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Old 02-20-2012, 08:49 AM   #13
Pinecone
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It goes both ways. Authors are affected by events and technology when they are writing. But they also invent new technologies that may drive the future.

Heinlein in Between Planets describes one portion of stealth technology. Not bad for 1951. Also in several books talks about the "tell me three times" of redundant computing.

The personal data storage devices in the original Star Trek are amazing similar in size and shape to a 3.5" floppy.

ANd does anyone truly believe that the flip phone is not related to the original Star Trek communicators? Don't forget, the first commercial flip phone was the Star Tac phone.

Asimov wrote about pocket computers (calculators) in the 1950s. Also autonomous military vehicles (drones). And even predicted that due to pocket computers, people would forget how to do basic arithmetic.

James P. Hogan has a character open his briefcase on a flight and use the built in video to make a rental vehicle reservation. Circa 1976.

And these few are off the top of my head.

No, SciFi doesn't always get it right, but it is amazing how many things they are predictive of. But that makes sense, because growing up, the geeks read SciFi. And the geeks went on to be engineers and scientists and started asking, well why can't we do that?
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