DailyDirt: Build It And They Will Come...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, May 24th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Certain kinds of science fiction could almost be considered far-out predictions. Star Trek crew members used tablet computers decades ago, and now the tablet computing market looks like it could take over PCs. Certainly, there's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy for some sci-fi technology, and here are just a few examples.

Practical fusion is always just 30 years away, but a dilithium-powered Star Trek Enterprise could take just 20 years to build. Okay, we're joking about the dilithium chamber, but there's an engineer who isn't joking about building his own NCC-1701. [url]
The Make-A-Wish Foundation helped to create a pretty cool Millennium Falcon for a 9-year-old kid. It's obviously not a full-scale model, so no Kessel runs or hyperdrive. [url]
Browncoats aren't left out of the fun here: a 12-foot long Serenity ship exists in the Universal Archives. Real fans want to know if there's a miniature dead Wash at the helm.... "I am a leaf on the wind - watch how I soar." [url]
To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Filed Under: browncoats, enterprise, firefly, millenium falcon, ncc-1701, serenity, star trek, star wars

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Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2012 @ 9:00pm

firefly & Aliens
Found out today that Firefly and Aliens exist in the same universe... so that also mean Predators exist in the Firefly universe, too.
http://screencrush.com/firefly-prometheus/
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Rekrul, 25 May 2012 @ 12:02am

Building the Enterprise...
Interesting that he chose the refit Enterprise rather than the original.

As for the serenity model;

For those who would like to own a replica, but can't afford an expensive garage kit, there's a very detailed paper replica that you can download and print out. Photos of the finished model look quite impressive.
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Richard, 27 May 2012 @ 12:00am

Accurate versus inaccurate predictions
With science fiction, an activity one could do is to compare the predictions that came true to the predictions that haven't happened yet (and, for that matter, technologies that actually came into existence but which were not anticipated in the past by science fiction.) In "When the Tripods Came," the 1984 prequel to the Tripods trilogy by John Christopher, the author talks about science fiction predictions failing many more times often than successfully guessing future developments. (To be sure, there have been predictions that came out roughly accurate, such as H.G. Wells and the use of tanks in military warfare.) In fact, the prequel was written in part because a leading British science fiction author was doubtful of the trilogy's premise, in which three-legged alien Tripod machines take control over most of humanity, and a small group of persons must work to free mankind. How could alien invaders that used searchlights (instead of infrared night-vision) be taken seriously by advanced civilization? (Among other things, the first of the books in the trilogy was written in the late 1960s, when infrared technology was mostly relegated to laboratories.)
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Rekrul, 28 May 2012 @ 4:25pm

Re: Accurate versus inaccurate predictions
With science fiction, an activity one could do is to compare the predictions that came true to the predictions that haven't happened yet (and, for that matter, technologies that actually came into existence but which were not anticipated in the past by science fiction.)

Science fiction has long predicted the rise of the video phone, but it's only now just starting to sort of catch on with Skype. It has also predicted self-sufficient robots that can walk around the house and do chores, but the most advanced robots we have are really only good for simple tasks like delivering mail. SF tells us that computers will be able to understand spoken commands, but voice recognition still has a long way to go before it can understand much beyond a few key words in a sentence. Cloning and growing replacement organs still doesn't work.

On the other hand, I'm not aware of any SF that accurately predicted the popularity of video games.
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Michael Ho (profile), 29 May 2012 @ 11:58am

Re: Re: Accurate versus inaccurate predictions
Star Trek predicted a "Google Glasses"+an addictive video game... :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is12anYx2Qs
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