There was a viral social media post going around a few years ago that showed ‘experts’ predicting we’d have flying cars in the next 10 years again and again, all the way back to the start of the 20th Century. When it comes to technology, media and entertainment have a habit of being overly optimistic about progress, but how accurately have the modern tech comforts we have today been predicted?
Smartphones
Virtually every sci-fi franchise for the last 50 years has featured a few core communication options: portable devices, video calling, and holograms. These devices were always portrayed as both far off into our future but also as fairly simple devices only capable of talking. Even in high-tech worlds like that of Bladerunner, video calls still only happen in phone booths.
In reality, we’re already far beyond this level just with our smartphones. Our devices go beyond spartan function and into the world of entertainment for things like videos, TV shows, and online casinos. No futuristic setting could have predicted that we’d be plugging in VR headsets to play live casino at Betfair and other sites with titles like Gonzo’s Quest. All we need now is holographic slots and we’ll be hundreds of years ahead of schedule on this one.
Space Travel
The moon landing in 1969 created a flurry of excitement around space travel that has never been equaled before or after. The media went wild around it and dreams of colonies on Mars and distant galaxies captured the imagination. Predictions varied wildly, with one of the first major movies to tackle this theme being 2001: A Space Odyssey by the legendary Stanley Kubrick.
To be clear, there are a number of incredible predictions by Kubrick on the topic of space, but his timelines were a little off. His world of 2001 already contains lunar outposts, a project that has so far failed to materialize or even come close to being completed as of the 2020s in reality. With most space travel missions now in commercial hands, all predictions are up in the air on this front.
AI
Put simply, sci-fi movies always agreed on one specific topic: artificial intelligence is inherently dangerous. HAL was the primary villain in the previously mentioned 2001, and no one could forget the SkyNet system in the Terminator franchise that effectively wiped out all of humanity a short hop into the future. Wherever it appeared, it went wrong and in a very bad way.
At the time of writing, we are on the very cusp of creating our own AI systems. Some leading experts from OpenAI, Google, and others are warning us of the inherent dangers of the systems they themselves are making. It’s a rare instance in which reality may end up imitating art, and industry leaders are desperately pushing to get safeguards in place.
Only time will tell if our own science-fiction movies of today are set to come true, and there will inevitably be some things that even our most creative minds haven’t managed to conjure up yet!
