
Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction? - focal
I loved @ajus&#x27;s comment about Stansislaw Lem&#x27;s ebook prediction in 1961[1].<p>Another favorite is E.M. Forster&#x27;s prediction of video calling and more in 1909 with The Machine Stops[2].
&quot;But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her.&quot;<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18896513
[2] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ncsa.illinois.edu&#x2F;prajlich&#x2F;forster.html
======
femto113
The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson, 1995) had many eerily prescient visions but
I've always liked some of the more subtle ones: the "Neo-Victorians" who put
extra value on handmade goods in a world where anything can be printed
foreshadowed Etsy and the modern "artisanal" everything, the use of pictogram
based language foreshadowed rising use of emojis, the Primer as a source of
education accessible to anyone foreshadowed Khan Academy (and maybe YouTube's
how-to-anything more generally).

~~~
bigger_cheese
Another of his books Snow Crash, which is kind of precursor to Diamond Age had
some pretty interesting predictions.

I read somewhere stuff like Second Life, Google Earth etc were directly
inspired by Snow Crash.

There's some other themes in Snow Crash we are just starting to see as well:

-Government difficulties with taxation of digital goods and currency

-Companies competing to attract drivers/messengers etc (basically the uber/gig ecconomy)

-For profit surveillance and commercialization of intelligence data

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _-Government difficulties with taxation of digital goods and currency_

Cryptonomicon covers this, too. Arguably so does REAMDE.

------
MichaelMoser123
Asimov in "The Caves of Steel"; Earth has a huge population that lives in huge
cities, therefore it needs powerful computers as it has to track/police its
massive population. Asimov guessed in 1953 that computers are a surveillance
tool!

"R. Daneel came to his desk with a sheaf of papers. "And those are?" asked
Baley. "A list of men and women who might belong to a Medievalist
organization." "How many does the list include?" "Over a million," said R.
Daneel. "These are just part of them." "Do you expect to check them all,
Daneel?" "Obviously that would be impractical, Elijah." .... Baley said,
abruptly, "How did you get your list?" "It was a machine that did it for me.
Apparently, one sets it for a particular type of offense and it does the rest.
I let it scan all disorderly conduct cases involving robots over the past
twenty-five years. Another machine scanned all City newspapers over an equal
period for the names of those involved in unfavorable statements concerning
robots or men of the Outer Worlds. It is amazing what can be done in three
hours. The machine even eliminated the names of non-survivors from the lists."
"You are amazed? Surely you've got computers on the Outer Worlds?" "Of many
sorts, certainly. Very advanced ones. Still, none are as massive and complex
as the ones here. You must remember, of course, that even the largest Outer
World scarcely has the population of one of your Cities and extreme complexity
is not necessary."

~~~
ip26
The comment about "three hours" was of course supposed to impress you with the
sheer speed of it- but I can't help thinking it would take only minutes today!

~~~
tabtab
Unless you worked for some orgs I've worked for where info was siloed in
different systems that didn't talk to each other well, and nobody wanted to
spend the resources to unify or coordinate it all.

------
kabdib
Niven and Pournelle predicted unrepairability in The Mote in God's Eye -

    
    
        Renner [said] "I remembered something. Have you got your pocket
        computer?"
    
        "Certainly." She took it out to show him.
    
        "Please test it for me."
    
        Her face a puzzled mask, Sally drew letters on the face of the
        flat box, wiped them, scrawled a simple problem, then a complex
        one that would require the ship's computer to help. Then she
        called up an arbitrary personal data file from ship's memory. "It
        works all right."
    
        Renner's voice was thick with sleep. "Am I crazy, or did we watch
        the Motie take that thing apart and put it back together again?
        You know that's impossible, don't you?"
    
        She thought it was a joke. "No, I didn't."
    
        "Well, it is. Ask Dr. Horvath." Renner hung up and went back to
        sleep.
    
        Sally caught up with Dr. Horvath as he was turning into his cabin.
        She told him about the computer.
    
        "But those things are one big integrated circuit. We don't even
        try to repair them."

