Whether it be a group read discussion or sharing our thoughts on a movie we’ve just seen or simply shooting the breeze over the things we are passionate about, I see these online interactions as the equivalent of the coffee klatch. Let’s face it, we are readers and movie/tv buffs. If we were all to converge on the cantina in Mos Eisley Spaceport we wouldn’t be on the lookout for a couple of wanted droids nor would be be dodging bounty hunters. We would start talking about the latest thing we read or watched and off we would go.
So here we are. It is the weekend and we are meeting up. Pull up a chair, order an Antakarian Fire Dancer or a Synthale…or perhaps just a steaming hot cuppa joe and let’s chat (no blasters please). At some point in that conversation I will ask this question:
What technology/innovation from science fiction books, television or film do you wish was a reality today?
In putting in my own two credits worth I would go about answering three wishes style, only I would cheat (we are at a wretched hive of scum and villainy after all). I would offer three wishes based on things I believe are already in various stages of development and are in some ways already a reality and three that are dreams unfettered by rational thinking.
Remember, we are sitting around chatting, so be sure to put your two credits in too.
- The Future is Now
1. It is amazing to see how rapidly our society has adapted to an array of touch-screen technology that would have seemed science fictional just a few decades ago. Our phones, various hand-held devices and now our desktop monitors are touch-screen capable, allowing us a very different experience than the mouse/keyboard option. I’m ready right now for a fully interactive desktop surface like the one Sean Bean utilizes in The Island. I could multi-task like nobody’s business and I would have the bonus of my work desk being impeccably clean.
2. I’m a gamer, tracing my roots back to those heady days when Pong could keep you glued to the television for hours. As technology has advanced the gaming experience online and on console/pc has just gotten better and better. I recently listened to the audio version of Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One and as Wade described in minute detail his haptic rig I could not help wishing that I would live to see (and be young enough to still play) fully immersive games like that. Cline isn’t the first to imagine such things and while I could have just as easily referenced the holodecks on Star Trek or the memory alteration of Total Recall, the haptic technology imagined by Cline is closer to a reality given that technology exists and is utilized today that allows the user to be hooked into a virtual world not only visually but also with the whole body.
A caveat to this: I would not want to live in a fully realistic looking virtual world the way the people in Cline’s novel, or the movie Surrogates, do but I do want to have that fully realistic virtual experience. Not only would gaming be incredible but it would provide us the only opportunity we are likely to get to explore first-hand our own solar system.
3. I am not sure what to call this last one other than ‘integrated immersion’ although I don’t mean that in the ‘lost in a virtual reality’ sense that I poo-pooed in the previous paragraph. No, what I’m talking about is largely what we have now in the form of user-specific content in our everyday lives coupled with what rich folks like Bill Gates already have. I’m thinking of Philip K. Dick stories here, or at least the movies inspired by them like Minority Report for example. Or other SF films like the aforementioned The Island or even to some degree the computer A.I. in Orson Scott Card’s Ender stories. I want what we get from our entertainment systems and handheld tablets and phones etc. all accessible at a moment, by voice or physical manipulation, at any time. I want to be able to get up and tell my house what temperature to set the room, what music I want playing or tell it to turn on the news or better yet just give me a visual of today’s headlines. Whether this be some kind of contact lens and voice technology like they are working on today or various Minority Report like surfaces in the home that are voice activated and display things computer-style I would love to have that kind of hands-free experience. I’m doing a terrible job explaining this but I hope you know what I mean.
- Only In My Dreams
1. Let’s face it, if money were no object we would all like to travel, wouldn’t we? But extensive travel is time intensive and costly. But what if we could travel instantly? I know what you are thinking: transporter technology ala Star Trek. While that works for this dream just fine, I am more partial to the stepping discs in Larry Niven’s Ringworld series. The discs are open-air transport pads that send you instantly to any location where a pad exists (and one has clearance). What I like about this technology is that it is limited in that you could still have areas like Yosemite National Park where you limited discs to areas outside the forest leaving parts of the world that have to be accessed the old fashioned way and they are also controlled in that you have to be allowed access to the disc, thus the ones in your home, for example, can be locked and keyed to only those you allow in. This way there would not be anyone suddenly transporting into your living room and surprising you in the middle of a Full House marathonn (wuh?!?!). Just think of it. You could get to and from work instantly. You could pop home for lunch or take your coffee break at a cafe in Paris. If you wanted a seasonal fix you could zip off on a hot summer day to the wilds of Alaska or leave the ice and snow for a quick dip in the ocean at a tropical location. We could get together in-person to discuss our group reads!!!
