Are We in a science fiction novel?

Uh-oh… Is society on track to making the most common mistake in science fiction novels of all time? Maybe.

Here Comes The History Lesson

While it has inspired many great changes in our world, there is a reason that most science fiction novels miss out on the “happily ever after.” As good and well as it is to tamper with creation and technological advancements, when does one ask themselves if it is too much? Where is the oversight? The accountability? When does what we create become what we fear?

Science fiction novels have long served as a well of ideas to inspire society to pivot into a new era with technological advancements that make everyday life easier. Of note, many of the ideas presented in sci-fi novels took centuries to realize and then be accredited. To start easy, let us look at the trains, planes, and automobiles of our world today. In 1824, writer, journalist and publisher Thaddeus Bulgarin penned the novel Probable Tall Tales, which mentions “aerial stagecoaches” for aviation purposes. As most of us are aware, the Wright brothers did not create the first successful powered airplane until 1903, meaning that Bulgarin’s work was published 80 years before the idea of planes was even a possibility. As of 2024, there are over 100,000 planes operating each day with over six million passengers. So, while Thaddeus Bulgarin may have just wanted to add creative flare to his novel, he was a helpful inspiration for many years after his work was published. 

In fact, we can trace the inspiration for transportation and aerial advancements as far back as the mid-1600s. In 1666, Margaret Cavendish released The Blazing World, a novel that would later be known as a forerunner for the science fiction genre, which depicted the idea of “ships swimming underwater.” While there are some known recordings of submarines being built during the 1620s, it can be said that Cavendish’s novel renewed interest in the creation of underwater travel and helped spur the building of a more secure submarine in the late 1690s. Jules Verne was later inspired by the creations to write his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, which is said to have been American inventor Simon Lake’s muse for the modern submarine. Since then, these once-upon-a-time dreams have been used to change the tides of wars, advance scientific discoveries, and help build out our understanding of Earth a bit more.

Most shockingly, in 1657, author Cyrano de Bergerac published the third installment of his satirical works Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon which included the first recorded description of rocket-powered spaceflight and the invention of the ramjet. This early work is said by some to have later influenced H. G. Wells’ novel The World of Wars, published in 1897. According to research done by Professor of Victorian Literature Simon J. James, Wells’ book altered the course of history as it served as the motivation for Robert Goddard to invent the liquid-fueled rocket in 1926 and ultimately create and lead NASA's Apollo program.

Alright, you get it; yay for transportation and discovery through the seas and the skies, but we are 21st-century babies, so let's skip to the stuff that we care about…. Like our beloved screens.

 Thanks Star Trek for My Cellphone

I think we can all agree it is nice to sit down after a long day of working at our computer screens and stare at our even bigger screens while we slowly disconnect from the world… or is it? Whatever your answer may be, I promise that it was originally answered in Ray Bradbury’s 1953 science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. While the book itself should have served as a warning for the evils that come with constantly being connected to screens, it still inspired our society to create flat-screen TVs. At the time of publication, electronic television, and CRT TVs (for those younger than 30, these are the huge black boxes with the grainy screens you see on sitcoms sometimes and yell to your Mom to ask why everyone had junk in their homes) had been in use for about 20 years. However, following Bradbury’s novel, several technology companies started a race to see who might be the first to create the alluded-to “wall of screens” in the novel, with the first successful prototype being introduced in July 1964 at the University of Illinois.

You know what’s better than a wall of screens? A screen that can fit in your pocket. Never fear, dear reader; science fiction influenced your cellphones, too.

Believe it or not, Star Trek: The Original Series can take full credit for our use of LOL’s and OMG’s. In 1966, the sci-fi TV series debuted a “communicator” that acted and looked similar to what we now refer to as a “flip phone.” Thirty years after this initial clip premiered, “Motorola launched the first mobile flip phone, which, in a nod to the series, it dubbed the StarTAC,” according to an article from Micron Technology.

Now, you are probably thinking, okay great, but Star Trek is not a book, so how does that relate here? And you would be right in that thought process. However, the entire series WAS inspired by a few novels that Director Gene Roddenberry held near and dear to the heart. According to a Penthouse Interview with Roddenberry in 1976, he claimed that he wanted his show to be similar to “what Jonathan Swift did when he wrote Gulliver's Travels,” and create an intersection where both science fiction and societal commentary could converge. Additionally, a 2021 article from Screenrant points out that Roddenberry frequently credited C.S. Forester’s The Horatio Hornblower Series as serving as the blueprint for most of his character storylines, including his lead captain Robert M. April (later changed to the beloved James T. Kirk, shoutout Chris Pine version).  

