Landmark Technologies that Went From Science Fiction To Science Fact
The popular genre of science fiction has become a major influence on contemporary culture over the decades, inspiring countless books, comics, movies, and TV series. What is incredible, and often over-looked, however, is just how many gadgets and tech, once imagined and speculated in sci-fi, is now a reality.
Travel To Space & The Moon
Jules Verne, who famously authored “20 000 League Under The Sea”, among other classics, is considered by many to the father of modern sci-fi. In his 1865 novel “From The Earth To The Moon”, Verne described a journey to space and the moon via a huge projectile, and also mentioned various other surprisingly accurate details. The story was amazingly written 104 years before the first moon-landing actually became a reality.
The literal age of the space-travel sci-fi genre, however, is something that is largely debated. Some consider the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh to technically be one of the first known accounts of space-travel.
Star Trek’s Mobile Phones & Teleportation
The popular old sci-fi television series Star Trek first aired in the 1960s, is well-known for predicting several technologies well ahead of its time. Aside from touch-screen computers similar to what we now use to play at a live casino online and analysis machines such as the “spectrometer”, one of the most remembered gadgets in the original series was the “communicator”. This was a small “mobile” hand-held communication device with a flip-up cover, remarkably similar to some of the first mobile phones created around four decades later.
Another, perhaps more famous technology from Star Trek, though, is their use of instant teleportation to “beam” themselves to various locations. While we aren’t exactly able to do this yet, a revolutionary new scientific experiment has been able prove that teleportation, at least on a quantum level, is possible. Who knows where this exciting technology will take us in the future.
Cyborgs & Robots
Cyborgs, half human and half robot, and an old trope from sci-fi stories, are often not given the most friendly light. However, as it turns out, robotics are proving to be very useful and viable when it comes to prosthetics. Though still out of the price range of the average person, these days highly functional robot prosthetic arms and legs are being made to replace lost limbs. Likewise, devices such as Neauralink, have begun what many believe will eventually become a symbiosis of human and machine.
The word “robot” was first used in Karel Čapek’s 1920 play, Rossum’s Universal Robots, though automatons have been well-detailed in many stories across history. Sci-fi author Isaac Asimov is largely credited with coining the term “robotics” and making the concept universally popular in the 1960-70s.
These days, robots are not only a reality but swiftly becoming a part of our daily lives, doing tasks for us with greater efficiency just as sci-fi predicted.
A Tech-Filled Future
There are many other instances of where sci-fi has accurately predicted or even directly inspired invention. As we head into the future it will be exciting to see what else comes true. Let’s hope it’s just the good stuff though!
