SCI-FIC a REALITY ?

When science fiction becomes a reality...

From talking robots to self-driving cars, modern technology was envisioned in films and books long before reality. As the International Exhibition of Inventions opens in Geneva, we look at real-life sci-fi.

Once again, thousands of groundbreaking ideas are being presented at the world's most significant inventions fair in Geneva, ranging from everyday gadgets to high-tech industrial novelties. The annual event shares some unusual innovations, including an "exoskeleton" that enables a paraplegic athlete to run and a humanoid robot that welcomes visitors in the entrance hall of the Geneva airport and at the fair.

Quite a few things that once only existed in science fiction films or literature have long become a reality. 

Visions for future technologies 

Innovations usually entail a break with prevailing rules and regulations. And in some cases, they have been inspired by courageous writers and film directors. After all, science fiction creates dreams that, later on, serve as a basis for engineers who attempt to realize these dreams.

French author Jules Verne is seen as the father of the science fiction genre. Already in the mid-19th century, he wrote about a human-crewed spaceflight to the moon and the exploration of the oceans with the help of submarines. The constructions described in his novels weren't always practical. After all, the first astronauts weren't shot into the universe with a cannon. But his ideas have inspired scientists who subsequently tried to put them into practice. His rotary-based flight platform "Albatros" described in his novel "Robur the Conqueror" (1886) is alleged to have inspired Igor Sikorsky to invent modern helicopters more than 50 years later.

Future ethics

But science fiction can achieve much more than just looking into the future. It also provides the means for developing ethical guidelines that may become applicable when the time comes. Writers like Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley have warned of totalitarian states that control the populace using surveillance techniques. Orwell's "1984" still resounds even 70 years after its first publication in 1949; it became the number one Amazon bestseller after Donald Trump was elected US president.

Here are a few lists of Sci-fi Movies:-

1. Back to the Future

2. The Terminator

3. Judge Dredd

4. Total Recall

5. Star Wars

6. Jurassic Park

7. The Matrix

8. Star Trek

9. The Martian

10. Gravity

11. WALL-E

If we talk about the director James Cameron, a Canadian filmmaker, philanthropist, and deep-sea explorer. After working in special effects, he found major success after directing and writing the science fiction action film The Terminator, Avatar, Aliens, etc.

Strange Relationship with Reality

The relationship between science fiction and reality is a curious one. In many ways, the predictions made in science fiction become self-fulfilling. People see a product in a movie or a book; they like it, and demand grows among enthusiastic technologists, leading someone to invent it. There is an almost reciprocal relationship, with fantasy and reality feeding off another. Author Jack Womack even went as far as to suggest that William Gibson's vision of cyberspace in Necromancer may have steered the Internet in the direction that it has gone. At the same time, many believe that Wells's prediction of the atomic bomb inspired Dr Leo Szilard, the man who split the atom, to use nuclear technology for destructive purposes.

Technology in science fiction is created primarily for two reasons - to function in the new world that the author has made. The author sees current technology evolving in that fashion and society developing too to suit this technology. So it is logical that those science fiction works that most accurately predicted how the society we live in functions are going to be the most accurate when it comes to predicting the technology that we have.

Steven Spielberg's 2002 movie Minority Report, based on the Phillip K Dick short story, has proven to be among the most prescient in predicting technology that is now in the early stages of development. Its central concept of predictive law enforcement is already proving correct, as police departments turn to data analytics to find patterns in criminal activity that could help them foresee crimes before they occur. Minority Report also included adverts that would appear for different individuals based on information about them, something that is already commonplace online and is now making its way into shops. Tesco is one of several retailers to have installed scanners in its stores that read customers' faces to determine their gender and target adverts at them accordingly.