The 21st century is starting to feel a bit like a sci-fi novel with driverless taxis roaming around San Francisco, generative AI talking to users like humans and Elon Musk preparing a fleet of StarShips to colonize Mars.
While it can be shocking that scientists have actually been able to pull these technological advances off, many of them don’t feel too unfamiliar. Many of these inventions have been seen in science fiction long before they appear at our fingertips.
Daniel Smalley is currently researching and recreating holograms at Brigham Young University.
In an interview with the Deseret News, he explained, “Many people believe that science fiction writes the future in the sense that it inspires technologists who go ahead and seek to make things real.”
“That’s what I do,” Smalley said, adding, “And I’m not alone.”
While scientists and researchers can occasionally create technology that hasn’t been seen in science fiction, “that’s pretty rare,” Smalley said, referencing the media lab at MIT, where he got his Ph.D.
“Many of the people that I meet, at least in the space of advanced display, are to a T, without variation, seeking doggedly to create what they have read about in science fiction,” Smalley said.
With that in mind, here are three famous works of science fiction that have influenced technologists and how they have influenced the world today.
‘Star Wars’
At BYU, Smalley and his lab are working to recreate the Princess Leia projection from Star Wars — and they’re making real progress.
“Our group’s manifest destiny is to create the Princess Leia projection from ‘Star Wars’ and the Holodeck from ‘Star Trek,’” Smalley explained. “Almost everything we do connects to one of those two things.”
Smalley described the Princess Leia hologram as a “directional display.” The team uses “little particles — we could levitate them in the air and move them around while they glow through persistence of vision.”
In simpler terms, Smalley compared it to using a sparkler that will momentarily leave an image in the air.
Outside of Smalley’s research lab, “Star Wars” has been an inspiration for other technology, including advanced prosthetics, robotics and AI, laser technology and space exploration.
In fact, Space reported on a humanoid robot currently living on the International Space Station, referred to as R2.
NASA explained how this R2 was built to work “side by side with humans” and go “where the risks are too great for people.”
For example, going out of the space station poses many risks for the astronauts living there, so NASA is hoping to create a version of R2 that will be able to do work on the spacewalks.
‘Star Trek’
“Star Trek” rivals “Star Wars” in the amount of technology it has inspired. Mobile phones, tablet computers, 3D printing and its own take on holograms are just a few.
Martin Cooper, a pioneer in the mobile phone industry in the 1970s, created the first personal cellphone, “citing Captain Kirk’s communicator on Star Trek as an inspiration,” per Time magazine.
At the time, Cooper was working for Motorola, which was smaller than their rival company AT&T. His team wanted to get ahead in the mobile phone race, and after watching an episode of “Star Trek” where Captain Kirk used a communicator, they developed the first cellphone in 90 days, per Destination Innovation.
Smalley’s lab has also found inspiration in “Star Trek,” and is currently trying to recreate the show’s holodeck. This technology is an immersive virtual reality system that allows the user to interact with lifelike, 3D simulations.
The problem Smalley’s lab is up against with this project is computing power.
However, if they’re able to pull it off, Smalley and his lab want this technology to be everything sci-fi readers imagine.
“There is a lot of click-bait when it comes to science fiction technologies because they are so evocative,” Smalley said. “For our own research, we would like to say, what we’re working on is exactly what you’re imagining.”
‘Dune’
Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel has been described as the first major “ecological science fiction novel,” per Oregon Public Broadcasting.
The novel discusses the idea of “terraforming,” without using the specific term. Specifically, the desert-dwellers referred to as “Fremen” have a long-term ecological plan to turn their planet into a more habitable, water-rich place.
According to BBC Science Focus, “Dune” can be related to research Gary King is conducting at Louisiana State University, which could potentially terraform Mars.
King’s approach would introduce oxygen to Mars’ atmosphere through “photosynthesising bacteria.”
The article explained, “This process of engineering an alien world to make it more like our own, and potentially habitable by humans, is sometimes known as ‘terraforming.’”
Smalley also connected “Voice” in “Dune” to research conducted at Cambridge University.
He described “Voice” as “the precise direction and manipulation of sound as a weapon.” Smalley explained, “There’s a whole field of audio holography that seeks to manipulate what audio can and can’t do.”
While working in a lab at MIT, they worked with a visiting professor from Cambridge who was working with weaponized acoustic transducers that would be lethal to watch.
Smalley said, “There’s certainly weaponization potential in the holographic manipulation of sound, and that was treated in ‘Dune.’”