With cinemas reopen in the UK post Coronavirus lockdown, touchscreen manufacturer Zytronic has complied a list of five sci-fi movie tech predictions well ahead of their time and explored the unlikely impact films have on the progression of technology in our lives.
However fantastical, all the best sci-fi movies make us look at our own lives and ask the exciting, or often frightening, question of “what if”?
The once-impossible sights we see when escaping to other worlds on the silver screen often end up becoming a reality as life imitates art. Advancements in technology in recent years have progressed at an unprecedented pace, making possible the outlandish imaginations of sci-fi movies that seemed implausible only decades ago.
Technology experts and touchscreen innovators Zytronic have uncovered 5 technology predictions the movies got right; from lightsabers to navigation display to robot assistants, some of these technological predictions come true with eerie accuracy.
Let’s take a look at a handful of movie tech predictions from Hollywood then shall we?
Back To The Future
It just wouldn’t be a list without this classic, would it?
From movie tech such as self-lacing shoes to video calling to 3D movies, the Back to the Future trilogy has predicted an almost scary number of technologies that are now part of our everyday lives over 35 years later.
Virtual reality, voice assistants and fingerprint scanners also make an appearance here; at this point, we’re not so sure that Doc’s car wasn’t a time machine in real life…
Star Trek
Despite perhaps appearing more far-fetched than Back to the Future at first glance, there are a surprising number of things that Star Trek predicted ahead of its time, and the list continues to grow to this day with recent technology launches allowing for invisible power delivery and even transparent, hologram-like screens akin to those seen on the Enterprise.
The list here is extensive, as Star Trek predicts everything from tablet computers and medical scanners to wearable communication devices, Google Glass-style augmented reality to automatic doors; we can’t help but think that Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek’s creator, would be impressed by the number of his ideas which have ended up becoming reality.
Star Wars
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
Star Wars is such an integral part of pop culture in many countries that it’s no wonder that people have attempted to replicate some of the famous technological wonders of the movies. From real-life lightsabers to bionic limbs, built-in vehicle navigation systems to robot assistants, our real-life tech is slowly starting to catch up with childhood fantasies of being a Jedi Knight…
Minority Report
Released almost 2 decades ago, Spielberg’s Minority Report confronts important questions about the progression of technology; although its “Precogs” are yet to exist, AI software and machine learning are enabling organisations to predict consumers buying patterns and preferrences, and companies like Google and Tesla are making driverless cars a reality as seen in the film’s iconic chase scene, with the recent announcement that self-driving cars could be allowed on UK roads as early as this year.
Smart homes with voice control are also becoming increasingly popular, with an estimated 258 million smart homes currently in existence, whilst fingerprint and face identification technology is now a widely available consumer technology used to unlock most modern smartphones.
Terminator
I’ll be back…
Killer cyborgs (thankfully) remain out of the picture as we approach 2029, the year in which Arnold Schwarzenegger’s titular character time travels from. However, other technologies from the movies have become a reality, including advanced drones which have been used by the military to devasting effect for years, and are now widely available to consumers in less deadly form.
And whilst robots which can accurately emulate every aspect of human behaviour aren’t here yet, technology can convincingly imitate celebrity voices by analysing public audio databases and Google Assistant can now answer your phone calls for you with often eerily human responses.
As technology continues to evolve faster than ever, more and more technologies from our favourite sci-fi movies will inevitably become a reality.
Ian Crosby, Sales & Marketing Director at Zytronic, commented: “It’s fascinating to see the back-and-forth influence that science fiction and technology have on each other and the relationship that popular culture has with the development of new devices and features.
At Zytronic, we’re working on the cutting edge of interactive glass technology, from our recent breakthrough in transferring power safely across glass surfaces to our award-winning hover-touch technology for infection-safe interaction.
We’re excited to continue pushing the boundaries between reality and sci-fi in ways that have a positive impact on the lives of people and make them take a step back and realise they’ve seen something similar in their favourite films.”
