Science Fiction Films And Tv Shows Whose Visions of the Future And Technology Predictions Have Become Obsolete.

[GAROVORKIN]

Nothing ages quicker then science fiction in terms  of its  Technology predictions , overall visions of the Future worlds and the dates its future worlds will be set in. Which Films and  tv show have not aged well and have  in effect become obsolete? 

 

Thoughts ?

[Rhom]

Back to the Future is pretty obvious.  Still waiting on my Hoverboard and the ability to control the weather.  We have moved past Mr. Fax however. 

[GAROVORKIN]

5 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Back to the Future is pretty obvious.  Still waiting on my Hoverboard and the ability to control the weather.  We have moved past Mr. Fax however. 

Im still waiting for Mr Fusion .  Where are the Flying Cars we were promised . And where are  the personal warp drive Jet pacts we were All promised? 

 

But they almost got the date of the Chicago Cubs Winning the World series correct. 

 

[Corvinus85]

In terms of getting the dates right, the majority have failed, which is not a surprise.

In terms of getting technology right any movie that simply took present day tech and just slightly advanced it further, has come up short, mainly due to a failure of imagination or ambition. For example, communication tech where characters are, essentially, using a small, yet bulky TV (see Aliens or Total Recall), has failed in this regard.

Personally, I had given up on the concept of flying cars, until the recent announcements from Uber (and I think Elon Musk). I guess it's never too late for certain things.

[polishgenius]

26 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

(and I think Elon Musk)

You have to take any pronouncement from Musk with a huge pinch of salt (and I have no idea what Uber said but I'd trust them even less: at least Musk has delivered on some of his talk so far).

[Corvinus85]

19 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

You have to take any pronouncement from Musk with a huge pinch of salt (and I have no idea what Uber said but I'd trust them even less: at least Musk has delivered on some of his talk so far).

Uber wants self-driving, electric cars for really crowded urban areas, that would transport people between various main points in a city (ex. downtown to airport). I think they're looking at L.A. to start.

[polishgenius]

8 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Uber wants self-driving, electric cars for really crowded urban areas, that would transport people between various main points in a city (ex. downtown to airport). I think they're looking at L.A. to start.

Yeah, but self-driving flying cars?

If we're talking pure self-driving then Musk's proclamations on that are one of the big reasons I don't trust him, in particular when he dates stuff or proclaims it to be certainly possible, coz his enthusiasm to turn the road network mostly self-driving within ten years trivialises the moral and attending legislative aspects of that happening (he acknowledges it in passing, but it's gonna take more than ten years to sort it) and the cost to the average person of transferring to a self-driver even if they wanted to.
Compared to that, Uber's plan is actually much more reasonable.

[boojam]

3 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Nothing ages quicker then science fiction in terms  of its  Technology predictions , overall visions of the Future worlds and the dates its future worlds will be set in. Which Films and  tv show have not aged well and have  in effect become obsolete? 

 

Thoughts ?

What about movies where the science fiction technology trumped the present? About any TV SF show that had Faster Than Light interstellar travel,.actually , Star Trek was about the only show that understood what this meant , or that interstellar distances were completely different from interplanetary.

Lost in Space just had Irwin Allen nonsense.

Of course 2001:A Space Odyssey totally outclassed what came to be. Manned space flight and Uber AI , that films milieu passed into another universe in 2001.

[GAROVORKIN]

Blade Runner took place in the year 2017 and our current world doesn't look a thing like it .  No flying cars and no replicants and no off world colonies as of yet. 

[boojam]

41 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Blade Runner took place in the year 2017 and our current world doesn't look a thing like it .  No flying cars and no replicants and no off world colonies as of yet. 

The time (in the movie story) was November 2019 (I still don't know why a month was specified). That world is about to pass into an alternate universe , soon. I tell ya 2049 will not look like Blade Runner 2049. 

I give 2001 a by the 'date deal'* , even tho Clarke and Kubrick seemed think it was plausible , I remember seeing the film in 1968 and saying to myself then 'aint gonna be like that in 2001' and it was not.

