Which mildly futuristic devices got omitted in SF settings?

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In summary, smartphones and other handheld devices are becoming more commonplace, but they still have some features that are not present in contemporary SF.
  • #36
Terahertz radiation full body imaging, even now that some scanners exist...
 
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  • #37
1. Technological inventions follow changes in human lifestyle. In early 20 century no one predicted mobile phones to include them in space travel books, since mobile phone wasn't needed back then.
2. Usually SF greatly overestimates development of space travel and underestimates social changes.
3. In 50 years we will no longer go outside or even walk on foot. We will sit on out butts and browse galleries of funny kittens.
4. This change of lifestyle will demand new inventions to address new challenges. Instant anti-acne pill? Virtual reality goggles to make one feel like he's doing sport? Holoraphic belly shrinker? Guess what.
5. In 50 years people will laugh at the today's sci-fi writers that they haven't anticipated such obvious things like edible autonomous drone tasting like pizza.

The biggest mistake sci-fi writers make is to assume that in the future there will be the same society traveling trough space. It's the social change that's driving new inventions, not space industry.
 
  • #38
haael said:
3. In 50 years we will no longer go outside or even walk on foot. We will sit on out butts and browse galleries of funny kittens.

The biggest mistake sci-fi writers make is to assume that in the future there will be the same society traveling trough space. It's the social change that's driving new inventions, not space industry.

IMHO, you are overestimating social changes. It is like in Back to Future 3, Emett Brown talks about the future, people laugh on him : So that cars will mean, no one will walk?
 
  • #39
haael said:
The biggest mistake sci-fi writers make is to assume that in the future there will be the same society traveling trough space. It's the social change that's driving new inventions, not space industry.

I think that science fiction is for teenage future engineers. They're generally interested in technology, not social change. They seem to prefer highly retrogressive governments, perhaps because they lend themselves to wars and other drama.

There are exceptions, like Iain Banks' Culture. But more often it's empires.
 
  • #40
Hornbein said:
They seem to prefer highly retrogressive governments, perhaps because they lend themselves to wars and other drama.

Maybe another topic should be dedicated to that matter (i have one Past ages in SF) but developed technology can be very well used to bring back times where the few had absolute control over the many, with birth control, cloning one can get rid of a weakness of dynasties, succession wars.

By the way, many things we use now in everyday life, was originally created for military or space industry (GPS, new materials for example)
 
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  • #41
Robots controlled over the network with tactile feedback in body suits and virtual reality headset gear allowing the operator to see and hear and FEEL (tactile at least) but from safe distance -in order to explore, say, potentially dangerous caves or underwater regions, help rescue/locate victims of natural disasters etc.

Largely ignored by any SF:
Quantum computers.
 

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