When is the Future takes one topic per episode and delves deep into how it has been
promised to us in pop culture, the expectations and predictions in movies, books and
magazines and the attempts that have been made over the years – and decades – past
to realize the idea. The main reason why we don’t yet have the future we all take for
granted is we completely underestimate just how complex a puzzle some of these things
are.

That’s the crux of When is the Future. Showing how something seemingly simple, like a
robot butler, is actually 6 separate fields of research, each with their own list of dozens of problems to solve. Some seem simple, like walking on two legs, but turn out to be maddeningly complex. Others seem complex even on the surface, like a computer recognizing objects in a room and knowing how to interact with them