In 1889 Oscar Wilde famously said ‘Life imitates art more than art imitates life’. Creative people like to paint the canvas of an uncertain future with their imagination. These creative imaginations sometimes inspire real world projects and outcomes. One classic example of this would be the famous animated show The Simpsons which has been notoriously famous at foreshadowing. However there is nothing better than the sci-fi genre at predicting the future. That’s becuase for the most part this genre bets heavy on building stories around imaginative future events and inventions.
It’s been more than a century since the first sci-fi film “A Trip to the Moon” was made by Georges Méliès in the year 1902. Since then we have made countless science fiction books, movies and tv series. So today we’ll look specifically at some of the sci-fi movies that may have inadvertently or even deliberately inspired your favorite gadget or vehicle. The list deliberately leaves out classics like Back to the future since its predictions about wearables are well known. Instead we explore some of the more overlooked predictions. So Let’s find out of how did the sci-fi genere do in predicting modern inventions.
1. Her
Nowadays most human beings can’t fathom living without technology. One of the biggest outcomes of recent advancements in technology is Artificial Intelligence. It seems like AI is here to stay and as human beings will have to learn to coexist with it. However, the movie Her predicted the advent and limits of AI back in 2013 when the real life technology was still in the nascent stages. THe movie took the human-tech relationship to a whole new level. Not only did AI technology like AI generated art which is fairly common nowadays but also predicted human beings having an empathetic relation with AI. WHen the movie first came out more than a decade ago this whoe concept seemed alien to the viewers and thought of as something that may happen in way ahead in the future. However, just in 10 years since the release we are extremely close to the movie become a reality. Well maybe the scale is lesser but the momentum of societal impact of AI is in a similar direction to what the movie portrayed.
2. Until the end of the world
Flat Screen television was shocking in Wim Wenders’s 1991 Until the end of the world but fast forward to today its a ubiquitous reality. What’s crazy is that at the time tbe movie was released HDTV was thought of as science fiction. But it didn’t stay that way for long since inventors definitely liked what they saw and today you can just buy what was once considered fiction with just a click. However the movie had another gem of a prediction which was also essential to the plot. The film shows a technology that sends images directly to the brain which helps the blind to see. While this technology is not entirely a reality but definitely seems plausible now more than ever before thatnks to companies like Neuralink.
- Jetsons
Jetsons is one of the most iconic sci-fi animated series and while it had some outrageous tech like cars folding in briefcases - which probably inspired AKira Toriyama to build capsule corp- , it did manage to get a few things right. For the instance 3d food printing. In the show the jetsons family had a food printing machine that printed real edible food. The machine looks a lot different from the 3d food printers that you see nowadays in the news but the outcome was the same - food. As if this wasn’t amazing in itself Jetsons also got the domestic robot part right. WHile the robots that curently exist are not as intellignt or friendly as Rosie the robot but we are getting there slowly and steadily.
- Sleeper - Autonomous cars
When you hear autonomous cars or driverless cars the first thing that probably comes to your mind is Tesla. However do you know the first time dirverless cars wre ever shown in a movie was in 1973 in Woody Allen’s sci-fi Sleeper. In just five decades this vision has already become a reality. However thankfully the driverless cars nowadays are much more sleeker than and technologically advanced that what Sleeper had, thankfully.
- World on a Wire - Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality as a concept itself is so exciting that it had undoubtedly featured in many sci-fi projects whehter it be in Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi novel Snow Crash or in the animated series Johnny Quest. However, for the first time something close to what we now refer to as virtual reality ever featured in a movie was in 1973 in the movie World on a Wire. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s movie introduces the idea of living in a simulation inside a computer. Seems like 1973 was really a good year for sci-fi movies.
Honourable Mention
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Making a sci-fi movie list that doesn’t include Star Trek just seems sinful and wrong so we decided to include it in the honourable mentions. Just like Back to the future franchise the star trek franchise also got plenty right.
However, the most iconic predictions besides the obvious space travel is the use of Flip phones. Although it’s safe to say flip phones are outdated now, it’s safe to say that were quite popular at one point in time. But not just flip phones but cell phones in their entirety owe their origin story to Star Trek. Martin Cooper who created the first cell phone has famously said that Captain Kirk’s communicator in the movie was his main source of inspiration. To have envisoned and inspired something so iconic that it would become one of the most popular gadgets known to mankind much later in the future is definitely a testament to the creativity of the makers of this legendary franchise.