Image via Complex Original
That kid up there, he's the future. Not because he's a child and children are the future (have you ever hung out with a human child? They're monstrous). He's the future because he's Ender, the hero of Ender's Game, in theaters now. Orson Scott Card's creation, when the novel was originally published in 1985, presaged the coming of many things, drones and blogging among them. But what looked and sounded strange in 1985 doesn't always stay that way.
Wild futuristic visions are the best part of sci-fi movies. Galactic empires, teleportation, alien co-habitation: these are the fantasies that keep us coming back. (That and the trenchant social commentary, amirite?!) We watch science fiction for the same breed of escapism that we get from the dragons of fantasy and the vampires of horror.
Unlike these other escapist genres, sometimes what was once sci-fi fantasy becomes everyday reality. There have been a number of times that science-fiction films have successfully predicted the future. Impossible inventions have become commonplace. Seemingly unthinking problems have become serious issues. Ideas that seemed like crazy became real. Here are 25 Ways Sci-FI Movies Have Accurately Predicted the Future.
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Memory Wipe
As seen in: Eternal Sunsine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
It might seem like just yesterday that we were trying to get dates by convincing hipster classmates to go see it with us, it's been almost a decade since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind hit theatres. Now, in 2013, we aren't far from being able to stage our own reenactments of the Michel Gondry/Charlie Kaufman mind-warp while on dates with manic pixie dream girls: Dr. Todd Saktor of SUNY Downstate Medical Center created a drug that can block certain types of memories in animals with a single dose. It may be just a matter of time before you can push that terrible date with that hipster when you saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind out of your head forever.
Be warned: If this product is ever offered commercially, it looks like you won't be able to get any memories back. Lab rats had three month old memories erased and, according to Docto Saktor, "We waited weeks, we gave reminders, but the memory never seemed to return." Lasting results.
Full Body Security Scans
As seen in: Total Recall (1990)
Not even 25 years after the release of Total Recall, full body scanners went from science fiction to daily reality for air travellers. Rather than show off your skeleton like the scanners in the film, the actual scanners stop at the skin, revealing your naked body, embarrassing and protecting citizens all in one quick scan.
The scanners were not beloved by privacy groups, leading to (wait for it) a total recall of the devices. As of June 1, all of the so-called "backscatter" machines were removed from airports, after widespread discomfort and overwhelming protests. Apparently, effective non-pornographic scanning isn't currently possible, as the TSA could not meet newly passed Congressional standards. Until they can fix this nudity, we'll just have to settle for being groped by gloved hands when we fly.
Video Calls
As seen in: Blade Runner (1982)
We've already surpassed the quality of video calls predicted in Blade Runner; pretty much anyone with a smartphone has access to HD video calls whenever they want. We can even put on funny hats if we use Google Hangouts instead of Facetime, Skype, or those other services that we're sure exist but we haven't tried. Ridley Scott's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel underestimated how fast video calls would progress, but the film wasn't as far off on video calls as it was on chess. How did they really think that we would have video calls, but still have to play chess by phone? Damn. Ridley Scott must be amazed by Farmville. Hell, by Blade Runner's standards, Solitaire on early Windows was a game changer.
Wearable Computers
As seen in: Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Everybody acts like Google is so smart, but anybody could have come up with Google Glass. All they had to do was turn on TBS at any point between 1997 and 2004—we're pretty sure that you could have watched the Back to the Future trilogy every day for ten years if you so chose during the late '90s and early 2000s, as it was default cable programming along with Airheads and syndicated Everybody Loves Raymond episodes.
Sure, we're impressed that the series predicted computerized shades, but we would have been really impressed if they could have predicted all of the dumb Internet memes that would be culled from the Back to the Future movies. Talk about meta. In case you still haven't been clued in, the date Marty McFly actually comes back to is in October 2015.
