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Technology

Science Faction 305

Posted by michael from the arthur-c-clarke dept.
tqft sent in this article about science fiction devices and concepts making it to the real world.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Science Faction More

Science Faction

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  • Shortest Slashdot article ever? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:45AM (#6375617)
    Quite possibly.

  • The Collector: (Score:5, Funny)

    by efishta ( 644037 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:48AM (#6375631)
    Stop right there. I have here the only working phaser ever built. It was fired only once, to keep William Shatner from making another album.

  • Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <joelinux@ g m a i l . c om> on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:48AM (#6375633)
    First of all, that is the SHORTEST slashdot blurb I have ever seen. Secondly, I think that this can be boiled down to very simple phrase: "Life is imitating art".

    Does anyone really think that the early phones would have flipped open had Captain Kirk not done the same thing with his communicator in Star Trek? Just a thought.

    JoeLinux

    "They have us surrounded? Well, that simplifies things. Now we can shoot in ANY direction and hit them! Those bastards won't get away this time!" -- Chesty Puller, USMC

    • Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Nastard ( 124180 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:57AM (#6375660)
      My mom's response to my new phone...

      "Wow, that phone looks like it's from Star Trek. Beam me up, Scotty"

      "You can actually beam up with it."

      "What? How?"

      "Just press star... and then 'trek'"

      "..."

    • Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)

      by EinarH ( 583836 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:00AM (#6375671) Journal
      First of all, that is the SHORTEST slashdot blurb I have ever seen.

      Short one, but not short enough to take the 1st prize.
      The Build Your Own Bar Stool Racer [slashdot.org] story had a shorter topic.

      The fact that I remember this is clearly a sign of way too many hours on this site.

    • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nathanh ( 1214 )
      Does anyone really think that the early phones would have flipped open had Captain Kirk not done the same thing with his communicator in Star Trek?

      Yes, because folding a device in half is an obvious way to make a long device fit into your pocket. Carpenter rulers have been doing it for centuries.

      Just a thought.

      Not a very good one.

  • I have one of these... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jamonterrell ( 517500 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:00AM (#6375670)
    "Imagine a gun that uses fingerprint scanning to prevent you firing a shot,"

    And in breaking news scientists have now developed an amazing device to prevent the firing of a gun via a small lever located on the side of the gun. Prior to firing the gun will automatically scan the lever on it's side to determine if the gun should fire. They've dubbed this lever "safety."
    • It could be used for cops. Like, say, the cop has its gun recognize HIS fingerprints, so if the bad guy manages to get his hands on the policeman's gun, he can't use it anyway. That's one of the use for such a gun.

      • Re:You didn't quite get it. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What a great idea. So now when the cop needs to fire his gun at a critical moment, it won't fire because he inadvertently got jelly on his fingers from the donut he was eating.
      • and really, pretty much the only one....

        and it wont be happening soon....

        a gun needs to be 100% reliable

      • A rant on smart guns. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rjh ( 40933 ) <rjh@sixdemonbag.org> on Sunday July 06, 2003 @02:05AM (#6375898)
        Ask cops sometime what they think of smart gun technologies. Of all the cops I've asked, they all hate the idea. Admittedly, my sample isn't representative; the cops I know are all ones I see at the local shooting range.

        Their opinion comes down to basically guns need to be kept as simple as possible. That's been the major direction firearms technology has been taking for the last 50+ years; not making more complex weapons but simpler and cheaper weapons. A modern Glock handgun is cheaper, more reliable, and (most astonishingly!) has fewer moving parts than a revolver of 50 years ago. A modern SIG-Sauer is cheaper, more reliable, and has fewer moving parts than a 1908 Luger.

        This trend--towards weapons which have fewer moving parts, fewer breakable parts, and are thus cheaper to manufacture and more reliable--has been overwhelmingly welcomed by shooters. It's been so welcomed that I don't know a single shooter who doesn't welcome it, and I've been shooting for 20 years. In fact, the only people I've ever seen advocate adding complexity to weapons are people who neither shoot for sport nor carry a weapon as part of their daily job.

        What happens as soon as you add a fingerprint-recognition system to a firearm?

        Well, first, you've got some kind of optical reader... how well does the optical reader work if you drop your gun in a mud puddle? I've dropped an M1911A1 in a bucket of mud before, pulled it out, given it two shakes to dislodge mud from the barrel, and gone through 21 rounds (three magazines) without a failure. I was spattered with mud and the gun was literally steaming by the end of it, but it fired perfectly--zero failures. Could I repeat that kind of reliability experiment with a fingerprint-reading gun? No? Okay, great. Your new smartgun is now less reliable in the face of hostile environments (like mud, water, etc.) than a pistol first designed in the early 1900s.

