Growing up in the 90s consuming a lot of sci-fi media, it feels rather strange that some of the tech described on sci-fi has become a reality. Things like smartphones, wireless headphones, video telephony, are some of the technologies that sci-fi predicted for example.
While smartphones, and tablets, don't really work as they were envision, are now devices that are commonplace. For example, tablets were envision as capable to do one thing while the tablets we got can be used for multiple things. The same goes for smartphones, so much so that they have replaced digital cameras, telephones, and media players.
Also computers have become smaller, rather than larger as some people believed when the first computers came to be. It was predicted that people would have computer terminal that would only be capable of sending the inputs to a central computer to be processed and displaying the results. Computers ended becoming smaller, and capable to process much more information faster than expected.
Though, to be honest, we have more of hybrid model. While our computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, are capable of impressive levels of computing powers locally, we supplement that with the Internet.
Yet the Internet not only supplements the computing power of our personal devices, it allows to access information remotely and to communicating with others at the same time. As such, the predictions weren't completely wrong, just missed how computers would be developed over time.
It can be said that sci-fi has inspired people to create our modern societies, and in a way our current tech inspire people to predict how future tech will look like through sci-fi. It is also a warning how badly managed tech can be our downfall, while inspiring people to create the tech that makes our lives better. It shows that there is hope, but only if we use and create new tech responsibly.
While sci-fi can only guess what tech will be, and how it shape our future, it still important because it allows to explore not how our future will be, but how tech is impacting our world now. Sci-fi is much more than entertainment, predicting the future of tech and its impact on people.
It is about our hopes and fears, it is about how tech can make our change our lives for better or for worse. Some will take it, and make tech that greatly improves an aspect of human life, others will do the opposite. Hope for a better future is not lost, but we have been warned that tech is not what will dictate our future. What will dictate our future, is how create and use tech.
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