~~~
starpilot
Your quote is unreadable on mobile due to your abuse of the code tag for
quoting.

------
ed
Not retrofuture, but I can’t stop thinking about the drug described in Nexus
by Ramez Naam (and I read the book years ago).

The drug binds to individual neurons allowing an external system to manipulate
the brain and e.g. overlay an OS GUI on your vision, enhance sensory input,
basically make you a programmable superhuman.

The trilogy is good but mostly because it’s fun to think about this tech. If
you’re at all into cyberpunk you’ll really enjoy it.

~~~
muthdra
I came across the "overlay an OS GUI on your vision" ideia in a series I
watched some years ago. I've been trying to google the title for an hour but I
can't seem to find it anywhere.

It was about successful "neuralink" implants that did the whole brain-computer
interface work but one day there was a glitch/virus/broken update and anyone
with the chip who got into contact with the internet would update, fry their
brains and die so I remember people hiding in what I think was an underground
garage.

Does anyone remember this one?

Edit: It was called H+
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZedLgAF9aEg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZedLgAF9aEg)

------
jagger11
The thing about Lem is that he was reading a lot (I mean, a lot) of scientific
journals and later scientific papers (in an interview with him he mentions
Soviet "Priroda", "Scientific American", some French and German journals of
this type), plus books of Dawkins/Hawking/Penrose /Shklovsky/Soviet scientists
etc., and all of that in 60's-70's-80's

Therefore his predictions are not that much original research/predictions, but
rather a good compilation and clever choice of ideas which had appeared
earlier in various sci papers. I suspect his quite striking description of
"Kindle reader" from 60s was based on some previously read paper/article.
Still, it's a very very good prediction as for 60's.

To add to his "predictions": Golem XIV is a philosophical desciption of
technological singularity (from 80's), and his Summa Technologiae (from 60's)
tackles a ton of then veeery novel stuff, like Machine Learning (a precise
description even for today's standards), SETI research, VR, AI, and all of
that in a "scientific" way, i.e. concreete and directly based on then
published papers, and not simply made as an effect of extrapolation of then
current trends (sort-a what Asimov liked doing)

------
evrydayhustling
Vernor Vinge, everything but most immediately the notions if security hygene
in "Rainbows End". Wearable augmented reality is ubiquitous, so anyone who
corrupts your digital life can really impact not just your credit card but
your perception of reality... So people develop security habits akin to
personal hygiene in response.

You have to love a book where one of the superweapons is a top level security
cert revocation...

------
Irene
Mind uploading predictions are fascinating (Edmond Hamilton, 1936; Isaac
Asimov, 1956, 1957; Arthur C. Clarke, 1956; Bertil Mårtensson, 1968).

Also predictions about automating boring and mundane human tasks:

Waldemar Kaempffert, 1950: "When Jane Dobson cleans house she simply turns the
hose on everything... After the water has run down a drain in the middle of
the floor (later concealed by a rug of synthetic fiber) Jane turns on a blast
of hot air and dries everything."

"With the advent of frozen foods in the shape of bricks, cooking as an art is
only a memory in the minds of old-people. A few die-hards still broil a
chicken or roast a leg of lamb, but <by using ingredients in frozen bricks>
Jane Dobson can serve a steak in less than three minutes, and an elaborate
multi-course meal never takes more than half an hour to prepare.

"discarded linens and underwear are recycled and turned into candy."

Isaac Asimov, 1964: "Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious
jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare 'automeals,' heating
water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or
scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on."

~~~
jagger11
About Asimov's predictions: those (incl. listed above) either haven't yet
materialized, or are rather funny from today's perspective (Robotics, AI and
"psychohistory" as described in the Foundation series). He's been rather poor
futurologist IMO, contrary to the level of his popularity.