Military Robots
As seen in: Short Circuit (1986)
A movie doesn't have to be good to predict the future. We're talking about a '80s Steve Guttenberg vehicle, after all, with the sophistication of an '80s Steve Guttenberg vehicle. And yet Short Circuit managed to foretell events to come. In the film, the dastardly NOVA Corporation tries to convince the military to add their robots to its arsenal. In reality, the US military has become heavily interested in military robotics in recent years. The government provides subsidies to a number of robotics companies, including the makers of the Roomba. The US Armed Forces isn't focused on keeping their room clean, however. The military has developed some heavy hitting bots that are a far cry from the charming robots of Short Circuit. Combat bots like the Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System aren't going to dance with you or read you a book, but they will deliver machine guns and grenades as necessary.
Disposable Consumerism
As seen in: Blade Runner (1982)
Not only are there several interesting inventions in Blade Runner that came to be, the film also predicted how we would use technology. The replicants are replaced every four years. They are disposable, as is much of the technology in the world of Blade Runner. Like the residents of dystopian Los Angeles, the obsolescence of technology has conditioned us to toss appliances almost as often as we buy new clothes. While previous generations held on to washers and rotary phones for years, we have developed a culture of pushing the reset button when our devices are no longer the newest and shiniest. These days, we're hard pressed to name an appliance we've held on to for more than five years. Even furniture items that used to be handed down for generations have been replaced by disposable IKEA products.
Violent Reality Television
As seen in: The Running Man (1987)
A full five years before the first episode of The Real World, The Running Man saw where reality television was headed. In The Running Man, everyone's favorite Governator is forced to participate in a violent game show after being framed for the murder of unarmed innocents. On the program, characters with names like Buzzsaw hunt him, most dangerous game style. Several years after The Running Man was released, American Gladiators premiered, clearly inspired by the film. Though nasty reality shows laid dormant for a while after that, it isn't hard to see a bit of The Running Man in shows like Survivor and the fights that break out on pretty much every reality show at least a few times a season.
Touchscreen Everything
As seen in: Minority Report (2002)
To be fair, many films and television shows saw the touchscreen interface coming. Star Trek: The Next Generation knew about the iPad before it was a glimmer in the late Steve Jobs’s eye. What sticks with us about Minority Report’s use of touch technology is that the film predicted just how ubiquitous touchscreens would become. Most of us are using gestures everyday on our phones and tablets, which we definitely weren’t when Minority Report was released over a decade ago. Earlier this month, University of Bristol researches announced “ultrahaptic” technology, which will allow for touchscreen-style technology without the actual touching. This means we are one step closer to batting at the air to do our computing like Tom Cruise does in the movie.
Intelligent Monkeys
As seen in: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), The Planet of the Apes (1968)
Only a year after Rise of the Planet of the Apes gave us some backstory for the old Statue-of-Liberty-in-the-sand bit, we set ourselves on a path to a world dominated by primates. In 2012, researchers from several universities (Wake Forest, Kentucky, and Southern California) released findings concluding that the neural performance of monkeys can be improved by stimulation. The researchers trained monkeys over the course of two years to follow a pattern. During this time, they recorded how their neurons fired when they chose the correct pattern. They then fired "correct" signals into their neurons, improving their performance by 10%.
Ten percent improvement doesn't lead to talking chimps, and the researchers insist that they are looking to aid humans with brain damage rather than creating an ape superrace, but don't so we didn't warn you if we end up with primate masters in our lifetime.
Reality Shows Will Dominate the Airwaves
As seen in: The Truman Show (1998)
The Truman Show wasn't quite as far ahead of its time as The Running Man. The Real World had already ushered in the era of reality television by the time Jim Carey's dramedywas released. But, what's amazing about The Truman Show is the film's amazing sense of where reality TV was headed. It isn't hard to see similarities between shows like Big Brother and Duck Dynasty and The Truman Show. 2003's Joe Schmo Show on Spike TV went as far as to adopt The Truman Show's premise completely, though on a much smaller scale. Granted, we haven't yet had a person raised in their own reality show, but as fans of Teen Mom well know, we are getting closer every day.
