Films and books dream big – what was once just imaginings on the page or screen can become everyday technology. Being open to ideas could be the next start-up goldmine. Here we look at coolest gadgets in film.
Pasiv device – Inception (2010)
Hook your team up to the shared dream space machine and they occupy the same lucid dream, interacting in a world of their own design.
Might it prove the ultimate virtual reality, with definition and detail computers could never replicate?
Likelihood: We need to decode the whole brain first to learn how dreams work and where they live, so no time soon.
Date: Year 2100 or beyond.
Weaponised flying armour – Iron Man (2008)
The paradox in robot power is that the on-board energy needed makes the system heavier, which needs more energy in turn, etc. Getting it off the ground will be the trickiest challenge.
But whatever company solves it stands to make squillions in military contracts.
Likelihood: Ultralight materials will make flight more likely than iron, but make it more vulnerable to sneering villain attack.
Date: 2025
Time machine – various
While literal transport to another point in history remains scientifically impossible, orbit the Earth at near light speed for an hour and everyone else will be decades old when you come back. Might there be an industry for space-borne tourists who want to live to see the far future?
Likelihood: Time, gravity and speed affecting each other is a principle of physics already, but as for the HG Wells and Doc Brown methods, Einstein says ‘never’.
Date: 2150, when we can build something fast enough.
Hoverboard – Back to the Future Part II (1990)
Just in time for the 2015 deadline, the Hendo Hoverboard exists, poised to capture a new generation of shredders. Even Buzz Aldrin and Tony Hawk have used one.
Likelihood: You can only use the Hendo on the correct magnetic surface, but for $10K you can preorder it now.
Date: Now
Holodeck – Star Trek: TNG (1987)
Rather than an empty room made of gridlines, simulated reality is going to be generated by devices in contact with your body, from an Oculus Rift-style headset to gloves that promise realistic digital feedback from the virtual world.
Likelihood: The components are rudimentary, but one day they’ll be synthesised into a whole experience, perhaps delivered by an all-in-one body appliance.
Date: 2022
Universal Replicator – Star Trek: TNG (1987)
Fabricating almost anything we need around the home using 3D printing might upend the supply and demand economy, and advances in printing transplant-compatible human tissues (www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131218100227.htm) and organs and even food (http://www.naturalmachines.com) are coming.
Likelihood: If we buy a machine that can make anything, will the commodity market survive? Maybe powerful interests will obstruct it.
Date: 2030
Teleportation – various
Scientists have already achieved data teleportation using quantum entanglement, but a person is something else entirely.
Mapping, disintegrating and reintegrating a complete human accurately is a huge computational task. What if it misses a single neural connection and you’re rebuilt believing your name’s Betty instead of George?
Likelihood: Like Inception’s dream machine, we need to know much more about our neural and cellular makeup before we start manipulating them.
Date: Inanimate objects: 2050. People: Beyond 2100.