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👽 What if alien existed...

Trends inspired by Science Fiction movies

Invisible suit

The superpower kind of invisibility that makes this story scary—allowing the villain to lurk unseen in the middle of a room or grab his victims unaware—remains far in the future. But the real science of making things invisible has come a long way since Wells’ 1897 book. Scientists have devised materials that bend light around an object, effectively causing it to disappear. They’ve used cameras to record and project images of what’s behind an object onto the object’s surface, making it appear like it’s not even there.

'The Invisible Man' Isn't Real, but This Invisibility Technology Is

Next-level gaming

The VR envisioned within Ready Player One offers total immersion, meaning that the objects and atmosphere within the space are directly accessible to the user. ... Within the movie, characters run across actual live three-dimensional space (in real reality, not virtual)

Nanotechnology

What are some best nanotechnology Science fiction movies?

BioWar

More rocket launch

We launch 10 rockets each year and we discover 1 planet and a few new stars per year. What if we launched 10 rockets per month? We would live in Mars by then! Don’t get me wrong but, humans have the tendencies to create rules for everything. “In order to be an astronaut, you’ll have to fit that profile but with these rules, and these rules.” Every kid want to be an astronaut! Give them the chance to go into deep space and let them risk their lives if they love to do so! We would be discovering the galaxy in a giffy!

Water is our biggest enemy

I recently watched Attraction 2 on Streamio and you should seriously watch it! Yes, it’s another space invasion kind of movie but wtf, it’s super cool! It’s not like most SciFi movies (I’ll put you a list of my favorite ones 👎) where aliens come to earth to destroy it and humans come together and destroy them the last 20 minutes of the movie with a badass war. It’s different, very different. Go watch it before I spoil everything!

TV's newest genius inspired by Steve Jobs and Elon Musk

In Salvation, Tanz makes his billions by selling drones to the government and while working with a gifted MIT graduate, has come to the Pentagon with an alarming revelation – an asteroid will collide with Earth in just 186 days.

TV's newest genius inspired by Steve Jobs and Elon Musk

Controlling your senses

Playtest centers on a video game testing experience gone horribly wrong. The protagonist of the episode is Cooper, an American backpacker, left penniless and stranded in England after having travelled the world following his father’s death.

Instead of reaching out to his mother in the US for help, Cooper offers to participate in a playtest of an augmented reality video game in exchange for money. An implant is placed at the back of his neck that allows him to experience the video game more immersively. Cooper is then projected into the game experience: he finds himself alone in a mansion with the implant feeding his brain with spooky virtual images. After some jumpscares, the tester starts experiencing severe mental and physical distress and the test is terminated. Even after the test is concluded, Cooper keeps hallucinating and is then revealed that an interference in the testing process has caused him irreversible brain damage.

A precious lesson is learned from this episode: instead of looking for comfort in video games, just call your mom!

Tortured, sentient clones

This episode marks the first American-produced season of Black Mirror. It centers around tech able to create digital clones of people to have them star as main characters in a multiplayer video-game.

Vindictive game developer Daly has created for himself a patch of the Star Trek-inspired Infinity game in which he is the captain of the starship and is worshipped by his crew members. In the game he programmed, the adoring crew members are versions of his real-life co-workers. But the crew members aren’t mere digital creations of Daly’s co-workers — they’re sentient beings cloned from DNA material that Daly obtained from trash they left behind in the office. Tortured day in and day out by Daly, the digital clones will soon realize their condition and try to escape subjection to their master and the game itself.

Head-up display

Watch for the head-up display shown in the quadcopters late in the film. A shimmering orange display appears in a windshield, which helps the pilot focus on the action at hand. What you might not realize, if you have never driven a Corvette, is that the technology is available today. A projector shines the display onto the windshield so you can see your speed, navigation and even the current gear as you focus on the road. The upcoming 2015 Kia K900 even adds your current cruise control setting.

