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Science Fiction into Science Fact?
Selanit asks: "I'm a student of English literature at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, with a pronounced interest in all things tech as well. Next term I'll be taking an Independent Study course which combines the two -- the topic will be 'Influences of Science Fiction on Real-World Tech.' The professor and I are still trying to assemble a reading list. So here's my question: what science-fiction novels have had a particularly noticeable effect on the development of technology? I'm mainly interested in books that have been written since World War II. The line of inquiry is not limited to computers; any kind of link between sci-fi and hard tech will do (e.g. Cap'n Kirk's communicator == prototype mobile phone). Books that have lent a name to a technology are also interesting (like the 'Little-Endian, Big-Endian' terms which were lifted from Gulliver's Travels, or 'Babel Fish' from Douglas Adams)."
After he wrote Snow Crash, the ultimate cyberpunk novel, Neil Stephenson wrote The Diamond Age. Its key plot device was a book with leaves of paper that were computer controlled and displayed whatever the person wanted to read at the moment. Thus a single volume was the equivalent of the entire internet or library of congress or whatever. This differed from using a laptop computer because his society was "neo-Victorian" and everybody wanted to be seen with books, not computers, as a kind of status thing. The funny thing is that Electric Ink is on the verge of making this a reality and has already got posters up in department stores...
I've been told from a retired Navy man that control rooms on latter-day vessels are based on the Enterprise model, which didn't exist until the show did. Previously, key combat stations (such as the helm and tactical) were not in the same room as the skipper. Note: I have not been able to confirm or deny this story; anybody else want to?
In the original series, whenever one character handed another character computer data, the prop they used was a brightly colored square wafer. IMHO, it looked 3.5" on a side--The microfloppy.
Again, unconfirmed: did the taser descend from the "stun" setting on the phaser? Trek showed just how useful it was to have a less-lethal weapon.
The military uses needle-less pneumatic hypodermic injectors to do mass injections--perhaps lining up a regiment to all get a Tetanus booster or something. How is this related to McCoy's spray hypo? I'm not sure.
Finally, a case of ST influencing technobabble rather than technology itself. Under the Unix operating system, the graphics package (X11) easily allows for one computer to run a program, but for its windows to appear on another machine's display. This is often referred to as "Beaming the app over", based on terminology for the transporter.
--The basis of all love is respect
Predited many of todays technologies including the walkman, and real-time media. The book is particularly interesting because it correctly predicts the effects these technolgies would have on society. e.g. example walkmans have increased our social isolation.
-ShieldWolf
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
If you don't mind a bit of controversy, to put it mildly, you should include dianetics/Scientology.
Were Lafayette Ron Howard and Analog's Editor (Joseph?) Campbell pulling everyone's legs with a fake science and fake religion? Was it just a tax scam? Or was it a legitimate effort that went horribly wrong?
This isn't just an idle question - Scientologists have shut down web sites, even seized computer hardware and essentially destroyed it while the Federal courts did nothing, because they published religious "trade secrets" about the evil god Unix. I mean Xinu. I mean Xenu. (Hmm, makes you think....) They have flooded newsgroups with bogus posts to make it hard to find the on-topic posts. They have bought the top 40-odd places on search engines that provide "sponsored links," to make it hard for the casual browser to find critical sites. They have created "safe harbor" web browsers that protect their members from "objectionable" material.
You don't have to agree with my opinion of Scientologists to see how they're linked to many of the most controversial issues facing us on the 'net. And it all started with a science fiction writer and a magazine editor discussing psychology based on "science," not Freud.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The holodeck color scheme used on the "Enterprise" (black with yellow lines) is used by Nasa as the background for vector mapping when information is not known or to convey the axes. The engineers specifically requested it.
Its a small, but notable influence.
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Neuromancer was definitely his crowning achievement, and tech lingo will forever be indebted to him.
However, one of his short stories you might find really fascinating, in that he illustrates the opposite of what you are asking. In his collection of short stories Burning Chrome he has a story named "The Gernsback Continuum" where he describes visions of the future that never quite came to pass... but what if they did? Things like flying cars from the 50's and huge single airwings with 100's of propellers. Think about 20's gothic architecture and those early visions of going to the moon. It would be a nice counterpoint in your work to what were "probable" visions of the future versus what was in the imagined future.
Burning Chrome is also a good basis, because little works like "Johnny Mnemonic" and "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" show him developing the ideas that later became the astounding Neuromancer.
TurtleBlue
ps - 62-36, nice - I was there.
It's worth pointing out that Clarke's original concept involved three enormous manned space-stations in geostationary orbit, not the relatively small solid-state devices we have now. Really, Clarke's idea came down to a lot of foresight and some clever geometry. He solved a problem that nobody had even though to consider at the time.
All I can say is a) Clarke's a very clever guy who deserves an enormous amount of credit for his inventiveness, and b) thank god he wasn't able to patent that idea. As clever as he was for being the first one to have it, let's face it... If you need to send a signal over the horizon, it's not going to take long for you to hit upon the idea of geosync sattelites (assuming you have the resources to put them up.)
I can't precisely say that the solution is "obvious", but I do think a lot of communications companies would have found themselves unnecessarily shelling out to Clarke, regardless of his actual contribution to their efforts.
The term robot actually comes from a 1920's play by Karel Capek called "RUR, Rossum's Universal Robots" and is a derivitive of the Slavic word for "work". Therefore Asimov simply popularized the term. Asimov would have been about 3 when the phrase Robot was first used and 7 I believe when 'Metropolis' came to the screen. So these may have had more of an influence on his writing than anything else.
People keep brining up Jules Verne and the Nautilus but debunking the 'nuclear' aspect because the engine burned salt. What people fail to mention is the process it used to 'burn' the salt could it have been a nuclear reaction. Additionally noone mentions that the ship gets the salt from the surrounding water through either some desalinization process (too long) or a shorter electrochemical process like a catalytic converter. Parrallels to these processes would be the ramjet/scramjet that collects it's fuel from the surrounding atmosphere and current fuel cell and hybrid engines that are designed to convert simple water into base elements for consumption.
There also has been no mention of the "fulgurator" which holds more than a passing resemblance to a nuclear missile/atom bomb.
"Water is the coal of the future. The energy of tomorrow is water broken down into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity. These elements will secure the earth's power supply for an indefinite period."
Jules Verne -- 1874
Please anyone correct me if I'm wrong on any of these points
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon