5 Minutes from Now - How Reality Becomes Science Fiction

In the 20th century most of us have grown up with amazing visions of futuristic technologies from flying cars to flying cities, from devices that can easily tap into all the information in the world to virtual worlds we can enter which will be all but indistinguishable from the real world.

Of course as the technology of the real world advances, the bar for Science Fictional technology is raised. The invisible race between the real technology we see all around us and the virtual technology depicted in Science Fiction books, movies and television shows is one we generally never even notice is going on. But if we look all around us with fresh eyes, we can find ourselves living in a Science Fiction world.

Consider the urban street of a business or upscale district today which is filled with people talking into thin air via wireless earphones and microphones that look like something out of Tron or some 80's SciFi movie. Except these are entirely real and part of our daily world.

Take a look at the PAD's, the squares commonly carried around Star Trek The Next Generation, which accessed and exchanged data with the starship computer. They consisted of a transparent touch screen filled with icons. Scale it down today and we call it the new iPhone. It's no coincidence that the iPhone is so popular, it's a Science Fiction device made real.

Take a look at an 80's cell phone for that matter and match it to Captain Kirk's communicator. Captain Kirk's device was a lot more decorative and cruder and less digital but we are looking at a similar design. Or we can take a look at some of Dick Tracy's gadgets too.

If anyone from 1955 were to catch the launch of the Space Shuttle, they would see an amazing massive rocketship rising in flame to the sky as part of a tremendously impressive operation. Today we just change the channel. Familiarity with technology breeds contempt. The magic device of yesterday becomes a familiar part of our world which we no longer pay attention to. The Mars probes are interesting only because we haven't spent much time on Mars. By contrast once we spent enough time walking on the moon, no news service will even bother to cover a lunar probe.

In part this is because of the nature of our species. We love the exploration of frontiers but quickly grow bored with our past accomplishments. Once reaching the Pole was a struggle and an adventure that transfixed much of the world. Today it borders on a resort for scientists. But in part it is also because we quickly grow habituated to what we already have.

It's easy to take our ability to check digital maps on the fly or play nearly endless amounts of songs wherever we go. Predictions are now being made of a robotic device in every home within a decade. Unlike the Science Fiction robots, it simply means incrementally smarter automated appliances like the Roomba that perform their tasks on a schedule. The old style telephone landlines are approaching extinction. And the virtual world is rushing closer toward us as more people now spend time in Second Life and World of Warcraft than are citizens of some European nations. All of this is not Science Fiction. It is simply the way we live.

There are two kinds of future Science Fiction scenarios. The usual one often takes place decades or centuries or even millennia away in the future. The other one takes place in a 5 minutes from now future, a world that looks a lot like our one but happening in the very near future. Minority Report, Earth Final Conflict and many others all take place in that 5 minutes from now future. As Alvin Toffler demonstrated in Future Shock, we all live in the 5 minutes from now future, now.

Within a few years streets filled with people seemingly talking to themselves have become something we take for granted. Once change happens we accept it and adapt to it and begin to live that way. The older we are, the more difficult that transition can be to make. But that too is overstated. Senior citizens have become the fastest growing segment of the internet. In the end we are all human. We adapt.

More interesting is the question of the intersection between Science Fiction and modern technology. Science Fiction often has the idea right but the implementation wrong. Flying cars and walkie talkie watches were entirely feasible from a technological standpoint. We have them today. We can build them and use them. But they are unworkable from a practical standpoint. A sky full of flying cars would present too many practical problems in an urban environment. A watch we can talk into is an inelegant and awkward solution at best. The cell phone has become the central integrating point for our appliances. The real problem has not been how to miniaturize technology. We're already there. The problem has been how to make their interfaces accessible despite their miniaturization, a problem that companies like Apple, Motorola and Microsoft are all tackling in different ways.

As we move forward into the future, advancing 5 minutes from now into the future, in every 5 minute increment of our lives, the problems and challenges of technology that are worked out behind the scenes reshape our reality into Science Fiction. A privatized space program now looks likelier than ever while a government space program seems like an outdated fossil. A global data network that can feed us data at a touch is here but has brought as much bad as good with it. People are vanishing into virtual worlds in spirit but not in body leaving behind broken marriages while creating new social relationships.

Science Fiction is a projection of an idea of what is to come but as we live it, we reshape and recreate it into reality with the choices we as a society and a global tool using culture make.