By Request, Serial Post Part 3

This is the final installment of the Impact of Science Fiction paper. Work Cited can be accessed on Page 2, if necessary. Hope you enjoyed it.

          Robotics and medical advances are not the only impacts Science Fiction has had on technology. The design and function of many of our modern telecommunication and computing devices have come from authors and set designers from Science Fiction television and movies. Even our modern concept of what the Internet and Cyberspace should be has evolved form Science Fiction. Books like ‘Neuromancer’ by William Gibson describe Cyberspace as a physical reality and users have jumped right in. Modern communications has benefited from Science Fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke, who envisioned broadcasts via orbiting satellites and wireless communication devices. Even some of our most common physical designs have come from Science Fiction. Hand-held flip-phones, similar to the communicators carried by the crew of The Enterprise on television’s “Star Trek”, have become so commonplace that we barely notice the similarity anymore. Perhaps Tom Chivers said it best, “Arthur C Clarke claimed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic – but it turns out that we have started taking magic for granted pretty quickly” (Chivers). Other designs have found their way into modern society as well. The flat panel controls, haptic and auditory response systems, and the ideas behind motion-controlled computers came from the designers and technical support for shows like “Star Trek; Next Generation” and “The Minority Report.” The set designers for “Next Generation” even told an actor “Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s software- defined. The person sitting in that console last week pushed this button to fire the phaser, but when you sit there, you customize it to your profile, and that button fires the phaser” (Flatow). This incident brought about a discussion and conceptual design similar to our common smart phone design. John Underkoffler, a technical advisor on the set of “Minority Report” and co-owner of Oblong Industries, has taken conceptual designs into the real world. With others, his company is designing and building motion-controlled computer screens. While he admits the idea and some of the technology was around before the movie, he allows that the movie version is spurring the design of control gloves for use instead of a wand or clickable mouse. In an NPR interview with Ira Flatow, Mr. Underkoffler says “For us, that same technique, that same sort of body-centered interaction technique [as shown in the movie] is the key to the future of human-machine interface, the key to being able to interact with and manipulate vast amounts of data, whatever the task may be” (Flatow).

            As society progresses and Science Fiction draws closer to Science Fact, the future may see more and more benefits from Science Fiction writers. There is always room for improvement in medical science, telecommunications, and robotics. The writers of the past dreamed our world first, technology just tries to catch up to their dreams. Thirty years ago, some of our modern technology was thought to be just that: dreams. Only a writer could have seen bionics in use as prosthetic devices. Only a dreamer could have seen humanoid robots walking and talking, even caring for the elderly. Certainly, no one at the time saw what our idea of Cyberspace and the Internet has become. We can say, without a doubt, that Science Fiction writers have had a major, positive impact on modern technology and our society.