[rogerclark]

It seems this way on the surface because everything seems equally inevitable. Maybe it's all inevitable, but many technologies come around and don't look like something described in science fiction.

People vaguely predicted the smartphone, but not really. It is not from Star Trek or Gibson. This technology may have been inevitable, but its design, terminology, and effects were not predicted in detail by mainstream sci-fi, and it really did turn out differently.

On the other hand, the Humane AI Pin is absolutely a Star Trek: TNG communicator badge. There's no denying it. VR and the Metaverse are lifted directly from Neuromancer and Snow Crash. They didn't have to end up that way, but they did, because we had those examples in fiction to steer our thinking.

It's true that predicting things isn't as impressive or as important as making them. But many people predict things that don't happen, and most people don't accurately predict anything. The sci-fi authors are a lot more like the people who make the things than the people who don't make anything and don't predict anything.

[rbanffy]

It’s much easier to work for a goal you can see and communicate clearly. Science-fiction is useful for that. Motorola’s Startac wouldn’t be without Star Trek’s communicator. It turns out a screen is more convenient for the other things we do with phones (they were getting smaller before every phone became a PDA, a camera, an e-reader, an e-mail client and so on) and the Star Trek design came and went.

I speak of Star Trek because it shows an utopian future while most other large sci-fi fictional universes go the opposite way and show dystopias. In that sense, Trek tries to predict a future while others try to prevent one.

There is enormous value in proposing a future people want to be part of.

And I miss the carpet.