Science fiction writers and directors love creating high-tech visions of the future. Over the years, their collective imagination has dreamed up possible futures that are awesome, amazing, terrifying, and often totally wrong.
Such imaginative speculation isn’t necessarily a crime or even a mistake. After all, it’s just fiction: a bit of fun exploring what might be. It’s not a rigorous, results-oriented slog—that’s for the programmer nerds back in the salt mines. Science fiction is an expedition where we let our imaginations run wild.
Science fiction creators have also been right at least some of the time. Some sci-fi visions have even helped steer the evolution of technology. Star Trek‘s hand-held “communicators,” for instance, might have inspired flip phones.