Human-on-Robot Crime
As seen in: I, Robot (2004)
The scope of the "cybernetic hate crime" that unfolded in a French McDonald's in 2012 wasn't quite on the level of the events chronicled in I, Robot. Nonetheless, the events that took place mirror things that Isaac Asimov predicted sixty years ago, and were echoed in the film. I, Robot pays a lot of attention to Del Spooner's (Will Smith) distrust of robots and to larger societal tensions that exist between humans and robots. We may have seen the first real world instance of these tensions.
Canadian professor Steve Mann has been wearing glasses similar to Google Glass for over three decades (though his are fused to his face), and though he has been kicked out of a Wal-Mart and questioned by the Secret Service, he had his first physical altercation while on vacation last year. After being questioned prior to ordering at McDonald's, Mann reported, "A person within McDonald's physically assaulted me, while I was in McDonald's eating McDonald's Ranch Wrap that I had just purchased at this McDonald's. He angrily grabbed my eyeglass, and tried to pull it off my head. The eyeglass is permanently attached and does not come off my skull without special tools."
In the aftermath of the assault, TechCrunch called for a McDonald's boycott, while Redditors published the address of the McDonald's. We imagine this will not be the last time that the mechanization of society prompts intolerance and violence.
Robots Are Coming...To Clean Our Homes
As seen in: Jetsons: The Movie (1990)
You can have your own housecleaning robot right now. Unfortunately, even if you upgrade it to a DJ Roomba, it will have far less personality than you might be expecting. There are some benefits to owning a Roomba over a Rosie. Roomba certainly has less personality than The Jetson's maid, but the real-life robot takes up far less space. You also don't have to worry about Roomba getting a boyfriend, copping an attitude, or going crazy, as she did in a Futurama spoof.
NSA Whistleblowers
As seen in: Murder She Wrote: South by Southwest (1997)
Rarely would we consider Murder She Wrote to be a science-fiction show, but the murder-mystery got futuristic in a late-'90s TV movie. In South By Southwest, Fletcher befriends the only witness to the murder of an NSA employee. Why was the employee dispatched? They were "going to leak information that was going to compromise the government." Hmm, that sounds awfully familiar. The new friend and a journalist turn up missing shortly thereafter.
Barton Gellman, one of the reporters who broke the Snowden story, recently discussed the possibility of being eighty-sixed for knowing too much with Terry Gross reporter on Fresh Air. Though Gellman doubts that the US would off him, he admits it is something he and Snowden have considered. After all, as an NSA Chief tells Jessica in South by Southwest, "It only makes the situation worse if any of this gets into the press."
Frankenstorms
As seen in: The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Even Al Gore probably thought that The Day After Tomorrow looked a little cheesy; you can't watch that scene with the wolves and not laugh. Here we are, less than ten years after the film's release and we're already seeing how global warming can exacerbate the effects of terrible storms. Needless to say, we aren't laughing now. Though it will take years to form a conclusive argument regarding exactly what creates a Superstorm like Sandy, there are enough facts to put most of you firmly in Jake Gyllenhaal's camp.
For example, temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean were five degrees warmer than is normal for this time of year when Sandy hit. Other scientists have cited the melting of the polar ice caps as factor in the severity of the storm. Even scientists who are cautious to speculate on global warming's effect on the storm, like Dr. Kevin Trenberth, believe that global warming could have been responsible for "as much as ten percent" of Sandy's force. Kerry Emanuel of MIT says that the bottom line is that these are the kind of storms that once happened once or twice in a century and will now become commonplace within the coming decades. "There's a reason why we build houses as far back and as high up as we do," she said.
