Quick! Someone send Wil Wheaton to Google Headquarters!
Since it does seem, at times, that we are mostly here to provide material that inspires the authors of other, bigger sites, we figured we’d try that trick again today. Perhaps today, with this User Input question, we can inspire two sites at the very same time! Wouldn’t that be marvellous for them?
After all, one of the greatest aspects of science fiction, one thing that captures the imagination, is all the marvellous technology they showcase in their World Of The Future™. Hell, captivating storylines and fanciful gadgets that make beepy noises? Put a show like that on a screen in front of a nerd, it’s like giving a pixie stick to a hyperactive five-year-old. The truly strange thing, however, is to look back on older science fiction programs, and realize that so many of the wonderful toys that are supposed to represent amazing technology from the distant future have since actually become a part of our day-to-day lives.
What fanciful pieces of science-fiction technology are now commonplace in the real world?
Flying cars. Wait, what? Never mind…
<img src="http://cdn.gajitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/paper-gps.jpg">GPS! And unlike yesterday's question, I have one! Right across the office, It's a board 19inches across. It has LCD! More than one even! Nine digits of very accurate time! Also a 36 pin or so D connector and some BNCs.
You could also argue that Arthur C. Clarke had a hand in conceptualizing geostationary satellites used in communications and GPS.
In 1984, William Gibson predicted these here interweb tubes. That's a good one. However, nobody in the twentieth century seems to have predicted the smart phone, as we know it. Even Star Trek had separate communicators and tricorders, and their tricorders couldn't even upload lolcats.
Flying machines of all kinds were at one point strictly in the relm of fiction and now they are so a part of our lives that I hardly notice the fact that I live just under the take off and landing airspace of my local airport.
That said, De Vinci would be very proud of this and I really want to try it.
<img src="http://www.bird-man.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Birthday-Freefly-Weekend-17.jpg" width="500">
Some of the videos with these nutbars are astounding. I've never wanted to try something so badly that I know would cause me a terminal pants-shitting event.
Video phones. I haven't tried forward facing cameras on cell phones, but in 2005 I was able to see my wife and daughter usually once a day from overseas on the Skype. That was pure fantasy years ago, and now it is not only better, but relatively commonplace. Common enough for us to demand a portable phone be capable of it. Following the Star Trek theme here, their portable communicators did not even have video!
<img src="http://cdn.gajitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/retrofuturistic-video-phone.jpg" width=500>
To continue the Star Trek theme, automatic doors and automatic lights.
And if you go back to Jules Vern airplanes.
AND, if you go back to what many consider the first science fiction work, Frankenstein, the creation of the monster isn't that far from what doctors are doing today with organ transplants.
Never mind organ transplants…
<img src="http://fashionindiemedia.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/carrot-top-plastic-surgery.jpeg">
That's a terrifying vision of the future.
I want my hovercraft, dangit!!
Let's not forget earpiece phones. If they were good enough for Uhuru…
<img src="http://roadtickle.com/img/life/things-we-have-now-that-star-trek-invented/uhura029.jpg" width="350/">
I, for one, do not miss washing my clothes in the local
sewage disposalcreek.Fembots:
<img src="https://farm7.staticflickr.com/6068/6136764281_e5d19ebd1a_b.jpg" width="500" border="2" style="border:2px solid black;" alt=" " />
Are these commonplace? Amazon appears to be sold out.
It's one of those things where you have to know the right people…
Too bad you didn't use that picture to describe your Emmas… I would have been happier with life on the whole.
Hah, I wish!
/I'm going to get a kicking for that
… do they know of this place?
I'm going to go into witness protection now, as a precaution.
<img src="http://www.shavingstuff.com/images/PL_72_shave_2.jpg">
MAD Magazine always had silly inventions (and stupid products), mostly thought up by Al Jaffee. After a couple of decades, though, they realized that some of what they'd thought up eventually became real. (They predicted that from the twin bladed razor a triple and quadruple were not far in the future.) There was a whole retrospective article but I haven't got time to look it up.
[youtube lsjU0K8QPhs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsjU0K8QPhs youtube]
Mad Tv called the iPad aswell albeit slightly different in function.