If asked to list the reasons why the arts are important to a civilized society, you might come up with a few standard chestnuts - sharing narratives that evoke empathy, instilling values, changing opinions, and catharsis to name a few. But what about invention, or even precognition?
An article published by Business Insider by Chris Weller proclaimed that in 1993 AT&T made “scarily accurate predictions about modern technology” with their “You Will” ad campaign at the time (Weller, 2015). The campaign includes images of a man video conferencing from a beach, a child asking a computer for answers, and friends selecting a movie to watch on their television.
Science Fiction or Precognition?
But is it really that impressive? Perhaps not as impressive as H.G. Wells concocting the idea of martians using a laser weapon in his 1898 War of the Worlds, sixty years before lasers were invented (Handwerk, 2016). Wells also introduced the idea of wireless email in 1923 in his novel, Men LIke Gods.
Did you happen to see Minority Report way back in 2002? The film was based on a 1952 short story by Phillip R. Dick. Some of the sci fi elements in the film, like 3-D virtual reality, don’t seem so far-fetched today, do they?
Did you know that the first cell phone design in the 1970s was inspired by Star Trek (Strauss, 2012)? It’s not the only thing inspired by the popular science fiction television series - Apple scientist Steve Perlman says that he got the idea for the groundbreaking multimedia program QuickTime from a Star Trek episode.
How do these writers and show creators seem to know the future? It seems, in a sense, humanity is only bound by its imagination. With enough focus on something that might be possible, it may just become possible.
Communications rEvolution
Take the astounding evolution of communications over the past 50 years. As a child, I wrote letters to a penpal in Scotland (whose name I initially got through our local public library.) The idea of handwriting a letter is painful to my 4th grader son - why on earth would you write when you can type an email, but why even do that when you can just FaceTime with your friend? The mechanisms of how we communicate may continually change but the desire to connect with each other and share our stories does not.
So even as we try to keep ahead of the ways that technology changes the communications field in our approach to marketing, public relations, workplace communication and evolution of traditional media (Hand, 2019), we need to keep in mind that we are still human beings connecting to each other through these different mediums, so there are some things that won’t change. But if you are looking for a bit of foreknowledge in regard to what might be around the corner in terms of technology, reading or watching a little science fiction might not be a bad place to start.
References
Diana Hand. (2019, October 4). 5 Ways Technology Has Changed the Communication Field. American
University Online. https://programs.online.american.edu/msc/masters-strategic-communication/resources/5-ways-technology-has-changed-the-communication-field
Handwerk, B. (2016, September 21). The Many Futuristic Predictions of H.G. Wells That Came True. Smithsonian; Smithsonian.com. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/many-futuristic-predictions-hg-wells-came-true-180960546/
Strauss, M. (2012). Ten Inventions Inspired by Science Fiction. Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ten-inventions-inspired-by-science-fiction-128080674/
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