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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)."
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html
Jules Verne wrote about nuclear submarines a long time before their invention. Even though this is not your typical "science fiction" book it did have an influence on people.
I think Sci-Fi has had less to do with bringing about certain technologies (still waiting on my ansible) than it has on coining terms that have been applied to technologies.
For instance, look at Neuromancer. It gave us the term "Cyberspace", which was cool, but then tried to convince us of a guy running around trying to fence one-megabyte ram sticks. Talk about dystopian...
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From dictionary.com:
Word History: Robot is a word that is both a coinage by an individual person and a borrowing. It has been in English since 1923 when the Czech writer Karel Capek's play R.U.R. was translated into English and presented in London and New York. R.U.R., published in 1921, is an abbreviation of Rossum's
Universal Robots; robot itself comes from Czech robota, "servitude, forced labor," from rab, "slave." The Slavic root behind robota is orb-,
from the Indo-European root *orbh-, referring to separation from one's group or passing out of one sphere of ownership into another. This seems to be the sense that binds together its somewhat
diverse group of derivatives, which includes Greek orphanos, "orphan," Latin orbus, "orphaned," and German Erbe, "inheritance," in addition to the
Slavic word for slave mentioned above. Czech robota is also similar to another German derivative of this root, namely Arbeit, "work" (its Middle High German form arabeit
is even more like the Czech word).
Arbeit may be descended from a word that meant "slave labor," and later generalized to just "labor."
mahlen
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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
I thought the one clear prediction Star Trek made around e-books was their rejection. Starship captains always made such a big deal about having genuine leather-bound books for their pleasure reading. Sure, e-books are fine as a query interface to a computer system, or as a data capture device. But nobody wants to use them for reading. Thirty years later the e-book makers still don't get it. Just maybe there's more to "reading a book" than the viewing of text on a page-by-page basis?
Here is one translation of the Czech play.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
How many scientists, engineers, and researchers were influenced by the books they read as kids? Asimov himself was one, though he ended up doing little research.
How much were the scientists who shot the moon influenced by Verne, Welles, and E. E. Doc Smith? If many of them were inspired by these authors' works, then the novels indeed had an impact and influence on technology.
Many authors directly and indirectly influenced our technosphere. Clarke calculated geosynchronous orbit; most satellites orbit in the belt named after him. Larry Niven's warnings about the effects of organ transplants has changed the way people approach the ethics of taking organs from executed criminals. (Incidently, the "Slashdot effect" is really nothing more than a virtual flash crowd, which Niven predicted as a result of easy teleportation.)
The early works about robots and sentient computers have influenced the direction of research in these fields. AI researchers talk earnestly about the three laws of robotics.
Terraforming was an idea first proposed in science fiction. The US First Contact Protocol is based on science fiction scenerios.
SF influences science and research because scientists tend to read science fiction. If that doesn't color our ideas of the world (which in turn influences our research), then our imagination has died.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
A snippet from a BBC News article, May 11 2000:
Science fiction powers space research
The European Space Agency (Esa) is studying science fiction for ideas and technologies that could be used in future missions.
A panel of readers is currently combing sci-fi novels and short stories published in the early decades of the last century to see if technology has caught up with ideas that were futuristic when first put into print.
Any good ideas turned up in the search will be assessed by scientists to see if they can help the agency in its ongoing mission to explore space.
Knowledgeable fans of science fiction are also being encouraged to send in suggestions to help Esa spot sources of good ideas.
(Follow link above for rest of article, interesting.)
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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
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If you're looking for good science fiction reading, check out the product literature that accompanied the launch of Microsoft's Windows 95. In it, there were descriptions of a MS computer operating system that was reliable, fast, and easy.
These bold and exotic claims were so influential, consumers actually started to want a reliable and fast OS from the company, and today, 5 years later, they are starting to produce such an operating system. It still amazes me how fiction can someday turn into fact.
The Internet is generally stupid
http://www.globalideasbank.org/BOV/BV-393.HTML
The biggest problem about getting science fiction applied in what is laughingly called 'the real world' is the old Catch-22. It is best exemplified by Arthur C. Clarke's explanation of why he is not rather better off than he actually is. When he first had the idea of the communications satellite, he tried to get it patented. 'Come, come, Mr Clarke,' said the people at the Patent Office. 'We're a serious outfit, we haven't got time to waste on fantastic ideas like this.' Years later, when the first satellite (with which Arthur was actively involved) actually went up, and the nations were queuing to get their own satellites up, Arthur went back to the Patent Office. 'But, Mr Clarke,' they said, 'the satellite already exists. You should have come to us earlier.'
