Science fiction has always been ahead of the technological curve using things well ahead of their time. Here are 5 gadgets predicted in sci-fi that we use now. (Or at least somebody can use.)
1. The Cell Phone
When I first started watching Star Trek, I was about eight years old, and I was watching the original series from way back in the late 60's. Back then, cell phones were certainly not in use, but Star Trek had communicators, the predecessor to the flip-phone. What I find humorous is that when I saw the show, seeing people talking on little flip-open devices wasn't at all strange or fictional. It was my reality, predicted 30 some years earlier.
2. Siri, Google, and Cortana
Who hasn't at least heard of Siri? Well, once again, Star Trek called it. With the phrase "Computer," the crews of the various shows could access a vocal recognition search engine with capabilities similar to (albeit less confusable than) our favorite voice-recognition programs today.
3. Railguns
Not everything sci-fi has come up with has been peaceful. In the video game series Halo, while the focus is on the Master Chief protagonist, the ships of his faction are typically equipped with railguns. A railgun is a projectile firing weapon that uses extremely powerful magnets to accelerate a chunk of metal to incredible speeds. You might be familiar with Call of Duty: Ghosts which featured a railgun weapon as part of an attack on the U.S.. The US Navy has developed a prototype railgun that can fire a fin-stabilized round over 5,000 mph (over Mach 7). While you and I will hopefully never get our hands on one of these bad-boys, it's another tech from sci-fi that's now real.
4. Electric Cars
I'm not talking about hybrids here. No, I mean actual battery powered electric cars. The company, Tesla, has created a series of cars that run off an A/C engine based off one created by the physicist Nikola Tesla, who just may have well been the world's first "mad scientist." You can get your own planet saving car for just $75,000. If you want to read a few more crazy things that Tesla invented, check out the link, and remember, he actually built a lot of the stuff.
5. Robotic Insects
Big Brother's fondest dream has become reality. Advanced technology in the form of robots the size and shape of insects are being worked on and featured at the various conferences where insect and robot enthusiasts meet. I can see the movie title now: Mutant Killer Robot Insects Attack! All joking aside, as early as 2007 at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), technologists had built and designed really small robots capable of flying and holding sensors of various sorts as well.
6. Warp Drive
Okay, I only promised five, so this one's free. Warp drive is an advanced technology that doesn't exist yet, but it's under development . . . by NASA. Evidently NASA is funding research into a modified form of the Alcubierre drive, a faster than light engine utilizing folds in space itself as a loophole in Einstein's theory or relativity, which is essentially how the Star Trek warp drive is "supposed" to work. Who knows? FTL might be possible in our lifetime.
