I have officially immersed myself in the Social Media sphere. So what does that have to do with books, writing, and the title of this blog post? Just wait, I’m getting there.
Having been put in charge of my office’s social media, I started subscribing to Mashable and TechCrunch. And wouldn’t you know that instead of reading about all of the new advances in technology, I was captured by an article on Mashable titled “11 Astounding Sci-Fi Predictions that Came True.” The main premise of this article is that it is only natural that a few sci-fi inventions/predictions would become reality. There are so many sci-fis out there, how could a few authors not manage to get a few things right? But what struck me about the article was a completely different idea – do inventors invent things because sci-fi has shown them that they are possible? Does sci-fi plant the seeds into the heads of children and adults that then grow into our technological advances?
Ideas Spawned from Literature
All inventors come up with their ideas from somewhere. Who’s not to say that reading about a “newspad” in 2001: A Space Odyssey didn’t give the brains at Apple the idea for the iPad? Sure, these technological advances may have come around without the help of sci-fi, but to dismiss the foreshadowing as mere coincidence? I don’t know. I’m not quite buying it.
Does sci-fi influence our future? Are we planting seeds in our readers heads about what the future can hold, and by doing so, encouraging them to create that future? Or are similarities in the predictions of books to the realities of the future merely coincidence?