Reality TV takeover

Even though Fifteen Millions Merits doesn’t feature any bloodshed or a hellish landscape, it still manages to be one of Black Mirror’s most disturbing episodes. The episode, in fact, centers around the role of tech – such as digital currency and social television – in disrupting the society of the future. The episode details a future in which most people are forced to cycle on exercise bikes in order to produce power. Confined in tiny bedrooms, forced to live in almost complete isolation, and constantly bombarded by interactive advertisement, these people live a slave-like existence. The only way for them to skip advertised content on TV and to catch a break from their nightmarish reality is by paying a few “merits” (digital currency) which they earn in exchange for their physical labor.

During one biking session, the episode’s main character, Bing, falls for a neighbour cyclist, Abi. Convinced that talent shows are the only way to escape their dull reality, Bing accumulates enough merits to buy Abi a ticket to audition in a singing contest.

When Abi’s audition doesn’t go as planned (the woman is told that she is better suited for porn than for singing), Bing decides to audition himself. Once on stage, he voices his indignation and threatens to commit suicide in front of the live crowd. Once his protest is concluded, the unbothered judges offers him a weekly show, where he will have the opportunity to rant about the system. Bing accepts their offer.

Bringing back the dead

Sharp like a knife and powerful like a punch in the stomach, Be Right Back hits you right where it hurts. It features a tech that we all would like to see realized – until it becomes clear that it just can’t work. The tech at hand is able to bring back the dead, or at least part of them.

Martha and Ash Starmer are a young couple who have recently moved to the countryside. The day after moving in, Ash dies in a car accident. At the funeral, a friend of Martha suggests her to try a new online service which helped her cope with the loss of a loved one. At first reluctant, Martha is eventually convinced to try the platform when she discovers she is pregnant. The tech allows the woman to upload the personality of Ash –  based on his past online communications and social media profiles – into a synthetic body that looks almost exactly identical to Ash.

Needless to say, the Ash android is not nearly as good as the real thing. Eventually, the constant comparison between her deceased boyfriend and the defective machine makes Martha incredibly miserable.

Remotely controlled conciousness

In an attempt to pull an art-imitates-life episode, Netflix cast former teen idol and current superstar singer Miley Cyrus to play a troubled former child star that has risen to world level stardom, Ashley O.

In the episode, Ashley is so popular that an AI doll, named “Ashley Too”, has been modelled after her personality and sold to the fans as a toy. However, Ashley’s life behind the spotlight is far from perfect, as the singer is subjected to the influence of her evil manager aunt who cashes in on her career and exploits her talent for her own benefit.

When Ashley decides to rebel against her aunt, she poisons her food and puts her in a coma. Yet, the aunt is still able to exploit Ashley’s still-existing brain activity to produce new Ashley O-branded music. After a series of weird turns and fortunate events it will be the sophisticated piece of tech that is the Ashley Too doll that saves Ashley from her coma and brings the evil aunt to justice.

Off-World Colonies

Fiction: In the world of Oblivion, the bulk of Earth's population has retreated to Saturn's moon Titan. The idea of off-world colonies has been explored by countless sci-fi films such as Aliens, Total Recall and Blade Runner. Space colonies are a staple of sci-fi literature as well. In Asimov's Foundation series, all habitable planets in the galaxy are eventually terraformed and colonized.

Science: Titan has been cited as a possible destination for space colonies in that it has a dense atmosphere and oceans. Oceans of liquid methane, maybe. But still.

Subterranean Cities

Fiction: With Earth's surface largely uninhabitable, the refugees in Oblivion live underground in a network of ruins, caves and tunnels. There are specific cinematic similarities here with the Matrix and Terminator movies, and stories of subterranean cities are found throughout both sci-fi and fantasy fiction – particularly in the works of J.R.R. Tolkein, H.G. Wells, Edgar Allen Poe and Jules Verne. You could even make the case that Dante's 14th century epic poem "The Divine Comedy" describes a particularly infernal underground community.

Science: Hundreds of underground complexes exist throughout the world, and many could fairly be termed cities. Montreal's Underground City – La Ville Souterraine in French – has more than 20 miles of tunnels connecting apartments, hotels, offices and shops.