        The next thing you need is some kind integrated circuit controller and wires between it and the optical reader. Do you know why there's been such a push towards simpler and simpler firearms designs? Because when you fire a semiautomatic pistol, parts of it are subjected to internal stresses of hundreds of G-forces and tens of thousands of pounds per square inch. It's not uncommon to have bullets loaded to generate 50,000 pounds per square inch. Take hundreds of G-forces and repeated exposure to huge overpressures and you get an environment which is very, very hostile to everything; the fewer moving parts you have, the fewer parts which can break. Can wires and integrated circuits be built which handle these things? Sure. An example would be the Army's Copperhead artillery system, which uses artillery shells with built-in integrated circuits. The question isn't "can we do it", though: the question is "do we want to be totally dependent on the circuit". If a load of Copperheads doesn't work, the artillery crew can just fall back on conventional high-explosive warheads--they're back in action almost immediately. If your smart gun doesn't work, you're best off throwing the gun at the bad guy. Big difference.

        Third thing you need is a battery, because ICs don't run on nothing. Great. So now do you not only have to make sure that your gun is loaded, that a round is chambered, that all safeties are disengaged, you now also have to make sure that your battery hasn't run out? Most cops--the majority of them--shoot very rarely. They don't inspect their guns very often. They go to the range once a year (or however often their department requires that they qualify) and then they forget about the gun the other 364 days. You ever had a power outage and then discovered the batteries in your flashlight are out? Do you really want the same thing happening to your firearm when the bad guy is shooting at you, your life is on the line, and all you want to do is get home safely to your wife and kids?

        ... Also, take a look at how many cops are shot by criminals with their
        • Just a thought -- perhaps, if these "smart guns" become the trend, they could give the shooter the benefit of the doubt. What I mean is, if it isn't able to read the print, then it will let you shoot. It would only prevent you from shooting if it could read the print and was certain that the person firing was NOT the owner.

          Then again, I'm one of the aforementioned people who don't own guns and don't use guns in their daily work. In fact, other than my father's hunting rifles, I've never actually fired a gu
        • Could I repeat that kind of reliability experiment with a fingerprint-reading gun? No? Okay, great. Your new smartgun is now less reliable in the face of hostile environments (like mud, water, etc.) than a pistol first designed in the early 1900s.

          We are talking about police that operate in the urban enviroment, it worries me that police could be so careless with their guns that they might accidently find a puddle of mud and drop it in.

          • And it never rains in the city? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Nf1nk ( 443791 ) <nf1nk.yahoo@com> on Sunday July 06, 2003 @12:56PM (#6377873) Homepage
            Imagine your a cop ona rainy day, walking down a alley complete with dumpsters full of spoiling food.
            some one shoots at you and you dive for cover behind a dumpster. where is your gun? still in your holster that is now in that nasty puddle of mud along with your leg and other equipment.
            another fun place to be is cold where you need to wear gloves for extended periods of time to avoid frostbite, do you force the officer to stop and remove his gloves before he can return fire?
            In my opinion fewer moving parts and simpler design is the way to go
      • The end of the article makes mention of people approaching him to develop the tech they saw in Minority Report. Anybody else smell MS in the mix. Remember their failed attempt at running a battleship with NT technology?
        !!!
        As if cops don't have enough problems . . . just picture a tiny blue screen on a police revolver:

        Cop 1: Crap!
        Cop 2: Whas wrong?
        Cop 1: Blue screen of Deaaaaargh!!!!!
    • The whole point is to save our precious children. Crippling household guns will prevent stupid little kids from taking themselves out of the gene pool, thus further ensuring the demise of our species.

      • Re:I have one of these... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by silas_moeckel ( 234313 ) <silas AT dsminc-corp DOT com> on Sunday July 06, 2003 @02:08AM (#6375906) Homepage
        Cripaling household guns just means yet again to protect yourself you will need to be a criminal. What part of people do not want to be forced to rely on police cant our lawmakers get through there heads. Yea less guns in the civilian population makes law enforement easier. Hrm do I care does arebody realy think we need to make it easier? Things are two easy now cop shows up does a probable cause search and plants an 8 ball your doing 5 to 10. No I'm not saying all cops are bad etc etc etc I'm saying we dont have any good technical assurances they arent. Where are the helment mounted cams with tamper resistant storage? Where are the non lethal rounds for cops to use? I would rather people load rubber rounds than the gun not fire. Hell load up a blank a rubber then go to lethal rounds if the first two dont stop then the rest will. Allways remember it should be the right of a homeowner to defend themselves with lethal force cops should play test dummy with any new technology and field test it before it's ever mandated for the home they get paid to get shot at just like a marine it's part of the job.

