a dreamer, an optimist and ready for change anytime even if it won't affect me while I'm still alive but still I dream! I have seen many of these ideas years ago , there are of course many new ideas! If you cannot adapt to new technology you'll be left behind because this is the way we're going and nothing can stop it so better embrace it! There'll be lots of mistakes done by incompetent people of course in the name of science but that is unavoidable ! I'd love to already live in that sustainable future and see all these incredible innovations but as for now that remains a dream! We're already living part of the future it's just unregulated and chaotic and needs more time to become beneficial on a global basis! For now we need all these new ideas and the people who will make them a reality! I applaud Netflix for once for something that can stir curiosity in a young mind! The medical one was particularly interesting! If you're curious like me you'll like this look into the future!