Real-Life Science-Fictional Experiences

[Raphael]

I thought perhaps we could have a thread about experiences we've had in real life that felt a bit like something out of science fiction to us at the time.

I'll start: When I had the physical part of my draft examination (when I was of draft age, Germany still had the draft), at one point, in a rather darkened room, I had to strip down to my underpants and stand still between two vertical glowing glass cylinders. I think the point was to measure the relative proportions of different parts of my body to each other. Anyway, when I saw those glowing glass cylinders, I instantly had to think of the red lights moving back and forth from the movie Airplane II:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG-0V-85H_0

They weren't red, and they weren't moving back and forth, and they were vertical, but like those lights, they looked very much like props from a bad sci-fi movie which served no other purpose than to stand around in the background and look kinda futuristic.

In the end, the glass cylinders couldn't even properly measure me, because my body was too asymmetric for them.

(In case you're wondering, I eventually got classified as T-3, which, under the German system, means basically "can be used for office work and little else".)

Back then, I even wrote a short post in bad Verdurian about the whole thing:

http://www.zompist.com/board/messages/306.html

[rotting bones]

My entire life has been a recurring failure to make scifi experiences happen to me. The closest I have come was the unveiling of ChatGPT.

[Raphael]

If this thread went for more than a year with just one reply, may I bump it? Are science-fictional experiences really that rare?

[malloc]

It would seem so. Much like Rotting Bones said, my life has given me disappointingly few SF experiences apart from the introduction of artificial intelligence. Somebody tell those aliens to stop loafing around on Zeta Reticuli and land here already. At least give us flying cars or cures for cancer.

[Creyeditor]

My whole life is a scifi experience. I see people talking on the phone to someone on a different continent without a visible phone, while moving on a vehicle without a visible space for an engine. I can look up all information that is available to humanity with a small wireless device that fits in my pocket and my father switches between a children's cartoon and his favorite 60's music via voice command to a miniaturized computer that looks mostly like a loudspeaker with some glowing lights.
Oh, and my car reads text messages to me while playing music from the internet and showing me satelite images of the best route on a small integrated screen. Maybe I'm just easy to impress.

[Torco]

I think they are indeed that rare, yes. on the one hand, the future doesn't generally feel like the future to people from the future, but on the other hand scifi is an offshoot of the techno-optimism of the industrial revolution: we were all promised flying commuter trains, easier lives through technology, colonies on neptune and artificial intelligence doing the drudgery work so humans could focus on creative and fun stuff. these days, of course, we have expensive and dilapidated public transportation, normalization of two jobs plus monetized hobbies, no more humans in space than there were when the cold war ended and AI doing all the creative and fun stuff so that humans can focus on the drudgery. honestly it's not that surprising people these days dream of the past, not the future.

[xxx]

the whole world is science+fiction,
tech has invaded everything,
and human concerns no longer concern reality...

[Torco]

but technology has always permeated all aspects of human life unless... do you by tech mean computers specifically?

[xxx]

the total artificialization of the world,
right down to reality itself...

[Raphael]

Somebody tell those aliens to stop loafing around on Zeta Reticuli and land here already. At least give us flying cars or cures for cancer.

If they give us both, the effects on mortality might well cancel each other out.

[keenir]

the total artificialization of the world,
right down to reality itself...

so...you aren't real?

[WeepingElf]

We were promised jetpacks, and got cyberpunk Indeed, we already have most of the things cyberpunk SF is about: computer networks, hackers, virtual realities, AIs, megacorporations. It is not hard to write a cyberpunk novel set in the present world; William Gibson did it himself with Pattern Recognition already in 2003.

[zompist]

I think this all depends on what you consider "science fictional" and what period of sf you mean.

There are a lot of experiences that didn't exist in my childhood, were predicted in sf, and now exist. Space stations, comsats, laser weapons, flyby photos of Pluto, drone warfare, GPS, phones with video, almost everything related to computers, chatbots that pass the Turing test. And the first time we saw any of these things, they might have felt thrilling, but everything becomes prosaic when it's part of everyday life.

