Science Fiction Inspires the Future of Science | National Geographic
The wonders of the future, the marvels of the presence. Science fiction and science innovation have been intertwined since sci-fi's origins. From video chat to self-driving cars to space flight, there's the science fiction and the science reality. Sci-fi popped up in the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution when feats of engineering were being achieved and widely used at lightning speed. All these are part of a modern age of machines powered by electricity. By taking existing technology a few steps beyond reality, science fiction has predicted and inspired real science innovation.
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How did Frankenstein inspire the pacemaker? Let's go back to the late 1700s when electricity was a subject of fascination and scientists were testing its effects on human bodies. Luigi Galvani discovered in the 1780s that electric current caused a dead frog's leg to twitch. In 1803, Galvani's nephew Giovanni Aldini conducted experiments on the corpses of criminals, in which a jolt of electricity to the head seemed to cause the body to reanimate.
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Mary Shelley heard about these experiments through her circle of writer and scientist friends, influencing her novel Frankenstein about a scientist obsessed with the secret of life. Dr. Victor Frankenstein assembles body parts and uses a jolt of electricity to bring them to life, creating a monster. Frankenstein, published in 1818, has been considered both gothic horror and early science fiction. The movie version starring Boris Karloff premiered in 1931 and it inspired a young Earl Bakken to work with both electricity and medicine.
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In 1957, Bakken developed the first wearable battery-powered cardiac pacemaker, a device that uses electric pulses to correct abnormal heartbeats. If this sci-fi monster can lead to a life-saving medical device, what else has sci-fi inspired? Here's how another sci-fi story helped pave the way for the moon landing. In French sci-fi pioneer Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, members of a gun club launched themselves in a projectile from a cannon to the moon. Because why not?
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Verne attempted to do the actual math and work out what it would take to launch a vehicle to the moon. As it turned out, he was surprisingly accurate with striking similarities to NASA's Apollo 11 command module. Verne's fictional shell was hollow and made mostly of aluminum and was crewed by three people. It launched from Florida and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, like the Apollo 11 command module would just over 100 years later in July 1969.
After Verne's novel came H.G. Wells, who wrote The First Men in the Moon at the turn of the century, and French filmmaker Georges Méliès, whose 1902 silent film A Trip to the Moon is often called the first sci-fi film. These stories inspired real-life rocket scientists to continue working on the problems of space travel. By the 1950s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were in a space race. The Soviet Union launched the first Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, which flashed its radio signals from space. Three months after Sputnik, the U.S. launched Explorer 1, the first American space satellite.
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Off into space! Man, that takes real teamwork. And here's a team of junior spacemen with an out-of-this-world breakfast. With the development of space flight, public interest in space science reached new heights by the 1960s, inspiring future engineers and sci-fi creators alike.
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And space appeared everywhere in pop culture: in fashion, fashions for the 21st century, home design, toys. I'm going to the moon tonight! We got our Buster Brown risk, even in our cereal bowls. New post count off a new way to help keep you in shape for the space age. Vern's sci-fi mission inspired science to reach for the moon. Back on Earth, sci-fi turned the telephone into a radical new way to connect. As communication devices have dramatically changed, sci-fi has been a step ahead, imagining new devices and their effects on society, for better and for worse.
"Hey, quit stalling! Get back to work!" Mobile phones and tablets appeared in sci-fi years before we had them in real life. But what we've wanted all along is face-to-face contact.
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Through a device: telephone, TV, with callers able to see as well as hear.
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At least since the invention of the telephone, illustrators and authors envisioned combining pictures with sound, like French author and illustrator George Dumarier's telephonoscope, which looks like a combination video phone and flat-screen TV. The video phone appeared in the first episode of The Jetsons in 1962 when Jane Jetson had a chat with her mother. Various versions of video chatting appeared in sci-fi TV and movies during the 20th century. Yes, what is it? Meanwhile, AT&T's Bell Labs was developing a real-life picture phone.
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In April 1964, the picture phone debuted for public demonstration at the World's Fair in New York. Two months later, service began with booths in Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C.