Ray Guns
As seen in: Star Wars (1977), Barbarella (1968)
Yes, the government does have a version of a ray gun, but it won't matter if you or Greedo shoot first—neither of you will be terribly affected. In a 2008 60 Minutes piece, reporter David Martin fended off the ray gun with a mattress, after a piece of plywood didn't quite cut it. Not only is the ray invisible, but at its worst, the ray gun feels like "scalding water." Not exactly the terrifying lasar canon we were expecting, but at least this keeps our hopes of a death ray alive. Sadly, as of now, the cast of Barbarella still has more stunning effect than the modern ray gun.
Drone Warfare
As seen in: The Terminator (1984)
Unless you've been under a rock waiting for a drone to take you out, then you're probably pretty familiar with the United States drone program. Though comparisons between the robotic killing machines of The Terminator and our current military program might seem tenuous at best, parallels have been drawn by the British Ministry of Defence. The Guardian reported that an internal study warned of an "incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality."
Our favorite part of that is probably the "involuntary" part. In words that sound like they belong in a cautionary sci-fi monologue rather than a government report, the study went on to say, "It is essential that before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late)...we ensure that, by removing some of the horror, or at least keeping it at a distance, we do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely." In case you are still sleeping well at night, just know that we have already lost control of at least one drone, and been forced to shoot it down.
Flying Cars
As seen in: Jetsons: The Movie (1990)
"I thought we'd have flying cars by now."
This has become the cliché lament of forward-thinking technophiles over the last several decades. All of you futurists can stop your complaining. It turns out that flying autos are already here. The prototype for the Terrafugia Transition Roadable Aircraft has already had a successful flight. In fact, the company has had a string of flight successes. But that doesn't mean you can expect to pick up a flying car anytime soon. The tests revealed a series of new modifications that will be necessary before the vehicle is consumer ready. With an expected sticker price of almost $300,000, you might want to wait and see if you can get one used anyway.
Genetic Discrimination
As seen in: Gattaca (1997)
Adrian Raine, a British criminologist, believes that abnormal physical brain make-up is a good indicator that you could be a criminal. Criminals, he argues, have consistent differences in their brain, such as a smaller prefrontal cortex and amygdala. Though proposed treatments like counseling and increased Omega 3 intake seem reasonable, if you want to see a dystopian vision of the logical extension of this research, look no further than Gattaca.
Gattaca takes place in a world where your role in society is determined by your genes; your only hope of breaking out of your pre-determined caste is to assume someone else's identity. We aren't supposing that this research will lead to eugenics, but "genetic discrimination," a concept central to Gattaca, doesn't feel like an unfair description of these proposed remedies. Also Gattaca's Wikipedia page predicted what Rand Paul would say in a recent speech. (Come on, we had to).
Resource Wars
As seen in: The Road Warrior (1981)
A war over oil certainly doesn't seem unrealistic, given the events of the last decade. Really, it didn't seem so unrealistic in 1981, as we were less than a decade removed from the oil crisis of 1973. As time goes on, however, the Mad Max sequel The Road Warrior seems more and more prophetic. Several governments, including the United States, have gone on record with research concluding that a full-scale war over natural resources is possible. And it's not oil that you should be worrying about. It's water.
In 2005, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated, "Water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is potent fuel for wars and conflict." In 2007, the UN Environment Program concluded that genocide in Darfur had its roots in climate change and water shortages. As populations continue to grow and resources become more scarce, it seems our world could increasingly look more and more like the world of Mad Max.
And the Blind Shall See
As seen in: Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Many shows have imagined a world where the blind can see. It looks like Star Trek may have predicted how it's all going to go down. Geordi LaForge's VISOR (Visual Instrument and Sensory Organ Replacement) allows the engineer to see the electromagnetic spectrum. In 2005, a Stanford University team implanted chips behind the eyes of blind rats that process light via infrared LED images. The chips stimulate the eyes' photodiodes that act in place of lost retinal cells. The process won't allow humans to reach 20/20 vision, but 20/80 vision is considered a realistic estimate. As of 2012, the experiment was still active, but has yet to be tested on humans.