  • Since when is sci-fi defined by films? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SubliminalLove ( 646840 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:01AM (#6375674)
    As someone who just put down Asimov's fantastic Caves of Steel to catch up on Slashdot, I have to say that I'm really suprised at an article that talks about the deep and lasting impact science fiction has made in the progress of real technology, and then goes on for two pages about movies. Admittedly, film has captured the public interest far more than literature in this genre, but how can the article fail to even mention sci-fi literature? With the exception of mentioning that several classic sci-fi films were based on Phillip K. Dick's work, the entire body of sci-fi short stories and books, which have had a phenomenal impact in science and everyday life, are completely ignored.

    So three cheers for Heinlein, Asimov, Niven, Pournelle, Robinson, Bear, and the dozens of other great writers who have produced the body of works that I think of when I hear "sci-fi".

    Cheers

    • And the best thing about those writers... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:11AM (#6375711)
      they don't stop at just the technology.

      They explore the cultural effects. And that, to me, is the best kind of science fiction.

      If someone manages to create one of those devices, how will it affect my life?

      Cell phones: Hang up and DRIVE you idiots. But now I can call anyone at any time without having to look for a pay phone. It makes it much easier to do things with your friends and to let them know you'll be late or the plans have changed.

      eMail: Spammers should die and burn in Hell! But now I can stay in touch with people on the other side of the globe.

    • Especially as movies are 30 years behind... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by geekotourist ( 80163 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @03:04AM (#6376036) Journal
      the literature, at least. And the author appears to be entirely unaware of this, because the people she interviewed- the movie experts- also don't know this. Saying that technology is catching up with "the benchmarks set by sci-fi writers and filmmakers" is like saying that a new computer is catching up with "the benchmarks set by PDP-11's and Cray X1's."One is mightily easier to catch up with than the other.

      Comparing authors and the literature with directors and the SF movies...

      Authors

      • Know about the history of SF literature, including what has become stale or cliched.
      • Must be aware of scientific developments of the past 40 years, especially if the author specializes in "Hard SF"
      • Get help or critiques from other writers / scientists: many of the best SF writers are both (i.e. Benford, Vinge)
      • Go to SF conventions where topics include recent discoveries in science, technology and medicine; bleeding edge new writers and concepts; and which new novels or short stories should get recognized via awards like the Hugo.
      Directors and others involved in SF movies...
      • Get away with plots and backstory that were already old 30 years ago in the SF literature
      • Don't seem to want to admit their relationship with / dependancy on the SF literature, so don't read or seek criticism from SF writers. (Anecdotal evidence- they rarely participate in regular SF conventions (instead going to Media Cons) and even more rarely hang out in the audience, listening and learning.)
      • Don't know the state of the art in scientifically consistent (even if not plausible) technobabble. Apparently not aware of the evil overlord's rules [eviloverlord.com] and other long-known lists of cliches to avoid.
      • Don't have any idea about recent SF writers. Nor do their critics, so as in this case the movie/TV show will always be compared to one of "Wells, Verne, Bradbury, Star Trek, Star Wars, Bladerunner (or rarely PKDick) and The Matrix," all nice but they could use some higher standards. Leads to critics calling movies like Harris's Fatherland ("ohhhh, what if Hitler *won* WWII?") original, because they don't know that the SF subfield of alternate history is decades old.
      If the technologists have caught up to the literature, let's all go off to play a game of quantum soccer [netspace.net.au] with the other 10^16 posthumans in the multiverse (to give a nice 4 years old example from a state of the art author. I'd also recommend Dozois' "Year's Best Science Fiction" collections, Stross [antipope.org], McLeod, Vinge and most anything found in the best of the SF magazines [asimovs.com].)
      • Authors .. Must be aware of scientific developments of the past 40 years, especially if the author specializes in "Hard SF"

        Since there are relatively few Big Name authors who make a full-time living writing SF, frequently hard SF writers work in a scientific field.

        Don't seem to want to admit their relationship with / dependancy on the SF literature

        It's sad, but there are really good legal reasons for them to have as little contact with SF literature as possible. If it can be shown that they had any con

    • no doubt (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rhinobird ( 151521 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @03:04AM (#6376037) Homepage
      They didn't mention quantum teleportation...been done on large groups of photons. (Star Trek, And Larry Niven, possibly others)

      didn't mention Moller and his flying car thingie...been test flown. (Heinlien, and others)

      didn't mention those needleless injection thingies...sold by a variety of companies (Star Trek)

      didn't mention clones...rumors of human tests (a running gag in sci-fi)

      didn't mention PDA's...sold by retailers all over (Mentioned as pocket computers...Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle 'The Mote in God's Eye' first published in 1974) Mote also made a couple of other subtle predictions besides everybody walking around with pocket computers, they also predicted that they would be wirelessly connected to nearby large databases...see wi-fi and a primitive internet/web-services kinda thing.

