I WAS having a conversation the other night with my youngest son, Norman, who has a tendency to either challenge me with mind-benders like “Why did the bike fall over?” or hypothetical questions about the future based on the TV shows and movies he watched.
In an attempt to deflect from the mind-bender, I told him there were numerous predictions about the future in popular culture like TV shows and movies that never came true, or at least, not yet.
Those my age would remember Space: 1999, a science-fiction series that aired from 1975 to 1977. Set in the year 1999, it involved hundreds of human inhabitants on the moonbase Alpha.
Well, 1999 came and went, and humans have yet to colonise the moon.
A lunar outpost was part of United States President George W. Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration”. At the time it was proposed, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) was to build the facility over five years between 2019 and 2024.
More recent proposals were made by Japan (to have a moon base in 2030) and Russia (2027-2032).
Then there was the critically acclaimed movie 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, which follows a voyage to Jupiter with the sentient computer Hal after the discovery of a mysterious black monolith affecting human evolution. A sequel, 2010, was released in 1984.
Artificial intelligence is only now showing some progress, from Apple’s Siri (a computer programme that works as an intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator) to self-driving cars, but we’re still some years away from a computer that can potentially harm humans to preserve its own interests.
And while we may not be able to beam ourselves anywhere we like using Star Trek-like transporters just yet, admittedly there are some innovations that appeared in science-fiction movies that have become a part of our daily lives today.
Jack Sackman, writing in Goliath, lists some instances when science fiction correctly predicted the future of technology.
Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987 introduced the concept of touchscreen computers. Today our phones, tablets and ATM machines are just a few of many touchscreen devices.
Tom Cruise’s 2002 film Minority Report gave us targeted advertising. Everywhere he went, advertisements were geared specifically to him and his interests. Some even referred to him by name.
The 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey featured tablet computers. Nearly 50 years later, there’s at least one tablet device in every home.
The 1990 film Total Recall had driverless cars. Google and Uber are currently conducting tests on their own version of this vehicle.
The 1982 Harrison Ford film Blade Runner, another classic, showed the characters communicating via video calls, more than 30 years before apps like Skype and WhatsApp brought people closer around the globe.
The 1984 blockbuster The Terminator had military drones. Today these deadly unmanned combat aerial vehicles are part of the military arsenals of the US, Israel, Italy, China, India, Pakistan and Turkey.
In 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture had a device called a “universal translator”. Today we have Google Translate.
The 1960s original Star Trek series amazed viewers with its wireless “communicator” device. Today some people have more than two cellphones in their pockets.
So there’s still hope for some science-fiction visions of the future. To be fair, some series were set so far ahead in the future that they might yet prove to be true.
The television series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, for example, which ran between 1979 and 1981, is set in the year 2491.
The Star Trek series timeline starts in 2151, and Star Wars doesn’t count because it’s in a galaxy far, far away.
To digress, there can also be a deeper spiritual connection to works of fiction that portray either an amazing world of beauty, innovation and pleasures (as in science fiction and tales about paradise found) or a desolate world of pain, grief and torture (horror and apocalyptic flicks).
In Islam, for example, we are told that heaven and hell will far exceed the imagination of man.
Whatever comes to mind when we visualise a paradise of beautiful gardens, filled with greenery and flowing water... the reality will be more than that.
Similarly, however bad one imagines hell to be, the tortures that await evildoers will be worse. That partly explains why I don’t watch horror movies.
And for those who are still wondering “Why did the bike fall over?” The answer was “Because it was ‘two’ tired”.
LOKMAN MANSOR, studied journalism at the University of Toledo, Ohio. He has been with the NSTP group for more than two decades, the majority of them at ‘Business Times’. He has a wide range of interests in movies and music, plays golf and the drums.