Universal Translation
As seen in: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Doctor Whoe (1964- )
It's unfortunate that our real world translators didn't end up being phone booths or fish, but you can't win 'em all. Universal translators have been a handy device in sci-fi stories for years, easily explaining away the pesky language barriers between characters. Through sci-if, we've had numerous incarnations of such devices but only Doctor Who's TARDIS and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Babel Fish have existed during the time when universal translators have started to become a reality. There have been several solid attempts at something close to a universal translator in recent years, though they all have had their limitations. Google's affordable Google Translate app is probably the best known, though it is imperfect, and only recently added a speech-to-speech feature.
In August, Sigmo released a Bluetooth-enabled device that will free you from shoving your iPhone in someone's face just to understand them, though with only 25 language sto start, it is still a ways from being universal.
Space Tourism
As seen in: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Back in 1968, space tourism seemed like a (space) flight of fancy. Almost two months ago, Virgin Galactic completed the second successful test of its Space Ship 2 over the Mojave Desert. Sir Richard Branson predicts that 2014 will be the year that the first commercial space flight actually comes to pass. If all goes according to plan, you too will be able to travel to space, provided you can throw down $20,000 as a deposit on your $200,000 ticket. All that cash will only get you 68 miles out into the wild black yonder over the course of a two-hour journey.
Ebooks and Tablets Replace Books
As seen in: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Star Trek
Since the release of Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel Return from the Stars, science-fiction has been predicting the end of paper books. Lem wrote, "No longer was it possible to browse among the shelves, to weigh volumes in hand, to feel their heft, the promise of ponderous reading. The books resembled, instead, an electronic laboratory." Our favorite pop culture pre-ebook has to be The Hitchhiker's Guide, as it makes the audacious claim to being the "the standard repository for all knowledge and wisdom."
With each passing year, Kindle storage spaces get larger and larger, while cloud storage gets cheaper. We might be closer to a book that contains all known knowledge than even Hitchhiker author Douglas Adams thought possible. Here's hoping that if such a comprehensive book is ever written it will have the wit and humor of The Hitchhiker's Guide. There should always be room for quotes like, "Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer," regardless of how much we can fit into a book.
The Surveillance State
As seen in: Enemy of the State (1998)
Many films and books have warned us of an impeding surveillance state. We don't need to tell you that; you read 1984 when you were 16 and it blew your mind. Now when every media outlet throws out the word "Orwellian," you know what they're talking about. Enemy of the State stands out among Orwellian (are we not a media outlet?) films for its eerie accuracy; many of the lines read like a script for the next decade of news. You can watch a whole series of relevant clips over at The Daily Beast, but we'll share some of our favorites. Toward the beginning of the film, a newscaster ominously states, "When buildings start blowing up, people's priorities tend to change." Will Smith's wife responds, "He is talking about ending personal privacy. Do you want your phone tapped?" Gene Hackman later says, "The National Security Agency conducts world-wide surveillance: fax, phones, satellite communications ..." Just ask Angela Merkel if these quotes sound familiar.
The Future of Advertising
As seen in: Minority Report, 2002
If you take a train in Japan you might feel like Tom Cruise. No, they won't try to convert you to Scientology (as far as we know), but you will see advertising quite similar to what you saw in Minority Report. Japanese railway companies recently rolled out a digital billboard that shows customized advertisements based on the age and gender of the looker. They don't identify people individually, but they can take a guess at demographic thanks to embedded cameras.
If you think that's intrusive, wait until you hear the other advertising advancements that Minority Report predicted that have come to pass. Google recently announced that it's working on context-based advertising that will produce "targeted ads tailored to fit what you're seeing and hearing in the real world." Industry speculation is that the next step for tech companies will be to utilize eye-tracking technology. Phrases and images that are attractive to a user will generate relevant advertising. If advertising with this method is successful, it could also aid law enforcement officials in telling how honest a suspect is being with. Whether you buy a product or steal it, your eye movements will come in handy when the police state really gets going.