      I can't think of anymore, I'm sure someone will
      • didn't mention those needleless injection thingies...sold by a variety of companies (Star Trek)

        As I recall, NASA already had a needle-less injector, (How do you inject someone in a spacesuit and you can't get to their arm?) and that's where the Trek people got the idea. Of course, taking a recent development and extrapolating future common use is good SF too.

    • You put down Caves of Steel to read Slashdot????

      *WHY*?

      When I was reading the Robot series, I couldn't put it down.

    • So three cheers for Heinlein, Asimov, Niven, Pournelle, Robinson, Bear, and the dozens of other great writers who have produced the body of works that I think of when I hear "sci-fi".

      Don't forget Clarke. The first popular treatment of a space elevator (with a carbon-based cable, no less!) was Arthur C. Clarke's Fountains of Paradise, published in 1978.

      Granted, he got the idea from Y.N. Artsutanov (Komsomalskaya Pravda, 31 July, 1968), but nobody but Russian (er, Soviet) scientists would have read that

  • Imagination = Technology (Score:3, Insightful)

    by negRo_slim ( 636783 ) <mils_orgen@hotmail.com> on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:02AM (#6375681) Homepage
    Imagination created technology. Technology shaped imagination. Imagination shaped technology. Wash rinse repeat. I don't really see many sci-fi ideas not being able to become reality with enough time and interest...

  • Stuff from SF we should have. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:07AM (#6375698) Homepage
    There's a whole list of technologies that are routine in SF, but we don't have a clue how to make work.
    • Better energy sources. There hasn't been a new primary energy source in fifty years. All we have is better oil drilling technology.
    • Spacecraft that are actually useful. What we have now is minor improvements on 1960s technology, with the same miserable fuel to payload ratios and insanely high operating costs.
    • Robots and AI. We do not have a clue how to do this.
    We're not making much progress on any of this, either. 25 years ago, all those goals were thought to be closer than they are now.

    Worse, those aren't fields that good young people go into any more. Who goes into fusion research, or booster design, or even AI?

    • You forgot flying cars! Where's the flying cars? I want my flying car! Popular Science promised me and the Joneses down the road a flying car by 2000, it is already more than two years after that and I still can't buy a flying car! Seems like all there is are regular cars and that damned segway!
      • Where's the flying cars? I want my flying car!

        Well, the flying car [moller.com] may not be as far off as you think.

        Of course, I'll believe it when I see it.

      • Re:Stuff from SF we should have. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:36AM (#6375801) Homepage
        Moller [moller.com] has been trying to build a flying car since 1967, and he's been hyping it as "real soon now" since 1974. His web site makes it sound like it's about to work. But notice that there are no dates on the items. Check archive.org and you'll see that he's been putting out the same hype for the last five years.

        You can buy a 100Kg ultralight helicopter. [rotor.com] That's real.

        Another thing that should be working by now, and isn't, is turbines for small aircraft. Light aircraft are still putt-putting around on reciprocating engines, decades after the big iron switched over.

        • Another thing that should be working by now, and isn't, is turbines for small aircraft. Light aircraft are still putt-putting around on reciprocating engines, decades after the big iron switched over.

          As I recall , scaling from bigger to smaller turbines doesn't work very well as losses from the edges of your fantips are proportionally higher to the total engine output. Seems like a real cow of a problem to solve, too.
        • There are plenty of turboprops around that are small enough for use in light aircraft, but piston engines prevail.

          A turbofan/turbojet on a light aircraft would be a waste at those low speeds.
    • The "new" generation of scientists lauded by everyone to be the future of this country already knows what needs to be done.

      I have been involved in science and radical theories since I was a wee lad (some say I still am :-P), and came to the realization rather early what fields need more good men. AI, Aerospace, Mechanical Eng., Nuclear Physics, Quantum Physics, Partical Physics; all these fields offer such useful and potent technology should more people focus on them.

      The factor keeping innovation out of
    • Who goes into fusion research, or booster design, or even AI?

      Short answer: Nobody.

      Why: Because nobody'll hire kids to go into any of the above.

  • I'm still waiting. (Score:5, Funny)

    by bobdotorg ( 598873 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:15AM (#6375728)
    Where are the flying cars? We were promised flying cars. It's 2003 and WTF? No flying cars.

    On (in?) the other hand, which sci-fi novel predicted USB powered dildos?

