Science fiction can be an influence

It allows people to look directly at important subjects. A platform inspires curiosity through stories that demonstrate what could be created and what could become of society.

Just six short years later, inMartin Cooper made the first public cell phone call from Science fiction can be an influence handheld device. Afterward he acknowledged that Star Trek had inspired him to develop the technology. This is not a unique a story.

Rockets, geostationary satellites, and tablet computers all got their start in the creative minds of science fiction authors. And the creations of these authors, who were inspired by the science fact and fiction that came before them, went on to inspire the next wave of science fiction, creating a feedback loop of inspire, create, repeat.

To help predict where our technology is heading, it is important that we know how each step in the feedback loop works. Being able to understand the process will make us better designers and help us see the many ways we can directly impact the science of tomorrow.

As technology becomes more sophisticated, so does the technological climate. In order to remain fiction, sci-fi must be constantly presenting a more advanced future. The Technological Climate While science fiction can both inspire future technology and explore the effects of those future technologies, it is important to remember that at the end of the day science fiction is storytelling.

For an audience to understand those stories, it needs to be grounded in something that the audience is familiar with.

In the beginning, there was Metropolis

Be it cell phones or cruise control, once the average person understands what a technology can do for them without thinking about how it actually works, that technology has been absorbed into the technological climate.

This collective understanding will always lag behind our current level of technological achievement. Science fiction, on the other hand, needs to stay ahead of our current level of technological achievement. In the end, the sweet spot—where science fiction becomes comprehensible to the largest possible audience and can have the most impact—is in between those two where the science present and the science future blend together.

The sweet spot for science fiction represents the upper limit when designing for the everyday world. Today, it makes sense that a spaceship would need something more advanced. As our relative understanding of technology improved, so did our assumptions about what would make sense in the future.

Had touchscreens been imagined inshowing them would have been more future-reaching, but also would have pushed the audience outside the boundaries of their understanding. The science fiction feedback loop: See full text below 1.

Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing In a scene from the film Le Voyage dans la Lune, explorers traveling from the earth to the moon climb inside a giant bullet and prepare to be shot out of a cannon.

As they wave to the crowd the scene is full of pomp and circumstance complete with a grand marshal, a marching band, and a crowd of spectators who have come to watch. This depiction of space travel in Le Voyage dans la Lune shows us two things: Poster from the movie Le Voyage dans la Lune.

Whatever we can dream can happen. From Props to Prototypes Once science fiction has been put out there, the ideas can begin to be absorbed into the technological climate. The more difficult a given concept is to understand, the less it will be absorbed if it is absorbed at all.

Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing While science fiction relies on the technological climate for guidance, the technological climate relies on science fact for direction.

Like shouting over long distances, there is a delay between the introduction of new technology and its absorption into the technological climate. For science fact to have an impact on the technological climate, the technology needs to have been put into use in a very broad way.

It was only at that point that people began to understand how physical movements could be used to control computers. They all wonder what a world would be like, if… They all spark conversations that wonder and compel us to imagine things otherwise.

From Props to Prototypes Once new ideas and concepts have become reality and they are absorbed into the technological climate, they begin to influence the next wave of collective imagining.

In the technologically advanced society we live in today, new science fact tends to come from an established and well-financed industry. New science fiction, however, can come from anywhere.

The Influence of Science Fiction: How Ideas Can Shape the Future | Text / Context

This collective imagining—basically the new science fiction—provides a springboard into what might happen next. Having influenced science fact and that fact then influencing the next wave of science fiction, we have come full circle.

Each new evolution of the techno-climate causes us to revisit ideas from the past, imagine new futures, and influence technology in ways never conceived before. We are constantly moving through each phase of the sci-fi feedback loop, creating, being influenced by, and imagining new technology.For over a century, science fiction filmmaking has presented us with depictions of our future cities.

Some have been bright, shiny and positive, while others have been dark, dirty and rough. As we. Science fiction can also do all of this and even more; the most important ability science fiction have is the ability to inspire and influence.

This genre promotes interest in scientific learning, and has inspired generations of scientists. Mar 01,  · On Science Fiction How it influences the imaginations of technologists. Science fiction’s influence on technologists’ imaginations can be observed in its successful and unsuccessful Author: Jason Pontin.

Thus we have a basic distinction between fantasy and science fiction and even, though, it is not immediately apparent, between mainstream fiction and science fiction. I would like to suggest, however, that the worldview of science fiction can be narrowed even further.

Science Fiction often deals with the connections between science/technology and society. These books can influence our assumptions and paradigms about the world Q: What book have you loved that explore the connection between society and technology, and how did it influence how yo.

On Science Fiction - MIT Technology Review

Science fiction: Shaping the future. Ed Finn, director of the center, says that science fiction continues to influence science today, leading to fascinating discussions at CSI.

“Science fiction is a kind of laboratory to experiment intellectually with all sorts of ideas.