But you said  Obsolete , absolutely nothing about 2001 is obsolete! It makes the present look obsolete!!

*Why a date? LIke 2019 or 2049? Prose science fiction writers back in the 1940s . in general (tho not absolutely) adopted two ploys for future fiction settings, especially for interstellar flight, one was to set it 200 to 300 years in the future, Roddenberry adopted this, the other give no date at all! Leave it open , what the hell is so damned important about a date? Story works just dandy for me if it is left up to my imagination.

[Werthead]

Clarke was pretty adamant that what we saw in 2001 would have happened by 2001 if America had maintained the momentum it had in the space race in 1968. He wasn't expecting them to pretty much give up large-scale space exploration the second they reached the moon just a year later and start pouring money into the military-industrial complex. He was quite adamant that the Vietnam War by itself would have paid for half the stuff on screen in 2001.

I think it would be more interesting to see what predictions of the future have come true. Star Trek got iPads right, cyberpunk got the idea of a worldwide data network right (although the specifics were rarely gotten right) and so on. The biggest problem I think is that almost all SF dodges the AI problem: Babylon 5 says that hyper-advanced AI was outlawed, Star Trek seems to say that super-intelligent AI is beneficial and helpful (although it occasionally tips into self-awareness and then near-inevitable chaos), Blade Runner ignores it but 2049 then nods in its direction and Star Wars says that sentient AI can be developed and will be immediately and cheerfully enslaved.

[GAROVORKIN]

57 minutes ago, boojam said:

The time (in the movie story) was November 2019 (I still don't know why a month was specified). That world is about to pass into an alternate universe , soon. I tell ya 2049 will not look like Blade Runner 2049. 

I give 2001 a by the 'date deal'* , even tho Clarke and Kubrick seemed think it was plausible , I remember seeing the film in 1968 and saying to myself then 'aint gonna be like that in 2001' and it was not.

But you said  Obsolete , absolutely nothing about 2001 is obsolete! It makes the present look obsolete!!

*Why a date? LIke 2019 or 2049? Prose science fiction writers back in the 1940s . in general (tho not absolutely) adopted two ploys for future fiction settings, especially for interstellar flight, one was to set it 200 to 300 years in the future, Roddenberry adopted this, the other give no date at all! Leave it open , what the hell is so damned important about a date? Story works just dandy for me if it is left up to my imagination.

The date is a a consideration in obsolesces 

in the case to 2001, It looks good an many place and looks a bit quite in others . given the fact that this 2017 and the world is vastly different then the one projected , its obsolete.  Also In 2001 and its sequel 2010 the Soviet Union still existed.

Sorry I got the date of Bladerunner  off by 2 years. Nevertheless   its 2017 and the wold looks nothing like that  And did happen to forget the window with 20th century television sets and no Flat screen tv, and the Atari sign ? The technology and computer displays  in the film look dated.  

[boojam]

9 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

The date is a a consideration in obsolesces 

in the case to 2001, It looks good an many place and looks a bit quite in others . given the fact that this 2017 and the world is vastly different then the one projected , its obsolete.  Also In 2001 and its sequel 2010 the Soviet Union still existed.

Sorry I got the date of Bladerunner  off by 2 years. Nevertheless   its 2017 and the wold looks nothing like that  And did happen to forget the window with 20th century television sets and no Flat screen tv, and the Atari sign ? The technology and computer displays  in the film look dated.  

Why the word Obsolete ?

Def: Obsolete - in or according to styles or types no longer current or common; not modern.

Everything in 2001 is more than modern , all the technology exceeds anything had at present in this universe.

I think the word you are looking for is 'transpire' or 'came to pass' , not obsolete.

All the technological elements in 2001 are based on known physics and engineering physics that existed in 1968. This is the real triumph good prose science fiction. Take known facts and extrapolate them to a technology that can exist.

Sometime I see SF used in the manner of "what was silly science fiction" has now become science fact. God I wish that kind of phrasing would go away!

