Leonardo Da Vinci predicted helicopters and tanks.
What's the line between predicting and inventing?
Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
11–20 of 61 posts
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#12Leonardo Da Vinci predicted helicopters and tanks. What's the line between predicting and inventing?
Inventing is building a working device.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#13Star Trek predicted automatic sliding doors and flat screen TVs
I hope some day we invent Tricorder as well!
I wish. Our smartphones would be halfway there if manufacturers could be bothered to include a few more sensors.
Alas, I don't see tricorders happening soon, because they're "action movie" tools. That is, looking from economical and social POV, almost every use case for a tricorder would be better handled by a team of specialists with heavy equipment, and not in a hurry. Real life is boring this way, and technology in the real world isn't about empowering indivduals - at least not in any way that conflicts with the mundane.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#14In the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Captain Kirk accesses classified information in the ship's computer through a retina scan. This was well before the word 'biometrics' became a more familiar term. The filmmakers had the tricky task of how to represent a retina scan in a highly visual way. So what we see is a flythrough inside Kirk's eye until the retina is reached and verified.
Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG) is a pocket electronic book that contains all the accumulated knowledge about the universe. In the BBC TV series broadcast in 1981, the HHGTTG was represented by a 'computer graphics' aesthetic which was entirely hand animated. The animations still hold up brilliantly (and are better than the animations in the 2005 film).
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#15Mind uploading predictions are fascinating (Edmond Hamilton, 1936; Isaac Asimov, 1956, 1957; Arthur C. Clarke, 1956; Bertil Mårtensson, 1968). Also predictions about automating boring and mundane human tasks: Waldemar Kaempffert, 1950: "When Jane Dobson cleans house she simply turns the hose on everything... After the water has run down a drain in the middle of the floor (later concealed by a rug of synthetic fiber)…
About Asimov's predictions: those (incl. listed above) either haven't yet materialized, or are rather funny from today's perspective (Robotics, AI and "psychohistory" as described in the Foundation series). He's been rather poor futurologist IMO, contrary to the level of his popularity.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#16The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson, 1995) had many eerily prescient visions but I've always liked some of the more subtle ones: the "Neo-Victorians" who put extra value on handmade goods in a world where anything can be printed foreshadowed Etsy and the modern "artisanal" everything, the use of pictogram based language foreshadowed rising use of emojis, the Primer as a source of education accessible to anyone foreshadowed Khan Academy (and maybe YouTube's how-to-anything more generally).
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#17Star Trek predicted automatic sliding doors and flat screen TVs
I hope some day we invent Tricorder as well!
There was a $10m XPRIZE for a Tricorder[1] and they awarded a $2.6m prize to Final Frontier Medical Devices in 2017 [2]. We're getting closer.
[1] https://tricorder.xprize.org/prizes/tricorder [2] https://tricorder.xprize.org/prizes/tricorder/articles/famil...
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#18The thing about Lem is that he was reading a lot (I mean, a lot) of scientific journals and later scientific papers (in an interview with him he mentions Soviet "Priroda", "Scientific American", some French and German journals of this type), plus books of Dawkins/Hawking/Penrose
/Shklovsky/Soviet scientists etc., and all of that in 60's-70's-80's
Therefore his predictions are not that much original research/predictions, but rather a good compilation and clever choice of ideas which had appeared earlier in various sci papers. I suspect his quite striking description of "Kindle reader" from 60s was based on some previously read paper/article. Still, it's a very very good prediction as for 60's.
To add to his "predictions": Golem XIV is a philosophical desciption of technological singularity (from 80's), and his Summa Technologiae (from 60's) tackles a ton of then veeery novel stuff, like Machine Learning (a precise description even for today's standards), SETI research, VR, AI, and all of that in a "scientific" way, i.e. concreete and directly based on then published papers, and not simply made as an effect of extrapolation of then current trends (sort-a what Asimov liked doing)
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#19Robert Heinlein, 'Between Planets' 'A few hundred yards further on Lazy shied again, not from a snake this time but from an unexpected noise. Don pulled him in and spoke severely. "You bird-brained butterball! When are you going to learn not to jump when the telephone rings?" Lazy twitched his shoulder muscles and snorted. Don reached for the pommel, removed the phone, and answered.' Nothing unusual there - except th…
_Space Cadet_, 1948, references pocket phones as well, with this funny bit about avoiding them -
Tex Jarman looked at him understandingly. "Your folks always worry, don't they? I fooled mine -- packed my phone in my bag."
My favorite phone technology miss was their total absence from Gibson's _Neuromancer_, something that he's a little chagrined about, and tired of hearing about, too . . .
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#20Clarke's "The City and the Stars"
Technologically enabled immortality (in an interesting manner).
Massive, crystalline data storage.
Immersive gaming, including the negative, subsuming aspects of same.
The individual as radical.
The radical as an essential component of long-term planning and viability.