Great Technology That We Inherited From Science Fiction Movies

Sci-Fi movies are favorites among viewers of all age group. Science Fiction movies play with the element of technology and depict a future world that has more improved technology to facilitate the day-to-day life. When we watch such movies, we get awestruck with the incredible imagination of the director and also with his way of execution. The depiction of a world facilitated with much advanced gadgets is mesmerizing to one and all. It is quite interesting to note that there are many great minds that have used these ideas of Sci-Fi movies as inspiration to come up with real life innovation

Do you know that many gadgets or technology that you are happily using today are inspired from some Sci-Fi movies? You will be amazed to learn that the Rocket, Geostationary Satellite, Submarine, Telephone and many other technological innovations are the by-product of some Sci-Fi movies, and director’s imagination, that later inspired the engineer to come up with real life gadgets. 

Listed below are five such technological innovations that have been inherited from some Sci-Fi movies.

The Mobile Phone

 A television series called Star Trek was first to show the use of a mobile communication device. The inventor of the mobile phone, Martin Cooper (in the picture) had even admitted that he was inspired by watching Captain Kirk of Star Trek speaking into his handheld mobile communicator. In 1973, Cooper was ready with his telephone from which he made a call to his competitors at AT&T's Bell Labs.

Virtual Realities

 These days, we have become very much accustomed to the virtual world of Internet. We all are part of some virtual community and it comes usual to us. Phillip Rosedale of Linden Labs was first to create the online virtual world in his movie “Second Life” in 1999. Rosedale said he was inspired by the novel ‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson. The novel speaks about a "Metaverse" which refers to the space where humans behave as avatars and interact with each other a three-dimensional space. This space mirrors the real world. 

Flat Touchscreen devices 

 

 Today, flat touch-screen devices are in abundance. Almost all of us today own, iPhone, iPad, Android phone or Windows tab. Isn’t these touch screen devices have made our life easy? We all owe a debt of gratitude once again to the TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” This series showed the use of PADD (Personal Access Display Device). This was a kind of flat touch screen device through which, with the touch of a finger, users can remotely access databases, play back audiovisual content, and enter logs. Surprisingly, it’s a reality today. 

The Computer Virus

  Although, we are not happy to have computer viruses around and so not happy about somebody invented it. But as the talk is about technologies inspired from Science Fiction, then computer viruses worth deserve a mention. In 1975, British author John Brunner came up with the idea of “The Shockwave Rider,” which is shown as a self-replicating program that was capable of spreading across a network. After seven years in 1982, two great computer scientists John F. Shoch and John A. Hupp created the first computer worm. Even today, hackers refer to “The Shockwave Rider” as a big influence.

Science Fiction movies with concepts like time travel, use of ‘Time’ as currency in the movie, installation of chip in brain that enables one to communicate with others without use of device are considered as some really interesting ideas. Who knows, what idea of the reel life will get transformed into the real life in future. But while technology is evolving, especially with phenomenon like the Internet of Things, soon we will have new technology and gadgets to deal with. Moreover, there is no denial that Sci-Fi movies serve as a great source of inspiration.