Real-life Science Fiction
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Can fiction become reality? In today’s episode, we consider some of the predictions made by movies, books, and television shows in decades past and how some of these guesses have become devices we use in day-to-day life. We also have some futuristic wishes of our own.
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About The Author
levi
I am the coyote of the group! This means I am the handsome one, the intelligent one, the one who says all sorts of positive things about himself because he can even though he may be stretching the truth a little. When I'm not hosting or editing the show, you can find me writing the next great furry novel.
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I’m a Doctor Who fan, myself. As far as sci-fi turned fact, I think PDA’s were from ST:NG (Star Trek: Next Generation). They used a “portable” computer device back then before we came out with them irl..
As far as wishes, I would LOVE to see a TARDIS (if NOT for time travel, or the “bigger on the inside than the outside” at least for being able to travel to anywhere.) The trip wouldn’t be instantaneous, and you could always stop half-way and see “outside” to the stars and whatnot safely.
Has anyone read Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War? She describes neural implants that people use much in the same way that we use cellphones, but they’re apparently a pain to put in and remove.
I’ve never heard of this. I’ll want to look it up now.
I’m actually for slightly “less” technology. Not to say it’s bad- just how quickly everyone jumps on the band wagon is bad. I was waiting outside a classroom for a briefing and there were about 15 people waiting with me. I had a paper copy of a story I was writing at the time and took it out to read. I was startled by the sudden quiet, looked up and saw that everyone was on their smart phone. No one was talking- or were they? I had to shake my head at the scene…
I actually read a part in Bob Brown’s book The Readies (1930) that talks about a concept close to our e-readers:
“To continue reading at today’s speed I must have a machine. A simple reading machine which I can carry or move around and attach to any old electric light plug and read hundred thousand word novels in ten minutes if I want to, and I want to. A machine as handy as a portable phonograph, typewriter or radio, compact, minute operated by electricity, the printing done microscopically by the new photographic process on a transparent tough tissue roll which carries the contents of a book and is no bigger than a typewriter ribbon, a roll like a minature serpentine that can be put in a pill box. This reading film unrolls beneath a narrow magnifying glass four or give inches long set in a reading slit, the glass brings up the otherwise unreadable type to comfortable reading size, and the read is rid at last of the cumbersome book, the inconvenience of holding its bulk, turning its pages, keeping them clean, jiggling hs weary eyes back and forth in the awkward pursuit of words from the upper left hand corner to the lower right, all over the vast confusing reading surface of a page. . . .
“My machine is equipped with controls so the reading record can be turned back or shot ahead, a chapter read or the happy ending anticipated. The magnifying glass is so set that it can be moved nearer to or father from the type, so the reader may browse in 6 points, 8, 10, 12, 16 or any size that suits him. Many books remain unread today owing to the unsuitable size of type in which they are printed. A number of readers cannot stand the strain of small type and other intellectual prowlers are offended by Great Primer. The reading machine allows free choice in type-point, it is not a fixed arbitrary bound object but an adaptable carrier of flexible, flowing reading matter. . . .
“The machine is equipped with all modern improvements. By pressing a button the roll slows down so an interesting part can be read lesurely, over and over again if need be, or by speeding up, a dozen books can skimmed through in an afternoon without soiling the fingers or losing a dust wrapper. . . .
“The material advantages of my reading machine are obvious, paper saving by condensation and elimination of waste margin space which alone takes up a fifth or sixth of the bulk of the present-day book. Ink saving in proportion, a much smaller surface needs to be covered. . . Binding will be unnecessary, paper pill boxes are produced at the fraction of the cost of cloth cases. Manual labor will be minimized. Reading will be cheap and independent of advertising which today carries the cost of the cheap reading matter purveyed exclusively in the interests of the advertiser” (167-69).
I have watched no Star Trek at all, except for one of the original episodes being replayed over an old persons’ channel XD and the most common thing i see that was sci-fi in the past and is reality now has to be the robots, and i mean, everything from answering machines to pet robots to the pre-programmed robots that build vehicles and heavy machinery all over the world. I’m slightly less computerized than the average person, and I fantasize a slightly steampunk twist to modern technology, though i know that computers are only going to be used more and more to make cleaner and faster vehicles and date speeds and overall energy. and Wolfin, Volvo did that with a prototype self-parking car about a year ago. and as for cheaper transportation, buy a skateboard with a motor on it XD in the future, I would love to see cyrosleep and a few other little things come to be…the most radical being ‘furry surgery’. 😉 and having the internet/phone/email inside my head would be disastrous….i’d probably have 50 tabs open and texting 5 people at once because i’m so scatterbrained XD