I was thinking about this today, and I realized just how much life has become like a 70s sci-fi novel. I mean, almost everyone carries a small, slim, portable device that basically has access to all known knowledge in the world. It can be used for almost everything, from quick e-mails to entertainment.

We have the capability to build entire virtual worlds with our powerful computers, and even now the technology to building something from a computer program (3D printing) is being developed. People can now communicate with incredibly diverse and anonymous communities with the Internet.

And look at the predictions Back to the Future II made. Sure we have no hover boards/cars, and neon isn't back in (or is it?), we can still converse with people on a screen. And I think there's a self-lacing shoe in development, too, so there's that. Even in Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, he described students with their "desks", with sounds a lot like a tablet to me. And even machines and robots doing much of everything for humans is and is becoming more of a reality with each passing year.

Basically, with today's world, people from forty or even thirty years ago will be astonished at how much technology and society has progressed. So, do you think life is becoming more like a sci-fi? How different will technology and society be ten years from now? Would we be augmenting humans with robotic prosthetics? Discuss.

It is not uncommon for good scifi to predict the future of technology.

The laser featured in scifi literature long before one was built and Arthur C. Clarke invented the communications sattelite in the short story The Fountains of Paradise.

Continuing on this trend what I can see becoming a real device in the future is the softscreen featured in modern sf novels, among which those by Stephen Baxter.

This is a computer as thin and malleable as a paper towel or hankerchief that you can just fold up and put in a pocket when you don't need it.

Circa 2060

"Damn kids, back in my day my PC actually had a keyboard and we had to physically type out we wanted to say, and there were only 1080 p's on them screens."

Dune had something similar if I recall. Well not quite, but it is similar. A book who's paper is so thing because it is essentially just atoms being turned. It was a way to compress the entirety of human faith and religion into one book. You needed to turn the pages with an electrical current because of how many pages there were. I can't recall the name or if I am even describing it accurately, but it would be pretty cool to have a book like that.

It is funny when tech goes in completely different directions than people expect though. All Sci Fi has people talking to their computers, for example, but in reality no one really likes voice recognition software for anything more than novelty value. And who would've thought text messages would be so hugely popular when video chat is readily available?

I'm not disagreeing there, I was just struck with a sudden "OMG I'm living in a sci-fi world" today.

A softscreen sounds pretty cool. I myself think that light-reflecting/invisible fabrics will become commonplace next decade, but then again, if there's one thing a sci-fi novel/cinema cannot predict, it's fashion.

Niven's Ringworld fetaured a knife/ sword which was a one-molecule thick string held rigid by a stasis field.

It could cut your head off and you wouldn't know you were dead until you tried to nod.

Was there some sort of mechanism involved in Dune to avoid papercuts?

I love GPS navigation systems because they remind me of the days when I played old games with overview maps and indicators, and thought, "damn, how cool would it be if there was something like this in real life." Watching these 3D digital map representations of my surroundings while in a car feels so strange, as if the digital world and the physical one is being more and more intertwined. It's a little difficult to describe, but being the arrow on the map in person gives me a nerdgasm.

I hope I live long enough to see a scifi society full of sixy alien women looking for a captain to pilot their ship

I'm sure people were saying that life was becoming like a Jules Verne novel years ago. I think the saying is that life imitates art, I think it's because scientists grow up watching science fiction, and are inspired by the stuff in the books/films in their research.

Would love to see construction of a real life Rapture, though.

The future generations of tech users will have an 'app mentality'. I'm not so sure that is a good thing.

Burning Chrome 1982 W. Gibson

coined the word cyberspace.

Do you mean something like this? http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2012-08-07/0807_apple_630x420.jpg

I also could see holograms working out for the military in the near future, like this. http://www.fxguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Halo4_002.jpg

Still waiting for flying cars and sassy robot maids. And teleporting. Where's my teleporting?

Nah, that's a holographic screen.

I'm talking a physical computer, like a tablet, the thinkness and bendability of a large hankerchief perhaps.

You just fold it up and keep it in a pocket when not needed.

I'd be too scared to get in a teleporter, mostly because it could actually kill me and reassemble an exact clone of me on the other side.

This thread reminds me of an interview I read recently.. it's a good read.

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/09/interview-james-gunn-talks-about-transcendental-the-history-of-science-fiction-and-how-it-can-save-the-world/

Not could, would. That's how matter teleportation works. By sending the information that at the destination will become the original, you destroy the original.

But still, Descartes and all that, there won't be any difference between the old and new you.

Cloth/fiber material? May be possible.

Ah, I see. I have seen concept art for a watch that works that way, it looked pretty cool.

You're right, 1984 is getting closer and closer.

Yeah, sorry, that's what I meant. I don't want to die that early.

But it won't be death, you'd still be you down the fundamental particles.

It's just that as far as the bookkeeping of the universe is concerned, so to speak, you stopped existing here and started existing there without any time passing.

No, no, not Star Trek teleporation. It'd have to be the real space-foldin' deal for me to try it. Otherwise it's just a cloning machine with the disintegrator attachment. No thanks. Then again, who's to say that when you wake up in the morning you're the same person you were when you went to sleep?