6 Sci-Fi Movie Technologies That Are Common Now

    • Dheeraj.Jangra@timesgroup.com
    • Publish Date: Jul 4 2018 5:45PM
    • |
    • Updated Date: Jul 4 2018 6:22PM
6 Sci-Fi Movie Technologies That Are Common Now

The biggest attraction of any science fiction film —apart from its mind-bending plot — is its depiction of futuristic tech. Of course, the filmmakers take cinematic liberty to give us a glimpse of a future with ludicrously advanced technologies. But as past experience shows, the gadgets that were once labelled as a ‘figment of the imagination’ are now ubiquitous. In fact, in many instances, it’s the reel gadgets that have inspired real-life tech

Tablets

A still from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Apple aficionados swear by Apple gadgets but it might come as a surprise to them that the first Apple iPad released in 2010 may have been inspired way back from the 1968 released ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, the sci-fi masterpiece features a scene aboard Discover One where astronauts are shown eating while watching videos on tablet-like-devices. These devices are rectangular in shape with a huge screen-to-body ratio, flat front and rear surfaces, just like iPads. Even in the ‘Star Trek’ movies and Starfleet series on television, crew members have portable handheld devices called PADDs, which stood for Personal Access Display Device. Both these are examples of the earliest conceptions of tablets. Interestingly, Apple and Samsung untill recently, were locked in a bitter feud over the creative rights to tablet computers. Apple claimed that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets are a rip-off of iPad. Samsung hit back at Apple arguing that prototype of tablets have existed for a long time, reinforcing its argument by mentioning the above mentioned scene from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.

Cell phones

Captain Kirk from Star Trek: The Original Series’

Most smartphone users ought to be grateful to the creativity of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of sci-fi show Star Trek in the 1960s. Why? Martin Cooper, the inventor of the first mobile phone, got the idea of a hand-held communicating device while watching an episode of ‘Star Trek: The Original Series’ where Captain Kirk used his communicator to drum up help for an injured Spock. In 1973, in New York, Cooper made the first public phone call from a prototype of the first hand-held cellular telephone. It left many bemused. Let’s not forget this was the time, as Cooper later said, when there weren’t even cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones. But there were many cons with the original Motorola DynaTAC handset, chief among them was its hefty weight (1 kg) and just 20 minutes of battery backup. It took a full decade before the first commercial cell phone, DynaTAC 8000x, was launched in 1983.

Bluetooth headset

A still from Star Trek: The Original Series

One of the first prototypes of wireless and wearable communicators came from the original ‘Star Trek’ series. The communications officer Lieutenant Uhura is shown wearing an earpiece that, when pressed, against the ear allowed her to communicate with others. In ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ all officers wore a device on their uniform that comes equipped with a “built-in microphone for hands-free calling”.

Virtual Reality

Who wants to live in a world bound by rules and regulations when you can dwell in a “parallel world”, one that gives you an absolute thrill of moulding your life as you wish? The Matrix series is probably the poster child for Virtual Reality (VR) technology. Directed by the Wachowski Brothers, The Matrix (1999) showed a group of heroes, who are plugged into hi-tech chairs donning VR headsets and are cast into simulated reality to fight sentient machines that have enslaved humanity. Today, all major tech giants — Google, Samsung, LG, HTC, Facebook and Microsoft — have VR offerings in their portfolio. Though modern VR technology is more about giving you an immersive experience, rather than transporting you to a new realm, the concept is strikingly similar to what we have seen in earlier sci-fi movies.

Self-driving cars

A still from Total Recall

Driverless cars are a reality now. But 28 years ago the concept of cars driving themselves was implausible to say the least. But Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ‘Total Recall’ (1990) and Will Smith’s ‘I Robot’ (2004) presented us a future where roads are teeming with driverless vehicles. During a scene in ‘Total Recall’, Schwarzenegger’s character Douglas Quaid is being chased by baddies; to escape, he gets inside Johnny Cab, a self-driving vehicle manned by an ornamental robotic driver. In ‘I Robot’, Will Smith sits nonchalantly in an autonomous Audi concept car, which also has an option of manual override control; a steering wheel pops out of the dash on voice command. The US city of California this year will allow fully autonomous cars without safety drivers to test on public roads for the first time.

Video calls

A still from Metropolis

Almost all phones, tablets and laptops come equipped with front-facing cameras. So, it’s natural that there are dozens of video calling apps vying for our attention. But the concept of video chat was first introduced in the 1927 movie ‘Metropolis’. And from there on, it became a permanent fixture in the world of sci-fi, appearing in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1965), ‘Blade Runner’ (1982), ‘Back to The Future II’ (1989) ‘Demolition Man’ (1993) and in many more. It’s important to point out that video communication didn’t really kicked off until Skype’s internet-based service was launched in 2003.


Do you think that sci-fi movies will continue to inspire real-life technologies?  Let's know your views in the comments section below. 


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Comments

Kamakshi Singh SETH ANANDRAM JAIPURIA SCHOOL(VASUN

Definitely, all the researchers are working on it with great enthusiasm but I think this is going to lead some problems in the future and it’s predicted already that technology will take over humanity.

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