Scifi and Tech: not so far apart anymore (spoilers)

     My first blog post of the year (and on this blog in general) is being typed on a lightweight touch screen laptop. Of course, someone had imagined it long before it became a reality. It has been said that technology follows entertainment as we all have seen these changes throughout or lives The three most notable contributors have been Star Trek; which depicted everything from the cell phone, flip phone, the Ipad, bluetooth ( scifi2real.wordpress.com ) and most recently we have seen Google Glass, 3d printers, Scanadu Scout phone accessory (Tricorder) pop up onto the scene. The Jetsons: Video conferencing, tanning beds, dog treadmills, and Robot maids (Mahru-Z & AR), Roomba, food to order (by pressing a button) and flat screen tvs. Back to the Future had Hoverboards, Self-tying laces ( directly influenced by the movie), video conferencing and flat screens (again), tv glasses ( a bit like Google Glass TBH), and dehydrated food (yuck?). However, these are all decades in the future. Of course, the inventors were impacted by these shows growing up.

    One British show that I have watched which came out recently, Black Mirror shows a near-future with high-tech gadgets we are already on the verge of discovering and are being released by companies. Actually, it's hard to tell whether the development started first or the screen writing when a show comes out and then only a year or two later a project is unveiled.

White Christmas Episode clip:

Although her consciousness was copied and captured (as many who are now freezing and suspending their brains for possible future use: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/frozen-brain-cryogenics) we cannot practically do this yet, there is soon the Virtual Box - as only Japan could conceive it:

Well, at least "waifu" isn't a real self-aware intelligence -yet. It's still creepy as hell and doesn't exactly fix the current issue of low-birth rates in Japan. She even turns the lights on and off in his apartment...

There was also an episode on MR called Playtest in which a volunteer for a new gaming company technology may have or may have not been killed by it (be careful of cell phone interference).:

And here is MR: VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) combined. This version (Hololens) is from Microsoft, however a company called Magic Leap are also creating a version that is just as impressive. It even has the Realtime translation being developed by a few companies (as long as it's better than Google Translate and Skype translator). 

As long as it's not too realistic....

Black Mirror can be watched on-demand on Netflix.