Cyberworld

Single-wheeled and electric bikes already exist, for instance; the movie's design for them was just modified to look cooler and more futuristic. Per Gould, contactless connections could distribute the battery power efficiently in lieu of a gas-powered internal combustion engine, along with a gyroscopic balancing system. Alita's Berserker cyborg body—technology rare even in her futuristic world—is tough enough to withstand impact but also super-flexible to enable her to move freely. We already have "smart armor" made with unusual materials that are flexible, yet harden in response to impact to protect the wearer. We also have a number of self-healing materials—another unique feature of Alita's Berserker body.

Welcome to the cyber world: The real-world tech behind Alita: Battle Angel

Robots in Revolt

Fiction: The most obvious cinematic predecessor of the rogue military drones in Oblivion are the lethal Skynet machines of the Terminator films. Oblivion also has several scenes reminiscent of the underrated 1987 freakout RoboCop. Oblivion and its disobedient artillery drones are really just a variation on the robot uprising stories that have fascinated science fiction writers through the years, most notably Isaac Asimov in his Robot novels.

Science: The U.S. and several other countries have unmanned military drones deployed around the world.

Shape-shifting for fun and profit

In one scene, Valerian is wowed by a shape-shifter’s bravura performance, morphing from one sex-siren fantasy into another. The singer-songwriter Rihanna’s big-screen cameo as shape-shifting Bubble wowed the critics, too. The New York Post’s one-star review of the movie was headlined, “Rihanna Is the Only Good Part of ‘Valerian.'” Her shape-shifting strip tease, and her struggle as Bubble to take on a different and challenging role, serve as metaphors for the actor’s art. The closest thing to it in the natural world is a color-shifting cephalopod – which Bubble resembles in her true form.

Haptic mind control

Haptic mind control: One of the cleverest tricks for Valerian’s raid on the market is to have one of his commandos jack into the nervous system of a guard who’s manning a machine gun in a watchtower. The commando gets a virtual view of the scene through the eyes of the zombified guard, and makes arm gestures that are mirrored up in the tower, with hilarious (or deadly) effect. Military researchers haven’t yet perfected that kind of haptic remote control, and let’s hope they never do. But researchers have been experimenting with haptic belts, vests and other gizmos that can provide soldiers with tactile cues about how to proceed in a combat situation.

Mind-controlled soldiers

This episode is a metaphor for how high-tech, AI-driven weaponry have further dehumanized the battlefield and war in general. In an undefined future and unknown country, soldiers are exterminating mutated humans called “roaches”. To improve their performance on the battlefield, they use a neural implant called MASS, which enhances their senses and provides instant data via augmented reality. During one bloody encounter with the roaches, the soldier Stripe is attacked, and his MASS interface is disrupted. Following MASS’s malfunction, Stripe starts seeing roaches as humans, and soon realizes that the government is brainwashing soldiers to have them attack fellow humans and kill them en masse.

After finding out the truth, Stripe is incarcerated and left with a choice: stay in prison or having his memory erased and MASS reactivated. In a following bit of the episode Stripe is seen enjoying a MASS-induced dream and it is clear that he has chosen obliviousness over justice.

An AI like the one in Ironman

We just started to sell robots but they are not even smart enough or powerful. Alexa is the smartest AI. Try to ask “how was your day?” to Alexa and wait for a logic response. What about Ironman?

Professor X & Cerebro

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Genetic mutation

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A drug to be superhuman

The Absurd Superpowers of Netflix's Project Power, Explained

Destiny modules

The movie starts out with a real-world encounter – the Apollo-Soyuz meetup between Soviet and American spacefliers in 1975. The historic handshake between Alexey Leonov and Tom Stafford is re-enacted aboard the Alpha space station, first with the Chinese in 2020, then with a rainbow of other nations, and then with a parade of exotic aliens. It’s a great opening sequence, set to the tune of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Fun fact: Alpha was one of the proposed names for the International Space Station, but it never took. Reality check: the “Destiny module” you see later in the movie looks a lot like an Apollo spacecraft, and nothing like the Destiny module on the real-life space station.