------
pavel_lishin
Larry Niven predicted organ harvesting from political dissidents, as well as
black-market organ transplantation more generally. (See his Gil the ARM
stories, as well as another short story whose name I can't recall :/)

~~~
unknownkadath
He did miss out on tissue culturing and organ printing, though!

------
open-source-ux
In the 1982 film _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan_ , Captain Kirk accesses
classified information in the ship's computer through a retina scan. This was
well before the word 'biometrics' became a more familiar term. The filmmakers
had the tricky task of how to represent a retina scan in a highly visual way.
So what we see is a flythrough inside Kirk's eye until the retina is reached
and verified.

Douglas Adams' _The Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy_ (HHGTTG) is a pocket
electronic book that contains all the accumulated knowledge about the
universe. In the BBC TV series broadcast in 1981, the HHGTTG was represented
by a 'computer graphics' aesthetic which was entirely hand animated. The
animations still hold up brilliantly (and are better than the animations in
the 2005 film).

------
spiggytopes
Robert Heinlein, 'Between Planets'

'A few hundred yards further on Lazy shied again, not from a snake this time
but from an unexpected noise. Don pulled him in and spoke severely. "You bird-
brained butterball! When are you going to learn not to jump when the telephone
rings?"

Lazy twitched his shoulder muscles and snorted. Don reached for the pommel,
removed the phone, and answered.'

Nothing unusual there - except that this was published in 1951. Heinlein was
extrapolating one particular technology trend and got it spot-on, 60+ years
before it happened.

There are so many others - H.G.Wells' 'World Brain' for one (aka the Web)

~~~
kabdib
_Space Cadet_, 1948, references pocket phones as well, with this funny bit
about avoiding them -

    
    
        Tex Jarman looked at him understandingly. "Your folks always worry, don't they? I fooled mine -- packed my phone in my bag."
    

The phone usage in Between Planets involved call signs and was clearly
projected from Ham radio practices at the time.

My favorite phone technology _miss_ was their total absence from Gibson's
_Neuromancer_, something that he's a little chagrined about, and tired of
hearing about, too . . .

~~~
pavel_lishin
Your quote is very hard to read even on desktop - can you surround the quoted
text with asterisks instead of indenting it?

------
aplanas
In Ender's Game there is a description of an Ansible, a personal handheld
device used to communicate, join to public forums, read news and influence in
political discussions.

~~~
pavel_lishin
That's not what the Ansible was, but I don't want to actually describe it in
case someone here hasn't read Ender's Game yet, since it's pretty pivotal to
the plot.

Also, Ender's Game was written in 1984 - the idea of networks wasn't so new
then, but I agree that Card had a very prescient take on Locke and
Demonsthenes' influence over world politics.

------
baruchthescribe
Fahrenheit 451 managed a few disturbing ones:

\- The Hound, an automated drone for assassinations

\- Seashells, in-ear music playing

\- Large flat-screen TVs playing reality soaps that the viewer interacts with

------
ryanmercer
I _think_ you mean stuff that has mostly come to be but first I wanted to
throw one out that I really want, an ansible. If we could find a way to
communicate faster than light (especially if we could figure out instantaneous
communication regardless of distance) just imagine what it would do for space
exploration! Instead of waiting 2 years to retrieve seconds of data recorded
as New Horizons sailed by Ultima Thule we could have the data real-time or
nearly real-time.

If you could figure that out, I think it alone would result in us learning
more about our solar system in a couple of years than we have to date. You
could send small probes at pretty much everything you wanted and either have a
very small amount of buffer memory or just transmit it real time back. You
could also have real-time, or much closer to real-time, control of rovers!

Stuff that has come to be:

\- Small portable computers (tablets, smart phones)

\- Personal communicators (cellular telephones, smart phones)

\- 3D printing

\- Video phones

\- Westinghouse M-27 Phased Plasma Pulse Rifle for fighting Sky... wait we
don't have this one yet.