    • Re:I'm still waiting. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by phthisic ( 684413 )
      My favorite scene in Minority Report is the one where Cruise is flipping through the images using his hands. Here he is using this totally cool, futuristic, literally hands-on GUI. Then he needs to transfer some data to another console a few feet away -- so he puts it on a disk and walks it over there. Ah, the sneakernet. I've always wondered if this was a stupid oversight -- or was it an ingenious commentary on how humans interact with technology. Excuse me now, I have to go print out some emails for

  • There's lots of this now (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Aurelfell ( 520560 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:16AM (#6375735)
    The MRI concept was inspired by Dr McCoy's diagnostic beds in sickbay. I read an article that NASA was working on an Ion Engine, which makes up two thirds of a TIE fighter. And in my opinion, flip phones look a lit like communicators . . . .

  • 'real' VR devices existed before the holodeck (Score:4, Informative)

    by mah! ( 121197 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:21AM (#6375751) Homepage
    From the article:
    when Star Trek's "holodeck" appeared, it bore no resemblance to anything tangible. These days it is known as the precursor of augmented/virtual reality applications such as virtual surgery or holographic simulation training programs

    hmm...
    In fact, although the holodeck-like CAVE [uic.edu] was introduced in 1992 - 5 years after [startrek.com] ST:NG's debut, VR systems had been around a few years already.

    For example, Lanier's VPL had the first commercial interface gloves (1984). head mounted displays (1987), and networked virtual world system (1989) [wamc.org].

  • Total Recall (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ceswiedler ( 165311 ) * <chris@swiedler.org> on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:28AM (#6375777)
    My favorite thing about that movie when I was thirteen years old was the triple-breasted whore (a sly reference to Eccentrica Gallumbits? [blackened.net]).

    My favorite thing about Total Recall now is the fact that the movie never says whether Arnie is still in a vacation or not. He uses Rekall to acquire a vacation where he's a secret agent who saves Mars. He then wakes up, realizes he IS a secret agent, and then goes to save Mars.

    Perhaps five minutes after the credits roll, he wakes up, and pays Rekall for his most-excellent 'vacation.'
    • What you are "missing" both are possible. The nature of Philp K Dick stories on a whole is to explore the meaning of reality.

      Just look at Do Andriods Dream of Electic Sheep (cut down to Blade Runner) explores the meaning of being human. It is a shame that movie touched so lightly in this subject.

  • prior art? patents? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 73939133 ( 676561 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @01:46AM (#6375837)
    I wonder whether science fiction can count as prior art for patent purposes: a lot of science fiction writers seem to specify their ideas in about as much detail as a lot of patents.

    Conversely, when are science fiction writers going to start taking out patents prior to publishing their writings?
    • Nope. You can't patent a concept.
      • Nope. You can't patent a concept.
        ... unless you have enough lawyers, in which case you can patent anything. Any SF author who tried to patent the idea of pressing a single button to buy a bunch of stuff would have been laughed out of the patent office. A big corporation gets, "Oh yes sir, right away."
      • Where have you been hiding? People patent concepts all the time. No working implementation is required anymore. And a lot of SciFi writing is actually quite a bit more detailed than just a "concept".

  • ...or a standard Slashdot editor misspelling?

    If it's a play on words, someone clue me in. I don't get it.

  • What about OSS? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mpthompson ( 457482 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @02:00AM (#6375881)
    Has the impact of open source software been anticipated in science fiction literature or movies? It seems to me that 10 to 20 years from now the impact of OSS on the technology industry and our culture can potentially be 10 times or more greater than it is today. Particularly as the grip of the media companies is tightened on an unsuspecting public with draconian DRM laws that leak into all facets of our lives through media controlled technology. The chaos of OSS may ultimately become the last refuge of innovation in a tech sector that is otherwise corralled and beaten into submission.
  • I was watching Robocop on DVD with friends for the first time in years the other night - and there was Clarence Boddicker popping what was clearly a DVD disc into a player, so that he could play a final message to his current "hit" from his employer.

    Okay, it wouldn't have been called a DVD back then, but I suddenly remembered how the first time I saw that movie in the late 80s, I thought, "That's what we want, movies on CD discs!".

    And now we have them.

    Watching that scene again, and seeing how offhandedly the disc was used, I realized that in a few years people will probably watch that scene and not even *realize* that back then we had to use infernal video tape, that these movie-on-a-disc things didn't exist, and the whole setup was an attempt to look like "the not too distant future"!

    But I'm guilty of this, too - take the computer screens in featured in 2001. None of them were real - they were all projected onto the surface from projectors mounted inside the desks/consoles/whatever. I never realized that until I saw a "making of" documentary on 2001. Now, I'm not sure if either CRTs weren't used with computers back then, or they were just way too expensive for the film's budget, or what, but I had never even *considered* that they might not be real, live screens until I saw that documentary.
    • You're kidding, right?

