Which Things Science Fiction Got Wrong About Today’s Technology? – BBN Times

Science fiction (sci-fi) movies and books make a lot of predictions about the future, but not all of them were right in the 21st century.

The Covid-19 pandemic is still not over in some countries, and there is no magical pill to live an eternal life.

Here are nine things that were supposed to happen in our modern society based on science fiction predictions, but didn't:

1. Flying cars -This is a popular one to gripe about, a flying car is not happening yet as automobile companies are still struggling with self-driving cars. It's not that flying cars are technically impossible, but today's technology is still behind to create safe commercial flying cars.

2. The destruction of earth -We still live on earth, but countries need to pay more attention to global warming.

3. Artificial intelligence takeover - None of the existent robots and machines have risen up to overthrow the human race.

4. Magic pills replacing food- We still eat the same food, nothing has changed except people are more cautious about the planet and what they are eating.

5. Fighting aliens - While some movies do make an effort to be original, most of sci-fi is awfully locked on humanoid aliens, which we haven't met yet.

6. Living on another planet - We still live on earth despite Elon Musk's best efforts to colonize Mars in the future.

7. Laser beams - The military is vaporizing large chunks of buildings without the need of a laser beam.

8. Time travel -Traveling in time, especially to the past, is most likely impossible.

9. Teleportation - In reality, we can't pass particles of matter through most materialsbecause they interact too strongly with the atoms inside.

Sci-fi is supposed to explore all the possible consequences of scientific, social, and technological discoveries, innovations and inventions.

A good sci-fi work, novel, movies or TV series, should come with the most realistic vision for the future, among many possibilities, which is built on a deep knowledge of future science and emerging technologies.

In other words, to be a great sci-fi creator, you must be a visionary or a great researcher or inventor or technologist.

Or, you must be Nikola Tesla to predict smartphones 100 years before:

When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.

Many sci-fi predictions were inaccurate, but some have proven to be correct decades later such as space travel, earbuds, virtual calls, mobile phones, smart homes and military drones.

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Which Things Science Fiction Got Wrong About Today's Technology? - BBN Times