Virtual Vegas

Valerian and Laureline are dropped into a wide stretch of empty desert that’s transformed into a teeming bazaar when you put on glasses that look a lot like Microsoft’s HoloLens headsets. Visitors supposedly make their way through “the other dimension,” but it looks a lot like an augmented-reality environment where you can actually pick up virtual stuff and buy it. When you’re ready to bring your purchases out of the touristy bazaar, you put them through the augmented-realyt end of a “transmatter” device, and the real-world products come out the other side. That’s something to think about if you’re planning an augmented-reality shopping center for 3-D-printed goods. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s already an Amazon patent application for that.

Spaceships

There are a lot of movies that featured space ships. All are nice but no concepts have been made. It still resembles 🚀

Zip lines from dropships

Many summer camps offer zip lines through the woods, and Navy SEALS use them to enter a battlefield from hovering helicopters. But jumping from a quadcopter a few thousand feet above the war zone? There is a correlation in the real world, according to Kramer. Stuntmen and women use a device called a Descender -- a wire attached to a coil -- to drop down into a scene. They control the descent and can slow down their momentum. If you look closely during the early battle scenes, you can see similar coils in the dropship.

Teleportation or Time travel

Teleportation and time travel were mentioned thousands of time but where are the actual test runs. Has someone been travelling lately?

Eart > Moon taxi services

A flight from Paris <> NYC takes approximately 8 hours. Technically, if we would want to travel Earth <> Moon in a private jet, it would take a few days. What are we waiting for designing new planes that get you home in less than 15 hours (Home <> Airport <> security and waiting at airport <> plane <> landing <> suitcase pick up <> taxi home)

Minimal building

We design strange looking buildings and paint very weird art for millions of dollars. What if we get more inspired by SciFi movies and start minimising aesthetics?

Social rating systems

Nosedive represents the ultimate dystopia featuring social media. In the episode, people use eye implants and mobile devices to rate their online and in-person interactions on a scale from one to five stars. The episode’s protagonist, Lacie, is a young woman with a moderately high rating of 4.2 who hopes to further improve her socioeconomic status and reach a 4.5 rating through some high-level interactions with her former schoolmates at a fancy wedding. However, a series of unfortunate accidents and mishaps on her way to the wedding crush her rating just before the celebration – prompting her friend to cancel her invitation to the wedding.

This sends Lacie into a downward spiral. Frustrated and with a thirst for revenge, Lacie goes as far as to crash and destroy her friend’s wedding. While her rating drops to zero and she is arrested, Lacie is seen as feeling liberated. Though the tech described in Nosedive is already accessible (social media, smart phones and ratings are all very present in our everyday life), the social rating system in Nosedive is still far from becoming a reality. (At least in the West; its similarity to China’s social credit system is chilling.)

However just to make sure that we keep sane and grounded, we all should probably go on a social media detox asap!

Recording your life

In a not-so-remote future, people have implanted a device called “the grain” behind their ear which allows them to record everything they see and hear.  Whenever they need, they can re-watch the recordings of their memories directly into their eye or into a video monitor. The episode’s main character, Liam, is using his grain to try and trace back in time all his memories of his wife with an old male friend of hers. After an alcohol-induced fit of jealousy, Liam keeps growing suspicious of their close relationship, and starts obsessing over the thought that his wife has cheated on him. Eventually, he even goes as far to force his wife to show him her memories with the other man.

Shocking revelations about the two’s relationship will lead Liam to cut off his ear in an attempt to prevent the knowledge that comes with the device from influencing his life ever again. As they say, sometimes ignorance is bliss!

Real parental control

Resources

Black Mirror: 10 technologies we never want to see in real life

'Edge of Tomorrow': Future tech innovations

The Science and Fiction of 'Oblivion'

How pivoting to newer technologies can help save the 'old guard'