I thought to post this in SciFi, but it's more tech related. As title says, I was wondering are there any ideas or works of science fiction that became real technology? Also, how important SciFi is for generating tech ideas nowadays?
The moon landings were science fiction at one stage. So was TV. So was satellite communication. Computers small enough to carry. The helicopter. Horseless carriages (a.k.a. cars). Submarines and scuba gear. Talking motion pictures. There's a very long list.
The last line of the OP talks about Scifi actually inspiring new technology. That list would be much, much shorter than one including everything vaguely fantasized about and obvious things that just appeared in fiction before they were possible in reality. Arthur C Clarke's 1945 proposal of satellite communications stands out tof me as a rare gem. I don't cell phones qualify, because the idea of making them handheld was near immediately obvious. Maybe I'm a crumudgeon, but I don't put a lot of stock in the innovation potential of Sci fi. I think that's mostly a popular layman's fantasy.
Video telephones. The Space Shuttle. The Internet (The Machine Stops was written in 1909.) Voice recognition and synthesis. Accident avoidance. 3D printers. Tablets. Google Glasses. Facial recognition. Wireless power. All of which were around to inspire the scientists and engineers who then went on to invent those things.
According to the wiki, they may have been invented in 1908 and appeared in comics as early as 1907. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones#Predecessors
Without knowing the claimed science fiction source for each it is tough to evaluate them. But looking into the first one, the video phone was conceptualized nearly instantly (2 years) after the telephone was invented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videophone#Early_history Seems obvious and no need for a science fiction writer to come up with the idea for scientists/engineers to copy.
The things that seem obvious to us are obvious because of course people can do that; we've been seeing depictions of video telephones our entire lives. Note that the first people to conceptualize the video phone were contemporary authors rather than scientists/engineers. This doesn't mean that those authors were responsible for its development of course - but they certainly were part of the inspiration for its later development. Here's an example from 1947, from a story entitled "The Hobbyist." See if you can see what modern technology it envisioned: =========== Passing the last bank of cabinets, he found himself facing a machine. It was complicated and bizarre and it was making a crystalline growth. Near it, another and different machine was manufacturing a small, horned lizard. There could be no doubt at all about the process of fabrication because both objects were halfmade and both progressed slightly even as he watched. In a couple of hours' time, perhaps less, they'd be finished, and all they'd need would be . . . would be-- The hairs stiffened on the back of his neck and he commenced to run. Endless machines, all different, all making different things, plants, bugs, birds and fungoids. It was done by electroponics, atom fed to atom like brick after brick to build a house. ============
I think modern science is more entertaining than scifi. And scifi and fantasy are my fav fiction genre. Generally it's modern science influencing futuristic scifi. Like russ I'm a big Arthur C. Clarke fan for both his science and scifi. I can't think of many who have the science background other than Asimov and Heinlein. Heinlein will always be my favorite. Hope humans evolve as he imagined. Books like I Will Rear No Evil, and Farnhams Freehold blew my mind. Time Enough For Love. These books are full of idealism with respect to the future of the human race. Farmer in the sky. How about the visionary Jules Verne.
Do you have a source for that? I'm going to guess that you're equating that to 3D printing, but while I see that naively asked question a fair amount (How soon will we be able to 3d print...?), the technology required to 3D print a lizard, atom by atom, is far, far beyond our grasp today. It is still in the realm of science fantasy (not even plausible science fiction) and I doubt will ever be possible. This idea that sci fi has relevant value to the advancement of science/technology is largely just a popular myth.
Apparently at least some companies are very interested: http://www.businessinsider.de/microsoft-research-future-visions-2015-12?r=US&IR=T I think sci-fi has changed much though. In the past it was mostly technological fiction, these days it's more social fiction, concerned about the developement of societies, not so much about the technology. I still think that sci-fi will continue top play a role as idea-giver as well as a first visionary testbed, how these ideas can be used, and what impact they can have on a society.
I'm still waiting for the "sidewinder" from Thunderbirds: http://thunderbirds.wikia.com/wiki/Sidewinder Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Geostationary telecommunications satellites were suggested by science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke in the historical sweet spot just before Sputnik and caused the international increase in aerospace technology engineering that resulted during the Cold War. I spent 22 years doing satellite telecom R&D at the former Comast Labs just before a bad CEO and a bad merger finally caused congress to sell out the regulated business in a merger with Lockheed, which gutted all corporate activity not related to those regulated revenues, including R&D. Eventually, most of the telecom R&D Comsat Labs used to do for Intelsat is now done mostly in China. That included technology like routers, which gave China access to a controlling amount of Internet telecom security expertise, which they used to gain access to US government high security installations. Another smooth move in globalization brought to us courtesy of the last Bush administration.
Edward Bellamy in "Looking Backward" thought music would be transmitted to homes over telephones lines rather than radio. Heh.
Death Rays were popular in science fiction long before lasers became a practical reality. That particular technology has yet to reach the mobility and efficacy of Buck Rogers or James T Kirk's, or Han Solo's sidearms, but the market and the second amendment have been in place long enough to predict, if the price/performance/portability were there, both Google and Microsoft would be all over it. Apple would be a holdout for the first portable nuclear deterrents or particle beam weapons (iGiveUp!), if for no other reason, to counter Microsoft's domination of the personal death ray market. None of these will be a match for mind control weapons, which should eliminate the need for background checks.