Films and television shows have sometimes depicted outrageous technologies for the sake of the narrative. Yet some of those innovations have made their way to reality. Provided below are some of the better examples of media that speculated upon the future.
All of these can be streamed online.
The Social Network (2010)
This film is one person’s take on how an app that was intended for college kids to rate each other came into existence. In that light, it can be surprising to realize just how much more influential this one man’s notion for a way of streamlining hookups has evolved into the social network giant it has become today. It is also amusing realizing just how much more litigious things have become for Zuckerberg and his site than what he was dealing with during his college days.
The Social Network is available for streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
This is a film that we are not sure many have seen outside of Bowie fans. It gets a mention because of its introduction to instant film. For those unfamiliar with the premise, Bowie plays an alien, Thomas Newton, from a water-starved planet seeking a way to return home with enough resources for his people to overcome the drought. After basking in countless TV channels at the same time, he realizes he needs money to fund his plans. Fans of the character/persona Ziggy Stardust are probably noticing a lot of similarities!
In an effort to earn the capital for investing in space flight and surviving on Earth, he patents a new sort of disposable camera that finalizes its images at nearly instant speed and contains its own film. Indeed, the notion is presented as such a novelty that it took some of us a few moments to realize why people were freaking out over this invention. This is a character who makes a killing because the idea of a pocket-size camera capable of instant photos was decades away at the time this film was released.
While Polaroid had been around since the 1940s, even the photos taken by that iconic brand of camera needed a few minutes to fully reveal their images. Nowadays, digital cameras give us high quality images at an instant and have become a standard feature of even the most basic of cellular phones.
The Man Who Fell to Earth is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Black Mirror (2011-2019)
This lengthy anthology series serves as a sort of cousin to “The Twilight Zone.” Where Twilight Zone focused on analyzing human nature, Black Mirror analyzes humanity’s relationship with technology across 22 episodes and one special.
One notable episode that comes to mind on how tech is evolving is in season 3’s “Playtest”. Cooper signs up for a cutting edge gaming simulation in the horror genre. As things progress from the plausible to the implausible, Cooper’s grip on reality shatters and things ultimately go poorly for him. What’s even more impressive is when we learn how seamless the transition from reality to game was and how little of the way through the simulation Cooper made it. While VR gaming has made several advancements since 2016, it still has quite a way to go before it reaches let alone surpasses the uncanny valley.
“Metalhead” is another standout episode, if one of the less entertaining or intelligent ones. A woman is being chased by a quadrupedal hunter-killer robot simply for seeking out a teddy bear. While military robots are nothing new and have been used for tasks like bomb disposal units, quadrupedal robots have since become considerably more affordable. One particular design, the Stanford Robotics Club’s programmable “Stanford Pupper,” is designed to teach K-12 graders about robotics.
Black Mirror is available for streaming on Netflix.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
This film gets a mention for a technology that is slowly trickling into reality, even if the provider featured in the film is a relic of the past. Of course, we are referring to commercial flights into space. While the billionaires of the planet are seeking ways to reach the stars, those have all been private enterprises driven by a select few individuals, rather than being handed off to the major airlines like Delta and American Air. Indeed, the interstellar flight of 2001 was handled by Pan American Airways, but the airline became bankrupt and its assets were carved up for sale in 1991. While there may have been other pieces of media that suggested the plausibility of mass commercial space flights, few films better capture this possibility as 2001.
2001: A Space Odyssey is available for streaming on HBO Max.
The Back to the Future Trilogy (1985, 1989 and 1990)
The trio of films about time travel featured several innovations that were ahead of their time.
- Marty makes a telephone call with his glasses, a feat that would not be achieved in reality until the advent of Google Glasses.
- During the 1980s portions of these films, Doc Brown hands a tablet-based PC to Marty. Tablet computers did not enter the market until the MS-DOS-based GridPad of 1989 and even that particular item only gained minor attention through military contracts. Most people would not begin to enjoy using a tablet-based method of computing until the launch of the first iPad in 2010.
- One last innovation we take for granted these days are the instances of biometric security and payment. There are scenes where Marty uses his fingerprint to pay for a taxi and to unlock a door. Facial recognition did not come into play until 1991 and retinal/fingerprint security methods did not really proliferate beyond government and corporate facilities until the early 2000s.
Each of the films that make up the Back to the Future Trilogy are available for streaming on Peacock.