      Televisions pre-date 2001 by at least 20 years. Using one with a computer was common by the 1960s.

  • Dick (Score:3, Funny)

    by josh crawley ( 537561 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @02:10AM (#6375913)
    It looks like a lot of the movies presaging future technologies are based on the works of Philip K. Dick. If that isn't a good reason to be mildly schizophrenic, hide out in your bungalow and eat LSD all day, I don't know what is!

  • Minority Report Accuracy? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KrispyKringle ( 672903 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @02:10AM (#6375916)
    "[Minority Report] is highly regarded for its accuracy in projecting what life will be like in 2054 as all objects and gadgets featured in the film have very real foundations in existing technologies."

    Yeah. Existing technologies. Especially the part about the coked-out siblings who see the future through disturbances created by murders in the metaphysical plane. I bet Spielberg really researched that one, too.

    • They didn't say ALL the technologies. Jetpacks, sick-sticks, those personal-mass-transit pods, all doable within about 50 years, and all based on existing or curently-researched tech. I'd say the precogs are more of a plot device than a "tech". If PKD or the filmmakers had really wanted to they could have worked around them and found some more "scientific" way to run Pre-Crime. Statistical analysis of human behaviour? Booooring! Not to mention it'd be unlikely to be believed unquestioningly.
      • Plus, they needed a motive for the murder. I'm totally willing to accept certain things as given for the sake of the plot. I was being a tad facetious, but I really did think that was a particularly silly comment, and I strongly dislike Steven Spielberg.
  • Is the almighty "plot device." The "plot device" is basically any fanciful piece of equipment that is used, altered or modified
    in the service of resolving story points
    that actually require some real
    human problem solving. Many Star Trek
    TV episodes feature this piece of technology.
    Independence Day and countless other blockbuster
    films do, too.
    The Plot Device has a real world counterpart.
    It's embodied in all of our technology,
    and all of our faith in technology to solve
    the problems of Nature's and Man's ma

  • Device from "Weird Science" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pettifogger ( 651170 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @03:24AM (#6376088)
    What we really need is a device that can be hooked to a mid-80s computer that will create really hot women from pictures we cut out of magazines and stuff.
  • Ever since I was small I've kept hearing that they'll be bringing out flying cars soon, you'd hear it every year over and over again but to no avail. The last report I heard was that they were to expensive to make.

    So I'll ask again now as this question has dissapeared from the radar for a few years, are we going to be seeing flying cars soon or what?

  • it's not like this is really news... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Malor ( 3658 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @04:42AM (#6376227) Journal
    SF authors have been doing this *forever*. This article did catch a few good recent ones, but there are some towering accomplishments in early SF, including:

    The waterbed (Heinlein, I believe)

    The microwave oven (Heinlein) (has a one-paragraph joke about how hard cooking and cleanup are.... something along the line of "I pushed the button, you toss the dishes in the disposer." For 1950s-era writing, this was a powerful insight just tossed away as a cute joke.)

    Waldoes (Heinlein: the short story "Waldo", about a brilliant but incredibly weak man who lives in orbit and uses remote manipulators for everything) Even the modern *name* of these manipulators comes from the story.

    Geostationary satellites (Clarke) -- This was an amazing insight for the time -- it's one of those things that's retroactively obvious, but exceedingly difficult to invent.

    Virtual Reality -- I think possibly Clifford Simak had the first written version of something like a Holodeck. The book was "Way Station", published in 1963. Aliens had set up a waypost on Earth, and had hired an Earthling to run it. He got to play with some amazing technology. The virtual reality thing was a room-sized hunting simulator where he fired real shells at projected images on a wall, and they reacted appropriately. It was described as being extremely real and very frightening. This story was also my first exposure to the concept of a frictionless surface, which obviously remains fantasy at this point. I imagine frictionless surfaces were done before this, but this is the earliest example I can remember for something holo-deckish.

    Cell phones -- Dick Tracy, in the 1930s, had a pretty fair approximation. People wanted those wrist radios in the worst way. As it turns out, that form factor isn't too popular, but the fundamental idea has become indispensable for most first-world citizens, and the basic idea came from comics.

    Submarines -- This is a little more of a stretch, but 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea showed just what submarines might someday be. It was published in 1870, which is a little after the first submersible warships were designed, so the concept wasn't quite as groundbreaking as some of these others, but the story is worth a nod when you consider they're STILL doing remakes of it -- 130 years later!

    And, of course, there's the Time Machine, by H.G. Wells, another one that's a perennial favorite for remakes. This is one of my favorites, not because of the time machine (still unproven and most likely impossible), but because of the social commentary. We've had numerous Morlocks versus Eloi threads here on Slashdot, so it's not just me that finds the parallels a bit creepy. It was published in 1898 and is still quite relevant.

    Most modern SF doesn't look very far ahead. It's rare for authors to invent things that are *really* amazing and inventive. Greg Bear's "Blood Music" was probably in this caliber, and Gene Wolfe wrote a disturbing book about a society where people encouraged themselves to become schizophrenic as a method of tapping into more of their brainpower. (I think it may have been called "The Book of the New Sun", but that might be another novel by the same author.) Both were fascinating books... but did they really change anything?

    Perhaps I'm being unfair, too -- I'm picking out the very best of the old stuff and comparing it to the run-of-the-mill schlock today. But, even so, it seems that SF authors back in the 50s and 60s truly changed the world, and the ones nowadays don't do that. They entertain, they challenge, they make us think about things.... but they don't come up with things that change how we live anymore.

    I'd love to be proven wrong on this -- counterexamples welcome. :-)

    • I'd love to be proven wrong on this -- counterexamples welcome. :-)

      Even if they did accurately predict some gizmos, they were incredibly funny with completely false expectations on how people will use them. Take computers and networking - as far as I know, nobody - NOBODY! - guessed that the network will be used to distribute pr0n. What were they thinking? It was so easy to guess. After all, the first pornographical photos were taken on the first Daguerre machines, back in 1860's. First porno movies were
      • Even if they did accurately predict some gizmos, they were incredibly funny with completely false expectations on how people will use them. Take computers and networking - as far as I know, nobody - NOBODY! - guessed that the network will be used to distribute pr0n. What were they thinking? It was so easy to guess.

        Actually, I would guess that any new communications technology will be quickly adapted for pornography. It started with the Gutenberg press and movable type, things have continued that way to

    • Re:it's not like this is really news... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hello,

      Clarke submitted the satellite idea as an academic brief to Wireless World in his capacity as an RAF electronics engineer. A primitive submarine was used in a failed attack on the British fleet in New York Harbor during the American Revolution. The microwave oven came out of an accident that melted a chocolate bar at a Raytheon lab in 1946. DT's wrist radio was just a small walkie talkie, not a precisely channeled cell phone.

      When scifi ideas do beat inventions to the punch, it's usually because i
    • Virtual Reality -- I think possibly Clifford Simak had the first written version of something like a Holodeck.

      I think Clarke gets credit for this one too. The book "The City and the Stars" opens with Alvin & friends playing a total immersion VR adventure game. They're even doing so using distributed networking, since Alvin doesn't even know where some of his friends live. TC&TS was published in 1953.

  • The W3 (brief nod to Imperial Earth) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LouisvilleDebugger ( 414168 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @08:01AM (#6376578) Journal
    Just to mention in passing Arthur C. Clarke's "minisec" (miniature secretary) wireless PDA devices in his 1976 novel "Imperial Earth." One character inherits the minisec of a close but adverserial friend who has died tragically. The character has to face a password prompt, behind which are all his friend's life secrets. If he enters the wrong password, it's very possible that the minisec is set to pre-emptively wipe its memory. "Minisecs" get passing mention in another Clarke story or two, but Imperial Earth is where the concept gets the most schrift.

    (There's a parallel scene in his novel 2010 with nothing more than a scrap of paper flying out of an unsealed airlock and into space: was it a message from long-dead astronauts? The parallel is the fragility of the means of communication.)

    Now the Offtopic part :(

    I remember in late 1993 seeing my first web browser (Mosaic, at a friend's work, EDS in St. Louis), and learning HTML. I was desparate to convince my friends about the importance of this new technology...'You "click" what?' I wondered if the web would ever catch on for real, and desparately wanted it to. It was so cool, but so obscure. I mean, you'd have to have GUI-based computers in every home, and cheap servers outside the domain of academia in order for something like the web to take off, n'est pas?

    A year or so passes and every single billboard and TV ad has a URL plastered on it.

    Of course I was pleased at the success of the web (and to be "in the know" relatively early.) But I was actually, irrationally, a little sad that it was suddenly everywhere and everyone knew about it, if not exactly how it worked. Very technocratic attitude, and I'm a little bit ashamed of it. To put me back in my place, I can recall reading the early HTML 1.1 specification (that defined FORM data) and thinking "This documentation isn't very well written...people are never gonna go for these forms!"

    In the hacker parlance I believe this is called pulling a "vannevar."