 

[Eggegg]

Pretty much every science fiction movie from the 60's / 70's where computers are enormous and have huge dials and nobs you need to turn to use the controls. I'm sure in the future most interfaces with be activated with your mind or something like that (the technology is sort of there already). So every Star Trek or Doctor Who basically.

I also think that gene therapy and genetic manipulation will be enormous in the future, and is vary rarely touched on in when dealing with the future in movies.

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, boojam said:

Why the word Obsolete ?

Def: Obsolete - in or according to styles or types no longer current or common; not modern.

Everything in 2001 is more than modern , all the technology exceeds anything had at present in this universe.

I think the word you are looking for is 'transpire' or 'came to pass' , not obsolete.

All the technological elements in 2001 are based on known physics and engineering physics that existed in 1968. This is the real triumph good prose science fiction. Take known facts and extrapolate them to a technology that can exist.

Sometime I see SF used in the manner of "what was silly science fiction" has now become science fact. God I wish that kind of phrasing would go away!

 

I believe obsolete in the sense that it didn't happen the way that particular story predicted, therefore that reality is "obsolete". Of course, a lot of stuff we've seen in SF films can still happen, but since they may happen at a later date, it will be a different reality.

[boojam]

1 hour ago, Corvinus said:

I believe obsolete in the sense that it didn't happen the way that particular story predicted, therefore that reality is "obsolete". Of course, a lot of stuff we've seen in SF films can still happen, but since they may happen at a later date, it will be a different reality.

Or happen in a universe next door.

[HexMachina]

13 hours ago, Eggegg said:

Pretty much every science fiction movie from the 60's / 70's where computers are enormous and have huge dials and nobs you need to turn to use the controls. I'm sure in the future most interfaces with be activated with your mind or something like that (the technology is sort of there already). So every Star Trek or Doctor Who basically.

I also think that gene therapy and genetic manipulation will be enormous in the future, and is vary rarely touched on in when dealing with the future in movies.

All hail Neolution!

(not a film and not set in the future but the most recent and prominent example to spring to mind)

[boojam]

On 11/21/2017 at 5:26 AM, Eggegg said:

Pretty much every science fiction movie from the 60's / 70's where computers are enormous and have huge dials and nobs you need to turn to use the controls. I'm sure in the future most interfaces with be activated with your mind or something like that (the technology is sort of there already). So every Star Trek or Doctor Who basically.

 

Knobs and dials do not make the engineering physics wrong.

Destination Moon, 1950, had 50's state of the art instrumentation which would have worked! The rocket ship in that film was atomic powered , which could be done, could have been done, a few were built in the 1960s, but does not exist now as a form of rocket propulsion. Another case of science  fiction trumping the present!

All the controls and instruments in 2001 are not in any way obsolete  in the present. We still don't have an AI like HAL , and it might even take a large scale solid state instrumentality as depicted on the movie to construct a HAL. We have no idea how to made a HAL.

[GAROVORKIN]

6 hours ago, boojam said:

Knobs and dials do not make the engineering physics wrong.

Destination Moon, 1950, had 50's state of the art instrumentation which would have worked! The rocket ship in that film was atomic powered , which could be done, could have been done, a few were built in the 1960s, but does not exist now as a form of rocket propulsion. Another case of science  fiction trumping the present!

All the controls and instruments in 2001 are not in any way obsolete  in the present. We still don't have an AI like HAL , and it might even take a large scale solid state instrumentality as depicted on the movie to construct a HAL. We have no idea how to made a HAL.

 

For the record Boojam , Im  not knocking theses films  and shows . None of us are. 

[Liver and Onions]

Do we want an AI like Hal? I mean, he's efficient, but...

This reminds me of the Clockwork Orange film. The design looked like the 1970s lasted forever, but it works well even today. I don't know much about the making of the film, but perhaps it was a deliberate choice to remove the film from time progression to make it timeless? 

Given that's design aesthetic versus the technology presented. Reminds me of a MST3K joke- "wall mounted keyboards... it must be.... the FUTURE!"