In other words, despite not having a direct link to Motorola’s direct invention, science fiction novels were still key in knocking over the first domino. 

What is Reality?

Obviously, the above is just a brief summary of some of the advancements that science fiction has inspired, but there are thousands of more advancements that can be credited to earlier novels in all fields, including medicine, agriculture, architecture, engineering and so forth. At this time though, our society is creating science fiction inventions at a much faster pace than ever before, and it might not be such a good thing.

If you live in the Silicon Valley, it would not surprise me if you started to see an influx of people wandering around with a virtual reality headset on and not an ounce of self-awareness to them, similar to the characters depicted in the 21st century novel Ready Player One.

According to Louis Rosenberg — the LITERAL inventor behind the world's first functional augmented reality system, this might be a HUGE problem. In a recent interview with Screenrant, he explains that “AR is likely to make the personal information of others dangerously easy to view, and react accordingly.” For example, he claims that when walking down the street while wearing an AR device, you would have the ability to see others with a “virtual bubble above them that, not only identifies them, but also provides an overview of what they like, their ideological/political inclinations, their hobbies, and so on.” This may distort your perspective of the individual and ultimately change your reality. Rosenberg concluded that his own invention is “highly unlikely to make [the world] a better place.”

Stemming off that, an article from TechDetox points out that if adults are going to have a tough time with deciphering between AR and the real world, children are hopeless. In fact, the article states that it likely will ruin child development and create an influx of attention behavior issues.

Do They Know Me?

If the above is not scary enough, please refer to the recently published 2023 novel, Your Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill. The book centers around a small AI company that sells facial recognition to the highest bidders. Sound familiar?

A recent article from The Guardian entitled “Thanks to Amazon, the government will soon be able to track your face,” highlights the fact that Amazon has, in fact, “been supplying facial recognition technology to government and law enforcement agencies over its web services platform.” 310 million people use Amazon, and Amazon, therefore, has information and surveillance technology for each and every single one. According to the same article, “a coalition of civil liberties and human rights organizations have sounded the alarm, including the American Civil Liberties Union… asking Amazon to stop supplying its facial recognition technology to government and law enforcement agencies.” Shockingly, even Amazon shareholders and workers have joined them, voicing opposition to the company’s involvement in the business of government and police surveillance. For all, this is a major breach of privacy.

Don’t Worry, Robo Will Drive

 Maybe this is a cause for concern to a lesser degree than the two outlined above, but self-driving cars are not making the roads safer, no matter what the investors might say.

The idea of driverless cars was first mentioned in the 1940 book Magic Motorways by Bel Geddes, where he modernized the highway system in America and argued that it would be more efficient to remove humans. While the idea seems to be logical, it is in fact, anything but. In his novel, Geddes focused on the idea of removing the possibility of human error, which has not yet been fulfilled. While self-driving cars have removed the possibility of error in the operation of a vehicle, there is still the possibility of human error in coding the rules for the vehicle.

If not for human error in coding, then there is the possibility of human error in maintenance. Mary (Missy) L. Cummings, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science at Duke, informs readers in a recent article that “[AI Car] models cannot be trained and then sent off to perform well forever after. In dynamic settings like driving, models must be constantly updated to reflect new types of cars, bikes, and scooters, construction zones, traffic patterns, and so on.”

Saying the actual coding process goes smoothly and customers continue to update their model, many people do not realize that the decisions the car makes are based on predictions. If you were to type a search into Google, the platform tries to finish your sentence for you. Similarly, this occurs when a driverless car tries to decide with the hints it is receiving from the cameras and sensors it has built in. In other words, your car could be just as likely to reach a child on a bike as a shadow or vice-versa and respond differently each time.

Is ordering an Uber that tough?

 So, Are We Happy With Where We Are?

No matter what we say, there will always be people who want to advance the world forward. It is fair to say that some of these creative initiatives have spurred the world into great change, however, I believe we, as a society, are quickly reaching the turning point that most science fiction novels hit, which is, how far is too far? At what point do we need to pump the breaks and ponder the legal and societal fall-out of each new step?