Typical Bureaucratic bungling.
and there is more:
The very first paper describing the very first constellation, consisting of three satellites in geostationary orbit. Allegedly the only accurate science-fiction prediction ever. Authored by the famous Arthur C. Clarke, before the space race, before Sputnik 1, and before Arthur C. Clarke became a famous author. (There's a mirror of the paper. And now we call it the Clarke orbit, and you can simulate the original proposal.
This Page also discusses the legal issues because at the time Clarke wrote his paper, there was no way to get a satellite into orbit to begin with.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
But, I'll stick (stubbornly) by my original comments. The author thinks of what technology can do, and the engineer thinks of what to do with technology. A bit circular, and I'm feeling chatty....
The author throws the rules out the window, and does some What-If-ing.
The engineer, trained and bound by rules, but reporting to the demands of the Manager (who has read too much SciFi, and thus believes nothing is impossible), tries to find what technology can perform the task.
More simply, the author goes from task backward to technology, and the engineer goes from technology forward to task. In your post, they have the techology, and want to know what else to do with it. They are not trying to make SciFi come true. (am I nitpicking, here?)
I do think we need more dreamer-engineers, but the cirriculum and managers tend to conspire and weed them out.
George Lucas's first film, "THX-1138", introduced the concept of phone tech support based on obnoxious recorded messages. That was a very insightful film. Lucas later abandoned insight for popularity and became successful.
The first commerically successful "cyberspace" novel was "Neuromancer," by William Gibson. There are two worlds in Neuromancer: the corporeal world, run by corporations, and the cyberworld, which one "Jacks in" to via a computer hookup. IN cyberspace, data passes freely, but a lot work goes into protecting data from hackers. The protagonist is a hacker how specializes in stealing data. Sound familiar?
Gibson was so spot on that several commercial products use names from the book, eg BlackICE.
If you can find it, there is this great interview with William Gibson in which he discussed watching two kids playing pong (the original commercial video game, back in the 70s). Gibson realized that, for the players, the world behind the screen was just a real as a tennis court is to a tennis player. So Gibson pursued this "world behind the screen" metaphor and produced a striking, immersive world based an ubiquitous computers communicated via a world-wide standard network. This vision drove a lot of researchers, and still does. Many of us crave the fully, head mounted, immersive 3-D displays used in the book. But I'll take a pass on the Texas Catheter.
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
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.
For example, by the time Friday was released, in 1984, as I recall, publically available computer terminals were in existence, BBSes were how you got on-line (except for the fortunate few how knew about and had access to Usenet) and networked BBSes were about to be invented.
My own personal favorite example of an SF prediction is in Bellamy's Looking Backward which, among other things, talked about how the broadcasting of music (live performances over telephone lines as neither audio recording nor radio had been invented or conceived of when the book was written) had become common. I also seem to recall that it had some bit in there about how that led to fewer people being able to play the piano, but that may be my subsequent experiences leaking over as it's been 20+ years since I read that book.
However, it seems to me that the question is not about predictions in SF that come true, but about how SF has driven invention. If, as I say I believe above, SF is a reflection of the culture it's written in, then there can be no direct link. However, I also believe that invention is also a product of the culture it is in, so it is certainly fair to say that, if a work doesn't have a direct effect on invention, then it will necessarily reflect the environment in which the invention is made. Rarely is this made more clear than in "The Man Who Sold the Moon" where Delos D. Harriman talks about what it was like to grow up in the early part of the 20th century.
Further, if one wishes to look at that aspect more closes, I think that one could do worse than looking at the work of Dr. Lienhard of the University of Houston (not his son, who is a professor at MIT) who has a 5-minute daily radio program (and book derived therein) called "The Engines of our Ingenuity" which discusses the whole process of invention and covers quite well the methods by which people derive inspiration. The URL to reach the radio show's transcripts is http://www.uh.edu/engines
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
Thanks for a great response to my question! I've read many of the comments already, and liked a lot of the suggestions.
The reading list is not likely to include Neuromancer. Why? Because I read that one this term in a different course, with the same professor. We've already decided not to allow any overlap on the reading lists between the two courses. We are likely to be reading some early Heinlein, possibly Waldo Inc. Many people have suggested reading Jules Verne, and that is certainly a possibility; I was hoping to do more twentieth century stuff, but we'll certainly consider starting with some older material.
Tonight (or possibly tomorrow night) I will read each and every post which has been submitted (even the -1 posts). I may contact some of you via email for further discussion on some of the more interesting points raised.
Thanks again for all the terrific comments!