It sometimes gets to be a little
frightening when one thinks how humanity has developed in terms of technology
over the past hundred years, especially within the last twenty. Videocassettes
swarmed in and gave way to the rise of DVD’s, which in turn fell to Blu-Ray
Discs. Eight-tracks and records made room for audiocassettes and CD’s, rapidly
dissolving into the smaller and more popular iPod. Video game cartridges went
from being as large as a hand to the size of a thumbnail with the visual
capability of some of the most expensive movies ever produced. People, now free from the restrictive hassle
of cords, can communicate with someone in another continent, face-to-face, if
they so choose. War can now be won
before a single soldier is even deployed to the battlefield, with self-piloting
tools that can assess and deal with any threat that the government deems
necessary, and weapons that can end entire civilizations, delivered at
supersonic speeds. Almost as if to contradict this, life now can be created and
extended, and, perhaps the most impressive development of all, death can be
slowed down, even prevented.
It wasn’t long ago that these
technological breakthroughs that we take for granted were nothing more than the
products of some of the most creative men and women imaginable. Putting it
simply, we owe all the things we use today because of the worlds of tomorrow
that science fiction presented us with over the years. For instance, 1927’s Metropolis, 1968’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey, and the first season of Pokemon,
which premiered in the US in 1998 and Japan in 1997, featured a crude, bulky
form of video communication in which you would pick up a telephone, dial a
number on a keyboard, and look at a person directly through a camera as you
talked into the phone. At the dawn of the new millennium and the New Tens
(that’s the 2010’s, the current decade we are in), we have Skype and other
webcam-based communication services built into almost every portable computer
that operates very similar to the videophone, minus the bulky telephone. Another form of communication, one whose
history is more well known to the public.
When coming up with the vision for an idealistic future that was
groundbreaking in more ways in one, that pushed the limits of what could be
done or shown on the airwaves, creator Gene Roddenberry decided that there had
to be some changes made to the genre that had become so dull and trite. First
off, he removed the restrictions of a bulky video phone that could be used only
in a specific location by building a tiny, rectangular device that could fit in
a pocket, something similar to a walkie-talkie but minus the antenna, which
could be used to talk to people galaxies away as though they were sitting next
to each other. He called this tool a “communicator”, and, just like the
real-world tech it would inspire, it would continuously evolve and take on new
forms with each generation of Star Trek.
The real-world tech that I am referring to is none other than the cell phone, a
staple appliance in our everyday life. In 1978, Motorola’s John F. Mitchell
helped introduce America, and then the world, to the very first portable cell
phone, a massive piece of communications tech that looked exactly like the
average house phone. Over the next 30 years, the bulky and awkward gadget
continued to shrink until it became something that could easily fit in the palm
of your hand, and, much like Star Trek’s
communicator, it had a protective cover that could be flipped open or closed.
Sometimes, the most wondrous toys
of our time come from our nightmares, or just because a director wants to make
a brief joke. For instance, in the classic sci-fi comedy Back To The Future, Part II, young Californian teenager Marty McFly
has just returned from his adventures in 1955, when all of a sudden, a
brilliant burst of light flares in the distance, the roar of a dying engine is
heard, and the eccentric Doctor “Doc” Emmett Brown rushes towards Marty,
panic-stricken, telling him that he has to travel thirty years into the future
(2015 from the film’s initial setting of 1985, and just three years away from
when I am writing this article) to prevent Marty’s future son from making a
horrible mistake that will ruin the McFly family forever. When the two land in
Hill Valley of 2015, but more precisely, in an alleyway of Hill Valley 2015, Doc gives Marty the lowdown on where
his son is supposed to be. Marty, brought up to speed, walks out of the alley,
and takes in all of the awe-inspiring sights of his hometown, now redesigned
beyond recognition. One of the first things that Marty is shocked by is a crude
holographic great white shark that grows to gargantuan proportions until it
clamps its teeth over Marty, who dismisses it with the quip of “Shark still
looks fake”. The holographic great white, as it turns out, was nothing more
than an advertisement for Jaws 19, a
megablockbuster 3D movie. At the time that the Back To The Future trilogy was released, the interest for 3D movies
had considerably died down, regulated strictly for the new IMAX theaters (which
itself mostly saw use at museums, zoos, or aquariums), or novelty attractions
for the oncoming decade. It wasn’t until 2008 and 2009, which saw the releases
of the mega-successful Coraline and Avatar, that a massive resurgence in 3D
movies would be possible. And now, in the New Tens, (the decade encompassing
2010-on), we have major 3D movies like The
Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Dark Knight Saga, Transformers, as well as several re-releases of classic movies in
3D. Yet another bit of technological inspiration comes from Back To The Future, Part II. After Marty
is successful in preventing his family’s downfall, he is indirectly inspired to
use the DeLorean to make himself richer after finding out that the Chicago Cubs
win the world series of baseball against the Miami Marlins (which is yet
another thing that was correctly predicted- in 2012, the Florida Marlins
changed their name to Miami at the start of the new season). Remembering the
almanac of sports statistics from 1955 to 2000 he saw in an antiques shop,
Marty goes back to purchase the book. While making the final transaction, the
cashier makes a comment that the almanac was published back “when books were
still made using paper”, hinting that, in 2015, all print media would now be made electronically. Starting in
2007, E-book, or electronic book, technology, such as the Nook and Kindle, has made it easier to search for
and store thousands of thousands of books without so much as a single tree.
The military seems to have taken a
page from science fiction as well. In 1988, James Cameron introduced us to a
terrifying vision of the future in which all manner of machinery, including
convincingly human cyborgs built by the military, rebel against their creators
and bring human civilization to a standstill in pure Asimovian fashion. In
2003, the robotics company Cybernet finally loses control over all its
cybernetic weaponry as the first stage of the judgment day John and Sarah
fought so hard twice to prevent begins. One of the new machines featured in the
film is an aerial combat vehicle the size of an army jeep and the shape of a
helicopter, a self-piloting craft with multiple rotating blades , gun turrets,
and missile launchers that can sneak into an enemy base and leave a trail of
carnage before anyone knew it was there. ironically, at the time the original
film was being made, the military came up with a similarly-built weapon called
the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Not as bulky as Terminator’s HK, or as heavily equipped, the UAV, or drone, carried
the same functions: without alerting the enemy to your presence, perform
reconnaissance, assess the threat level, and if need be, eliminate the threat
before it can eliminate you.
It
seems that there is a cycle between technology and science fiction. As
Hollywood comes out with more and more mind-bending predictions of where
humanity is heading, engineers and technicians become inspired to make the
dream a tangible reality. Who knows what new gadget will come from the world of
science fiction next? Only time will tell.