    I suppose the relative inanity of most web sites was a factor too. "99% of anything is crap." (Sturgeon's Law...maybe that's the real Science Fiction principle that we should examine for its predictive success.)

  • There Is No Singularity (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Catiline ( 186878 ) <akrumbach@gmail.com> on Sunday July 06, 2003 @08:33AM (#6376668) Homepage Journal
    Will all do respect to Verner Vinge [caltech.edu], I think this article is proof that there is no "technological Singularity" (a point where the pace of change is so rapid it is overwhelming).

    Neanderthals could not envision a written word, although the Egyptians could. But the Egyptians could not envision movable type; eventually Gutenburg did. For Gutenburg, a "computer" refered to a person doing math, and was not a machine. In the '70s as computers began marching into many businesses, people cosidered cloning, quantum computing, nanotechnology, and many other things "sci fi" -- and yet they are developing now, for potential release within our lifetimes.

    The pace of change over the past 100 years makes me unwilling to forecast what would come 50 or 100 years from now. Indeed, to the Neanderthal, Egyptian or even Gutenburg, the pace of our change would be beyond their tech horizon: their world was far more static and unchanging. Yet the changes over the past year -- or over the past 50 years -- have not overwhelming. The so-called "technological singularity" is not an event horizon, a point-of-no-return beyond which all natural law changes, but a traditional horizon, a permanently receeding point beyond which our future predictions become rapidly more hazy. This article helps show that we will always be able to see some distance ahead, be it only a few decades, and the change will not become instantly overwhelming. Indeed, the pace of change is limited by the ability of society to teach new thinkers what is currently the state-of-art level, and whatever technologies we invent to increase the pace of learning will also assist in increasing the pace of acclimation.

  • Two points here.

    First of all, this article isn't so much about accurately predicting the future, so much as creating it. SF has been giving us the vocabulary and conceptual framework for many of our modern inventions. If what we invent is similar but differently implemented than the idea of an SF writer from 40 years ago, it's not that they got it wrong--it's merely that we took the concept in a different direction than they did, when then invented the concept.

    Secondly, this article goes on about movies,

  • There are lots of things that came our way (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PHPhD2B ( 675590 ) on Sunday July 06, 2003 @10:13AM (#6377062)
    One thing is to dream up some sort of fantastic invention or concept, another is being able to actually develop it - it usually takes decades.

    Some of you mentioned Jules Verne - he dreamed up submarines and travelling to the moon. He even predicted weightlessness, albeit for the incorrect reason. (He assumed that somewhere between the moon and the earth the gravitational fields would cancel each other out.) Well, we have both - we have submarines and we've been to the moon.

    Colonies on the moon? We don't have those, but we have had space stations for decades now, such as Skylab, Mir, and now the ISS. We might even be travelling to Mars within a decade or two, and whoever goes there are going to stay on Mars for a few months.

    Johnny Mnemonic / Neuromancer? We're headed that way - researchers are working on connecting computer chips directly to the brain stem to enable completely paralyzed people to robotic arms and computers so they can communicate more easily and manipulate objects.

    Alternative energy sources? Several of you claim that there is no work done on these - that's patently untrue. If you would care to read a trade magazine such as Mechanical Engineering you'll find that solar energy, wind energy, and even fusion power receives more and more funding, and at the very least receives constant attention from the engineering societies.

    Alternative energy sources and reclaiming waste energy such as waste heat and methane from landfills are becoming more and more prevalent, but right now are used mostly in "niche" applications where the average Joe does not see them - so the perception is that we're only using oil for energy.

    And on the topic of Sci-Fi energy sources - Nuclear Power? Isn't that Sci-Fi? Although a nuclear power plant is in principle a very fancy egg boiler.

    The internet? Repositories of information available from any computer anywhere? This was not Sci-Fi? In short, the means of communication that we have available now compared to what we had a few decades ago? PDAs, cell phones with internet access, Wi-Fi ?

    How about GPS? You can be dropped anywhere on the planet and in an instant find out where you actually ARE. With a satellite phone and a laptop you can even pull up maps and find your way to where you're going. As one of the engineers in charge of developing GPS for the military said in an interview, "This generation may be the last one to know what it means to be lost"

    So we don't yet have the holodeck or the matter transference beams, big deal. A lot of what was Sci-Fi a few decades is a reality today, but we fail to appreciate most of it.

  • Oh Good Grief!

    In your July 5th article titled; Science Faction, by Fiona Williams, it was described how science fiction has influenced current day technology. First of all, "Really!? Wow, nobody would have ever realized that!" Duh... What really gets my goat however is that the author (and by association your publication) seems to be completely clueless as to what science fiction IS. The author spent the entire article taking about the effect of 'movies', as if that was what the field of science fiction

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