2011-09-27
Set phasers to stun...
I've been a huge fan of all the Star Trek series since I was a kid. In fact, if you'll indulge me a brief geek confession, I did once learn a few pertinent phrases in Klingon with which to impress the ladies. Surprisingly, it didn't really seem to work... What always intrigued me the most about particularly the original programme was the scientific developments that the Star Trek universe had developed; communicators, phasers, transporters. They all seemed a million miles away from reality; yet the truth is that a lot of sci-fi TV shows and movies managed to predict new technologies or at least inspire them. Think about the medical lab on board the Enterprise and compare it to modern radiography jobs. Not much difference is there?
There are several other examples of modern inventions, many of which we take for granted, that made their first appearance in sci-fi entertainment rather than in serious scientific papers. Think back to Star Trek TNG, or The Next Generation for the uninitiated, and the hand-held computers that the crew used to check the status of the engines or to report to the bridge. The touch-screen gadget was nothing more than an early iPad, except that I never saw anyone take a photo with it! Communications expert Lieutenant Uhuru was never seen without her trademark earpiece, picking up unusual messages from across the universe; what was that if not a slightly longer-range version of Bluetooth technology?
Sci-fi literature has managed to predict many of our greatest scientific achievements, from the 19th century Jules Verne novel about putting a man on the moon to the slightly less well-known E.M Forster short story ’The Machine Stops’. In this 1909 publication, mankind no longer communicates face-to-face, but instead uses electric screens, upon which our faces can appear and our voices can be heard. Who would have thought that a man more at home writing satires on middle-class life in the early 20th century would have predicted the invention of Skype? And who knows what current sci-fi inventions will materialise in future decades.
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