Which Things Science Fiction Got Wrong About Today's Technology?

Which Things Science Fiction Got Wrong About Today's Technology?

Which Things Science Fiction Got Wrong About Today's Technology?

Science fiction (sci-fi) movies and books make a lot of predictions about the future, but not all of them were right in the 21st century.

The Covid-19 pandemic is still not over in some countries, and there is no magical pill to live an eternal life. 

Here are nine things that were supposed to happen in our modern society based on science fiction predictions, but didn't: 

1. Flying cars - This is a popular one to gripe about, a flying car is not happening yet as automobile companies are still struggling with self-driving cars. It's not that flying cars are technically impossible, but today's technology is still behind to create safe commercial flying cars.

2. The destruction of earth - We still live on earth, but countries need to pay more attention to global warming. 

3. Artificial intelligence takeover - None of the existent robots and machines have risen up to overthrow the human race.

4. Magic pills replacing food - We still eat the same food, nothing has changed except people are more cautious about the planet and what they are eating.

5. Fighting aliens - While some movies do make an effort to be original, most of sci-fi is awfully locked on humanoid aliens, which we haven't met yet. 

6. Living on another planet - We still live on earth despite Elon Musk's best efforts to colonize Mars in the future. 

7. Laser beams - The military is vaporizing large chunks of buildings without the need of a laser beam.

8. Time travel - Traveling in time, especially to the past, is most likely impossible.

9. Teleportation - In reality, we can't pass particles of matter through most materials because they interact too strongly with the atoms inside. 

Sci-fi is supposed to explore all the possible consequences of scientific, social, and technological discoveries, innovations and inventions.

A good sci-fi work, novel, movies or TV series, should come with the most realistic vision for the future, among many possibilities, which is built on a deep knowledge of future science and emerging technologies.

In other words, to be a great sci-fi creator, you must be a visionary or a great researcher or inventor or technologist.

Or, you must be Nikola Tesla to predict smartphones 100 years before:

“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”

Many sci-fi predictions were inaccurate, but some have proven to be correct decades later such as space travel, earbuds, virtual calls, mobile phones, smart homes and military drones.

Share this article

Leave your comments

Post comment as a guest

0
terms and condition.
  • Anne

    Science fiction is a literary (and cinematographic and other) genre. It has NO obligation to predict anything. A book, a movie, a game, a science fiction comic are just speculative exercises. If you want to predict the future, look for a fortune teller.

    The future cannot and should not be predicted. We can make many speculations about it, and a writer is under no obligation to stroke the ego of anyone who wants to know what the world will be like in 2100. As Ursula K. Le Guin said, the writer is a liar, a writer's job is to LIE. If you charge a writer for his "forecast of the future," then you're not taking advantage of all that science fiction can give you.

Share this article

Azamat Abdoullaev

Tech Expert

Azamat Abdoullaev is a leading ontologist and theoretical physicist who introduced a universal world model as a standard ontology/semantics for human beings and computing machines. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics and theoretical physics. 

   
Save
Cookies user prefences
We use cookies to ensure you to get the best experience on our website. If you decline the use of cookies, this website may not function as expected.
Accept all
Decline all
Read more
Analytics
Tools used to analyze the data to measure the effectiveness of a website and to understand how it works.
Google Analytics
Accept
Decline