2. Star Trek Replicators. Not only would this be great from the standpoint of not having to take the time to shop for food and prepare it yourself, unless you wanted to for nostalgia’s sake, but the sheer variety of what you could eat and drink would be incredible. Not only that, but the replicators could replicate other items too. It would offer the best from the standpoint of the consumer in our “I want it now” society but would have the benefit of being good for the environment and allow for a clutter-free existence. Why? Because the replicator recycles the material to use to make more things. Rather than purchasing and having to store all the things we feel we need in our lives we could replicate it, use it, recycle it, and replicate it again if we wanted to use it again.
(Art by Chris Goff. Click on image to see larger version)
3. Fly me to the Moon. It would be all too easy for me to go really big with this dream and just list faster than light (FTL) engines or whatever pseudo-science spaceflight of choice to be able to travel among the stars. But for the moment my more immediate dreams would be habitations on the celestial bodies closest to us, the moon and Mars. Reading Apollo’s Outcasts by Allen Steele and short stories from Jonathan Strahan’s Edge of Infinity anthology have me focused more in our own solar system at the moment, dreaming of being able to stand on the moon and see the beauty of Earth for myself rather than in the admittedly lovely pictures that exist. This feels like something that should be included in the “Future is Now” section but the sad reality is that this is not a priority for humanity at the moment and the cool things that NASA and other world organizations are doing now are great but they are not leading to anything like a “The Menace From Earth” lunar city being a reality in my lifetime.
Okay, lets top off those drinks and hear from you. What advances do you see either close to a reality or only in your dreams that are inspired by science fiction stories/shows? What also might be interesting is hearing how you think my wishes or even yours would also be annoying or perhaps not so great after all.
This will take some further thought, but I’ll throw out a few things just to get the ball rolling. I’m only going to do the nowhere near a reality section. (1) FTL drive. It’s the only way to have a semi-homogenious multiple planet/multiple system society, including the chance to join a colony on a new world. (2) Transporters a la Star Trek. Beam me up or down, please. (3) Medical technology of a heal-it-all level readily available to everyone anywhere, any time. Or, if you count X-Men comics as SF (I do) then Wolverine’s ability to self heal from just about anything. It would also, in the here and now, to have a single global monetary system.
Nice Richard! Yes, I’d love to have Star Trek’s medical technology be a reality. The whole idea of disease being virtually eliminated and broken bones, etc. to be quickly healed with just the wave of a small electronic device would be fantastic.
I’d settle for the transporters or the stepping discs, would be so fun to just get somewhere quickly.
I consider comics to be SFF, so yes. And that heal instantly thing would be cool too, as long as there were no negative genetic side effects.
I’m fascinated by the idea of galactic societies like those featured in Foundation all the way up to current novels/shows. I’d really love all the technology to be a reality that would make that happen.
You’ve hit on most of my top wishes – including RkR’s wish for the medical technology in Star Trek. The one that’s not a wish really anymore is that when I was little I would watch Inspector Gadget (not really sci-fi) and wish I had daughter Penny’s computer book. With the iPad and other tablets I feel like it’s become a reality 🙂
It is fun reading some of the old books and watching older shows, even once as comparatively recent as the Inspector Gadget cartoons, and seeing how today’s tech has made those imaginative gizmos a reality. I’m also enjoying how some of the SF authors who are writing near-future SF are building on the current pad ideas as they make really interesting predictions of what just might happen.
I was thinking that when listening to the audio book for Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation the other day, the pads that the characters use are so similar to iPads only they are at that point where they even go a step farther and do some of the things that I was hinting at with my 3rd ‘future is now’ wish. Also the BrainPALS in the Old Man’s War series.
Ah, what a fun idea for sci fi discussion! 🙂
Well, let’s see…transporters, definitely, sit near the top of the list for me. I’ll take the Star Trek version, though you make a compelling case for the Ringworld discs. If travel time became totally irrelevant, I think it would completely revolutionize society, from mundane ways to profound. Restaurants might all become 24-hours, because people could transport in from anywhere on the planet and want dinner. No one would have to live where they work, totally changing the job market. Long-distance relationships would no longer be an issue. Governments would go mad on the subject of immigration and security. We’d be able to solve the “last mile” problem of getting aid to needy communities.
Replicators would be fantastic too, and I do think we’re getting closer! 3D printers are basically low-level replicators, even if they don’t do quite all the clever things that Star Trek’s replicators do. But give them time.
Wanting the entire contents of Dr. McCoy’s Sickbay might be asking for a bit much, but I’d settle for his tricorder. How amazing would it be, if doctors could wave a device and know exactly what was wrong with anyone? Even if we still had to treat people using modern-day medicine, it would revolutionize care. And I’ve heard someone’s working on something basically along the premise of tricorders. Slowly but surely, everything from Star Trek is being invented!
Holodecks would also be amazing. I’m not a gamer, but as a reader, I would LOVE to “meet” the characters and explore the worlds I’ve read about. That one is probably a little farther down the invention path…
Hmm, I seem to have answered this question with the Star Trek inventions I really want, which rather upends your initial setting of the conversation in the Star Wars context. But…Star Trek is always my front-brain, go-to sci fi world. And it has so much cool stuff!
