The Near Future is Hard

Science fiction is easier when it's set way in the future. You can do pretty much anything you like and audiences will accept that it's been figured out, somehow. In the near future, it needs to be something you can grasp - and then you're overtaken by the times and most of what you did looks lacking at best and foolish at worst. Things you never even thought of should have been commonplace, and things you left in (or imagined) aren't around anymore (or yet).

For example, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson went 11 years into the future with UFO - from 1969 to 1980 . There are big things wrong, of course, such as a moon base, but there are also a lot of little things they got wrong - the headsets, the land-line phones with not a cell phone in sight, all their comms and computers still analog and on tape, everyone smoking everywhere - well, maybe not so wrong for 1980, but it sure looks wrong today.

But one thing really jumped out at me in the episode "A Question of Priorities" ... absolutely no EMT treatment. Straker's kid is hit by a car, and the ambulance is one of those scoop-and-drive jobs, just two guys in a (fancy) panel truck with a gurney - exactly like Hawaii 5-0. The concept of actual medical treatment at the site of the injury/accident seems to have been a huge surprise to everyone.