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First Lady of the U.S. Lady Bird Johnson made an early picture phone call to Dr. Elizabeth Wood of Bell Labs. “May I congratulate you and all who have helped make this great scientific stride possible?” The system was impractical for home use, involving expensive equipment and a hefty fee per minute. “I'm sure that there'll be many youngsters off to college and many mothers and fathers back at home that will find this a great joy.”
Video chatting remained elusive for three more decades until we had the internet, computers with cameras, and the software to make it work. "I bet your next best customers are grandmothers!"
Skype software was introduced in 2003 and Apple's FaceTime followed in 2010. We finally achieved the dream of the video phone. "Now call your grandma! She'd love to see you." Sci-fi cartoons didn't just predict new devices; they've even influenced modern housekeeping. Sci-fi has long imagined a future with robots but has often portrayed them as one-dimensional: fully good or fully evil.
Early sci-fi robots sometimes tried to destroy humanity but often they were helpful assistants, doing menial chores for humans. "Carpet's a bit dirty? Leave it to Robert! He's the perfect household help!" All right, like Rosie, the Jetsons family's housekeeper, who cooked, cleaned, and helped the kids with homework.
Most homes today don't yet have robot butlers, but in 2002, robotics company iRobot introduced the Roomba, a robotic vacuum that could automatically clean floors. Colin Engel, co-founder of iRobot, cites Rosie the Robot as an inspiration for the Roomba. Thanks, Rosie! Robots that move more like animals or humans have long been in development. Some even exceed human abilities, like that Boston Dynamics robots can open doors, carry heavy objects, and do parkour.
Sci-fi has also imagined artificial intelligence inside machines that can think and problem-solve at a human-like level.
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One of the first complex sci-fi portrayals of AI is in 2001: A Space Odyssey, co-written by Arthur C. Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick. Marvin Minsky, an early AI researcher at MIT, advised Kubrick on the direction of AI. Computer HAL 9000 could speak, "Good afternoon, Mr. Amer. Play chess. Bishop takes knight's pawn." And make plans, "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." Deadly plans? "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that today."
Many of us have AI in our homes in the form of assistants: Alexa and Siri, which are friendly, we hope. But as helpful as AI might become, it stops short of processing human idiosyncrasies and emotion. "Sorry, I didn't quite get that." An issue illustrated in sci-fi by Star Trek's android Data.
"You told a joke?" "Yes." "I am not laughing." "Yes, perhaps the joke was not funny." "No, the joke was funny. It's you, Data." Rosie led to the Roomba and now we've got Alexa. But where are the cars sci-fi promised us?
Sci-fi has long imagined that flying cars would zip around unencumbered by traffic. "Where we're going, we don't need roads." In Star Wars, Blade Runner, and The Fifth Element, flying cars just seem right, coming out of the garage. It's an automobile on its way to a hangar to become an airplane.
While flying cars once seemed inevitable, they haven't quite caught on yet, even though inventors have been trying for decades. Now companies like Uber are developing airborne ride-sharing, but the infrastructure and regulations don't yet exist to support it.
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Sci-fi also predicted self-driving cars but didn't quite explain how it worked. "Self-driven. Self-drive engaged. May I suggest you put the car in the auto cruise mode for safety's sake?" "No, you may not."
The self-driving car may soon be a common reality. Google, Tesla, Ford, Uber, and others have been developing self-driving cars for years. Cities including Paris and Beijing are testing self-driving cars on the road, and Waymo has released a fleet of truly driverless taxis in Phoenix, Arizona. The cars use sensors and complex algorithms to navigate and avoid collisions. Problems have cropped up with some test projects, including crashes, a pedestrian death, and even violence towards the cars, which could be typical road rage or the quirks of interacting with AI.
"I'm Johnny Cat! Where can I take you tonight?"
Which sci-fi also predicted. Science fiction creators have not only envisioned new technologies but have prototyped the worlds in which they exist, able to go where science has not yet gone.
"The true value of science fiction to me threatens in the fact that it permits speculation and makes it respectable. Such speculation is important today more than ever before, tomorrow more than today. The science fiction writer can leap across chasms where no evidence has yet filled in matters."
As sci-fi's imaginings become reality, they will again inspire real-world innovations, which will inspire new science fiction in a continuing loop.
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