• Question: Do you think the science fiction books and films could ever be possible and are at all realistic for the future?

    Asked by Bernice to Elliot, Thomas on 24 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Elliot Jokl

      Elliot Jokl answered on 24 Jun 2016:

      Thanks for the question.

      When I get asked this kind of question, I remember a collection of quotes that a friend showed me where people were very pessimistic/conservative about what was possible in the future, and how silly their predictions looked. I found something similar here:

      http://didyouknow.org/predictions/

      One of my favourites is “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home”

      So I feel like I’m at risk at ending up on one of those lists, but the one thing I really can’t quite imagine is how we would be able to travel fast enough to get very far in space, because space is oh so very big and getting anywhere faster than a snail’s pace would take a very large amount of energy. So a lot of the Star Trek and Star Wars space travel stuff seems quite impossible to me.

      There are other sci fi things that I think are probably quite possible – so things like robots and artificial intelligence are areas where technology is developing at quite a good pace, and maybe some day in the very near future we will be submitting to our robot overlords.

Comments