Then there's the aesthetic that recalls sf. There are certainly places or things that feel futuristic... at least, more so than other places. The first time I toured Fermilab felt that way. The irony is that the Star Trek aesthetic now feels very 1960s, so it's as much nostalgic as futuristic. Theremins still feel a little sci-fi, though they were first produced in 1929.

Sf has always been about dystopia as well as utopia, so the elements of cyberpunk we see around us are not reassuring. BTW, elements of cyberpunk were predicted in Winsor McCay's Little Nemo back in 1910, and aspects of the Internet by Edward Bellamy in 1888. Some bits of prediction are far easier than others.

[Raphael]

BTW, elements of cyberpunk were predicted in Winsor McCay's Little Nemo back in 1910, and aspects of the Internet by Edward Bellamy in 1888.

I knew about Bellamy, but McCay? Sounds intriguing. How does a comic about a little boy's dreams predict cyberpunk? Are you saying that the boy's dreams were a kind of early version of virtual reality?

[zompist]

BTW, elements of cyberpunk were predicted in Winsor McCay's Little Nemo back in 1910, and aspects of the Internet by Edward Bellamy in 1888.

I knew about Bellamy, but McCay? Sounds intriguing. How does a comic about a little boy's dreams predict cyberpunk? Are you saying that the boy's dreams were a kind of early version of virtual reality?

No-- McCay got tired of Slumberland, and sends Nemo and friends to Mars on an airship. Mars turns out to be run by a single corporation-- people even have to buy their air from it. And they have to buy words before they can speak...

(Technically Nemo is still dreaming, though not about Slumberland.)

[Raphael]

No-- McCay got tired of Slumberland, and sends Nemo and friends to Mars on an airship. Mars turns out to be run by a single corporation-- people even have to buy their air from it. And they have to buy words before they can speak...

(Technically Nemo is still dreaming, though not about Slumberland.)

Thank you, interesting!

[linguistcat]

Personally I love living "in the future". The problem is there are People Who Use Cool Tech for Bad Shit. The actual tech, in most cases, is pretty cool and most people I personally interact with are actually fairly kind and considerate.

I can use a vast network of computers to research how best to start a food garden for my community that is attractive and suited for the local climate.

I can talk to people on the other side of the planet, basically instantly.

You know why we don't have flying cars? Because those are basically just small planes that somehow are also road drivable. Who is going to get their pilot's license? People who already want to fly planes.

I'm sure there are other things but I have personally thought "Wow, we really are in the future now huh?" a few times. Not that I love everything about it either, but I think it's a matter of perspective more than one's actual experiences. But then I also think "In some ways, I am richer and better off than most kings in history despite only being lower middle class for my current society."

[xxx]

the total artificialization of the world,
right down to reality itself...

so...you aren't real?

I maybe a line of code in a chatbot...
or you are...
I'm quite sure you are...

[TomHChappell]

My latest two major surgeries were both science-fiction years before I had them.
The stomach surgery, because the idea that morbid obesity and/or Type II diabetes could be long-term ameliorated by surgery, appeared only in near-futuristic fiction when I was in my teens to twenties.
The heart surgery, because the idea that a patient could survive a cardiac-artery bypass procedure, was still science-fiction when I was in college.

[Ares Land]

If this thread went for more than a year with just one reply, may I bump it? Are science-fictional experiences really that rare?

Truth turned out way stranger than fiction. Recently I watched Donald Trump parody song about immigrants eating cats; this relies on several societal changes and technological breakthrough but would have been rejected in any SF novel for being too weird!

For actual SF experiences, I'd mentioning working from home, Zoom calls, seeing Starlink satellites pass by.
Straight out of Philip K Dick: AI produce realistic images on demand, but there's always something off with them when you look at them closely.