Science Fiction When There's Spaceships Already?

arachnophilia writes:i see "sunshine" as a movie about human stupidity.pretty much everything that happens in the movie is the result of someone doing something really, really dumb.for starters, they need a crew of seven to hit a target like the sun. i think i could program a 386 to hit the sun. I'm not even sure i'd need a computer to do it. the sun is the larget, most massive target in the solar system by far. all you'd have to do to hit it is make sure you don't fall into orbit with it or anything else. and that's pretty easy: fire your rocket so it goes outside the ecliptic plane, and then have it turn toward the sun. why they need people on this mission in the first place, i don't know.but the one that really gets me, every time i watch this movie, is when they get trapped on the Icarus 1, and have to get back to the icarus 2 with only one spacesuit. so they fire capa in the suit, and two other guys, out of the airlock, and leave one behind to die. why not fire the other three out of the airlock, and then slowly depressurize the ship, and the guy with the suit can take his sweet time getting back?

Briterican writes:Yes. It's fun to look at some of the older sci-fi stuff (you don't even have to go very far back) to notice things like cathode ray tubes in what is meant to be the year 2500 or some such. I was just watching "Alien" the other night and the graphics technology presented is nowhere near what we have now, much less what we would have at a time when we have giant mining vessels travelling to other worlds (aka the Nostromo).I am fascinated with the things that sci-fi has either consistently overestimated (flying cars, bases on the moon and mars) or almost completely overlooked ... the ONLY example that comes to mind immediately on that second point is the internet...Although I'm sure there are other examples of older sci-fi predicting the internet (or some similar planet-wide information sharing technology), the ONLY example of such that I can think of is A Logic Named Joe - Wikipedia - from the March 1946 edition of Astounding Science Fiction - and adapted into a radio play on the brilliant (albeit dated) old-time-radio programme "X-Minus 1". It imagined a calculating machine that could be asked any question and it would give an answer. Of course the controversy came when someone asked it for advice on killing someone and it responded with a poison formula or something like that... my memory fails me.If anyone has examples of pre-1960's sci-fi that predicted the internet, I'd love to give it a read.

frako writes:well some writers do hit the nail on the head, one of the early bond movies had a GPS in his car. So did kit in knight rider. Oh and while weare by kit self driving cars are being invented now. The un invasive medical scanners from star treck well magnetic imaging comes to mind used worldwide not that portable as of yet tough George Orwell wrote a book about a world where people are being watched by others on telescreens and nobody knows when and where tghey are being watched sound familiar cameras everywhere big brother is always watchingsomeone said for predictions of the Internet well i think mark twain did it 100 years ago.