------
King-Aaron
It's not so much a technology prediction, but Back to the Future predicted the
"Biff future" pretty well.

~~~
tabtab
The character of Biff was partly influenced by "that person", according to
Wikipedia. (Warning: Naming the person gets one instant negative moderation
points.)

------
simonblack
I remember when I was very young, back around 1960, that I said it was very
likely that we'd have space stations, rockets to the moon, hand-held computers
and excellent robots. But the one thing we'd never ever have, because of the
Inverse Cube Law, was any sort of Ray Gun.

Just to spite me, I'm sure, that was the very first of many Sci-Fi predictions
that became reality for me. I read a write-up on lasers in Popular Electronics
as early as 1963.

Popular Electronics, July 1963 "Lasers -- The Light Fantastic"

------
anjellow
Star Trek predicted automatic sliding doors and flat screen TVs

~~~
vinni2
I hope some day we invent Tricorder as well!

~~~
TeMPOraL
I wish. Our smartphones would be halfway there if manufacturers could be
bothered to include a few more sensors.

Alas, I don't see tricorders happening soon, because they're "action movie"
tools. That is, looking from economical and social POV, almost every use case
for a tricorder would be better handled by a team of specialists with heavy
equipment, and _not in a hurry_. Real life is boring this way, and technology
in the real world isn't about empowering indivduals - at least not in any way
that conflicts with the mundane.

------
scandox
In Fred Hoyle's book The Black Cloud you could argue the prediction of the
internet. He proposes a radio based data network with IIRC both compression
and encryption.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud)

The book is only so-so as a novel but it is compelling in terms of ideas.

------
admore
I have no idea where the idea originated from but you see it sometimes in
science fiction, that is the idea of mutable identity, from a superficial
point of view. In other words the concept of anyone being able to represent
themselves as they would like to through implants or body modification.

------
zabana
Another fascinating question is this: How much influence does science fiction
have on current technological innovations ? Are there inventions that have
been directly inspired by science fiction concepts and novels. (like ebooks
mentioned by OP in his post)

------
pasbesoin
Clarke's "The City and the Stars"

Technologically enabled immortality (in an interesting manner).

Massive, crystalline data storage.

Immersive gaming, including the negative, subsuming aspects of same.

The individual as radical.

The radical as an essential component of long-term planning and viability.

~~~
nurettin
It seems the sci-fi trend for huge data storage back then was "crystals!". So
were many of remote viewing devices, alien navigation systems and space fuel.

~~~
pasbesoin
A comment on another thread, made about a day after my GP comment, mentioned
an influential paper published in, IIRC, 1944 speculating on crystalline
storage of complete human genetic information. (I'm assuming this would
encompass a pre-double-helix understanding/conception of said data.)

That would tie into Clarke's story well (originally in several forms, that got
consolidated into "The City and the Stars" with a 1952 copyright. And he would
have been in a position (scientifically active) to have encountered it.

I don't know that any such thing happened. But, it was an interesting
coincidence to run across that comment. (Sorry, I don't have it to hand.)

------
analog31
Dickens, _A Tale of Two Cities,_ where conversations are being surreptitiously
recorded in code, to be recalled later and used against people.

------
devereaux
Star trek communicators and ipads!

------
yters
Leonardo Da Vinci predicted helicopters and tanks.

What's the line between predicting and inventing?

~~~
skookumchuck
Inventing is building a working device.

~~~
tabtab
Not necessarily. Da Vinci had the basic concepts right, but many practical
details were missing. "Half inventor"?

~~~
skookumchuck
Yes, necessarily. The "many practical details" are usually the key to it
working. For example, the details are why the Wright bros. airplane flew, and
the others didn't. The same with the light bulb, the telephone, the Xerox
machine, rocket engines, etc.

Maybe the Patent Office accepts concepts, but that leads to nothing but
trouble. The real work to inventing is getting something to actually work.
Anybody can have an idea, ideas are a dime a dozen.

~~~
tabtab
Re: _Maybe the Patent Office accepts concepts, but that leads to nothing but
trouble._

Perhaps, but definitions don't have to be practical nor rational. Vocabulary
is typically driven by common usage (language), not by logic. I'm just the
messenger.

~~~
skookumchuck
If you want a dictionary definition, that's easy enough to find online.

~~~
tabtab
I'm not sure what your point is then, to be honest. Yes, final products often
take a lot of experiments and tuning. But I'm not sure all of that is
"inventing" any more than testing software and fixing bugs is "inventing".
When is tuning inventing and when is it not?

