The futuristic gadgets in Westworld are more realistic than you might think

Westworld is back with its third season after a two-year gap and 5 episodes in, it's been an explosive journey so far. The show has boldly shed off its vintage-looking settings and we're now in a brave new world full of futuristic technologies and gadgets. The year is 2058 and a futuristic world has never looked shinier. Most sci-fi movies and shows often completely miss the mark when depicting futuristic gadgets. But not Westworld. It's a delight to watch how the showrunners have thoughtfully designed the technologies and gadgets of the future that are not too distant from reality and are based upon educated guesses over modern available technologies. Here are a few interesting gadgets that we've spotted so far and how they fare with their real-life counterparts:

The folding and sliding tablets

The tri-fold tablets that were used to control the hosts were some of the most iconic gadgets in season 1 and season 2. In season 3, we get a slight upgrade. Bernard uses a tablet that comes with a sliding display for additional screen space. These tablets look so cool that it left us wondering if these gadgets will ever be available in real life.

Earlier this year, LG rolled out its rollable screen TVs (pun intended) and a Chinese company called TCL has also introduced a phone with sliding display. And with major tech companies like Samsung and LG commercially producing foldable smartphones like the Galaxy Z flips and G8x ThinkQs, it's safe to assume that these gadgets are not that far ahead in the future.

AR hologram smart glasses

In season three, we see a lot of regular glasses that are actually AR hologram smart glasses. In reality, most AR glasses still don't look like our regular lightweight ones. Instead, they are big, bulky and comes with a hardware and battery pack. But we are slowly heading towards regular smart glasses with major tech firms including Goole, Apple and Amazon working on them. The smart glasses shown in Westworld are in fact just a brilliant educated guess on what smart AR glasses could possibly look like in the future. Simple, regular and feature-packed.

The RICO app

In season three, we see Caleb using a gig-economy app called RICO, to earn money by committing crimes. The app works like most gig-economy apps we use now, (hopefully not for criminal or shady activities) where the app lets the user choose a level of crime they want to commit, connects them with accomplices and like every gig app, let the users rate their partners.

Jonathan Nolan, the show's co-creator explained in an interview that the RICO app was based on blockchain which the government cannot trace or track. An app like this does sound scary, but no really unrealistic.

Self-riding bikes and self-driving cars

A big chunk of the futuristic world portrayed in season three comprises of self-driven vehicles. We see Dolores riding a motorbike to chase Liam Dempsey which then parks itself. Dolores also summons the motorbike whenever she wants in a very batman-esque way. In other scenes, we often see her and other characters riding in self-driven cars including one self-driven Audi.

In CES 2019, BMW showed off an early prototype for a self-riding motorcycle. And autonomous cars are no new concepts with numerous automobile manufacturers working on it. In fact, Audi itself has autonomous vehicles in development and testing just as we see in the show. So who's to say that by 2058 in the real world, we won't see streets filled with autonomous vehicles?

The synthetic abattoir

At the beginning of season three, we see Bernard working in a meat plant where cow meat is grown synthetically in labs. We see them cutting meat slabs from large pillars fitted with tubes full of blood so it's not clear what technology they are using exactly to grow these particular synthetic meats.

But in reality, though, synthetic or lab-grown meat is an actual thing. Have you not heard of the impossible whopper yet?

Westworld's season three is full of cheeky, realistic and yet futuristic techs like these. From smartwatches to data-hungry tech companies watching our every move, Westworld's depiction of technology is not something very far away in the future. More on Westworld and its fascinating world of tech when the season ends.