You make some great cases for instantaneous travel…and ones that are much more altruistic than mine, lol! It would be interesting to see if the world became less structured the way it is now with ‘class’ neighborhoods if everyone had the same quick access to places of work, commerce, etc.
We definitely need medical technology that can be accessed more affordably that would find cancer and other diseases immediately, something cheap enough that all people would be completely scanned every time they showed up for an illness at the doctor, and maybe twice a year for regular physicals.
Holodecks would be so cool just to be able to put yourself in various situations in history, etc. It would also be cool to “act” in some of those holodramas, putting yourself in the role of hero, etc.
Star Trek has been a gold mine over the years for innovations that would go a long way towards a society being more “ideal”. It is an imaginative world that all those writers, directors, actors created.
Cyberbrains from Ghost in the Shell. 😀 Think a neural interface for an implanted computer, allowing you to surf the net, communicate with others, or overlay your vision with a HUD a la Google Glass, all by using your mind!
The downside is, a cyberbrain can be hacked, allowing the hacker to alter the victim’s perceptions or even control the victim’s actions…
I like the upside of that, but not the downside. That reminds me of the BrainPALS from the Old Man’s War novels which allows some of the same functionality. I don’t think they can be hacked but I don’t recall now if that came up in any of Scalzi’s earlier books or not.
I’m like Kira on Deep Space Nine who refused to use the holodeck; I’d still rather read a book than be immersed in a computer simulation. And I’m nervous and get motion sickness on an airplane, so I don’t think I’d want to jump on a flight to the moon anytime soon. So I guess the technology I’d rather have is more the homey stuff I remember from the Jetsons. Robot maids and automatic housecleaning technology would give me more time to read without any discomfort about unfair class structures.
Those would be a lot of fun to have, Laurie. Can’t say that I particularly enjoy vacuuming or dusting so I’d be happy to have a robot doing it for me (even if I had to keep one eye on them looking for signs that they were about to take over the world).
I had forgotten that about Kira.
ahh but you use the holodeck AFTER you read the book so you know where you are going and why! I for one would visit Pern and maybe even Pandora!
That does *not* surprise me. 😉
It does make me think though, how cool would it be to use the holodeck to spend some time in an animated world. It would be cool to use technology to put yourself in an animated body and wander around say, the Adventure Time world. That would be crazy.
it would just be amazing that I was no longer afraid of heights! hello? me and dragons? duh! lol lol
Maybe you would be so excited about being on a dragon that your fear of heights would disappear.
I don’t think I ever imagined using the holodeck to enter an animated world. That sounds like SO MUCH fun! Someone should have done that on some episode of Trek…
It just sort of dawned on me as I was thinking about video games. It would be fun.
I love the idea of some Star Trek technology particularly to eliminate diseases. Not to mention – could I just be ‘beamed up’ to work please and miss all the rush hour.
On an even more selfish level I’d like a time machine – I could travel back in time and purchase books as they’re released! (Not to mention meet some pretty awesome people!)
Lynn 😀
I was thinking about the time machine idea when I was writing this. Of course if one existed it would be great to go back and see certain parts of history. I think what I would like is the ability to somehow go back in time and “view” things but not have to worry about the interaction messing up the timeline. I’d love to go back and see different parts of my childhood and somehow vicariously experience them again. Of course I would also be tempted to go back and tell myself not do make certain bad decisions I made at different points in my life.
I did think about going back and giving my younger self some advice but, like you said, I didn’t want to mess with the timeline and also I was too pigheaded to have listened (even to myself!) I was thinking I’d just nip in and out! (with an armful of books!)
Lynn 😀
I would do the same and I’d also want to arrive at various points in time where I lost copies of books or loaned them to untrustworthy souls and stop that from happening.
Haha, I like that, I can’t count the number of books that have never been returned! Funnily enough I’ve bought some books 3 or 4 times over because I keep letting people taking a copy and then never get them back and I like to keep my favourites. Oh well, I know that I’ll still continue to do so – I must be an optimistic person deep inside! 😀
Lynn
I have a few close friends I let borrow books because I trust them to return them in the same condition I lent them in, but for the most part I’d rather just buy someone a copy of a book I want them to read.
When I mentioned the medical technology, I wasn’t thinking Star Trek so much as the Sector General novels by James White. Still, any heal-all med would work…
And see Sector General would be fun just for all the aliens. I’ve got to get to the second in that series at some point.
Pong! I remember playing that one. I wasn’t big into video games but I loved Pong and Mrs. Packman.
I can still remember being at my grandma’s house when my uncle showed us Pong for the first time. My brother and I were blown away and not long after my parents bought it for us. So crazy to see how far games have advanced since then.