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.

By Request

Going to try something for my second post. I was asked to post a couple of Comp papers I wrote. Seems a couple of Professors think I have writing talent. I'll post in portions so it doesn't become too difficult (or too long) to read. Kind of appropriate for the subject seeing as much of my favorite Sci-Fi was published in 'serial' form.

Ray Bardin

A. Davis and D. McWhorter

GE117, Composition 1

7 Aug 2011

 

The Impact of Science Fiction on Modern Technology

"            For many years, Science Fiction writers have been considered to be dreamers and ‘hacks.’ However, many of our modern concepts and modern tools of technology came from these dreams. Many of our ideas behind robotics and robots, in general, came from writers like Isaac Asimov, who presented legal, philosophical, and human rights (well, robot rights) questions in his book of short stories, ‘I, Robot’. Medical science has also benefited from Science Fiction; lasers, robotic prosthesis, and other useful instruments have come from the dreams of these writers. Advances in design and deployment of telecommunication and computing devices, and even our modern concepts of Cyberspace and the Internet, owe much to Science Fiction. Many, if not all, self-proclaimed geeks (and nerds) have been exposed for years to Science Fiction in books, movies, and on television. The fantasies presented in these works have been a catalyst for conceptual designs that have become realities in the last decade. Science Fiction writers have had a major, positive impact in various fields including robotics, medicine and telecommunication devices.

            In the 1920’s, a Czech playwright named Karel Kapek coined the word ‘robot’ from the Czech word for ‘slave’. While Kapek’s robots were genetically engineered humans, the term became more closely associated with automatons, or mechanical men. Since then, people have used a variety of words to describe robots: Android for human-like robots, Cyborg for a combination of human and robotic parts, and Robot for the worker-bees of mechanical society. Writers like Isaac Asimov and his book, ‘I Robot’, and various movies and television shows like “Terminator” and “Star Trek” affect our perception of robots. Very few people born before 1980 in the Americas have not heard of Commander Data from televisions “Star Trek: Next Generation”. Data, as an android construction with a ‘positronic brain’, symbolizes what most people think of as a ‘robot’, essentially a humanoid with gears and metal inside a plastic skin. In their basic form, robots are no more complex than some simple machines. Most take their instruction, not from a special ‘brain’, but from a computer program connected from outside the body. "   

  So that's enough for a teaser. Tune in next time for more. As always, comments and insights are welcome.