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10 Sci-Fi Connected Objects that came true

4 pointsby liam_boogarabout 11 years ago

1 comment

dalkeabout 11 years ago
As is often the case, these examples existed in some form before the cited SF sources. In this case the list compiler uses very recent examples, when most of the examples were well known in early SF and in the general culture.<p>Google Glass: Steve Mann in 1980 used wearable computing with a display. He was limited by the technology. Before then, there was Sutherland&#x27;s experiments in augmented reality in 1968, and before then Vannevar Bush&#x27;s &quot;As We May Think&quot; described a head-mounted camera, though in that case just as a camera and not as wearable computing.<p>Driverless cars existed in reality before those SF examples, and of course existed in popular culture long before then. Disney&#x27;s &quot;Magic Highway&quot; from 1958 portrays a driverless car, for example.<p>The smart watch example Dick Tracy actually shows that the list maker uses a very broad definition of science fiction that seems to include anything with futuristic elements. By that definition, nearly every James Bond series is also science fiction.<p>&quot;Stress detectors&quot; have been around for many decades. Here&#x27;s a 1982 criticism of stress detector products from the 1970s &quot;marketed for law enforcement and forensic science purposes.&quot; <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7047675?dopt=Abstract" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;7047675?dopt=Abstract</a> .<p>&quot;Connected sex toys&quot; is known by many terms. The one I use is &quot;teledildonics&quot; from Ted Nelson in 1975. That&#x27;s several decades before the referenced Matrix Reloaded.<p>&quot;pretty similar to Ipads. Weirdly enough, they were called… PADDs&quot;. That &#x27;coincidence&#x27; is almost certainly because the idea is at least as old as the ubiquitous computing project at Xerox PARC. Mark Weiser&#x27;s Scientific American article in 1991 talked about &quot;tabs, pads, and boards&quot;, where &quot;pads&quot; are about the same size as an iPad or PADD.<p>In the replicator description, the author is reaching for anything in modern life like a replicator. Unfortunately, the example is 3D printers. The term &#x27;stereolithography&#x27; dates back to 1986, which is a year before TNG. It&#x27;s hard to say that it &quot;came true&quot;, when it was already true when ST:NG used the term.