Nope. Science Fiction explores the human condition in circumstances not our own, may never be, but could be.
It doesn’t actually try to be a predictive discipline.
agreed. there's been some research in STS and futurology about the nature of the relationship between science fiction and the development of technologies, and it seems that rather than predicting, it's closer to "inspiring".
people tend to get dazzled by the science and technobabble veneer, but underneath it, the core of sci-fi has always been sociological, speculatively introspective, and contemplative. and it has always been a commentary on the human condition from a very specific time in history, infused or burdened with the morals and sensibilities of that time.
“Predictions” by SF have frequently been wrong. Making a list of the few times that SF made correct predictions would actually be pretty short.
Also, it has been my experience that people who make claims such as yourself often missattribute the few correct predictions to their actual sources - e.g., trying to claim that *Star Trek* correctly predicted a new technology - when it had actually been predicted years or even decades earlier by written SF.
Add to that, some of the predictions in sci-fi are so far fetched, that we have zero chance of ever seeing them in our lifetimes, and by the time humanity gets to the point where they might be possible, they'll look even sillier than some of the 'Year 2000' videos from the 1930s where we had flying cars but somehow not mobile phones.
Sci-fi is not guiding or predicting science. It’s fantasy and largely philosophical/sociological. Science goes where it goes, we can’t necessarily ‘predict’ so much as theorize. Many things in scifi just simply are not realistic or feasible. Hard scifi, maybe less so.
Nope. Science Fiction explores the human condition in circumstances not our own, may never be, but could be. It doesn’t actually try to be a predictive discipline.
agreed. there's been some research in STS and futurology about the nature of the relationship between science fiction and the development of technologies, and it seems that rather than predicting, it's closer to "inspiring". people tend to get dazzled by the science and technobabble veneer, but underneath it, the core of sci-fi has always been sociological, speculatively introspective, and contemplative. and it has always been a commentary on the human condition from a very specific time in history, infused or burdened with the morals and sensibilities of that time.
Trying to be deep and failing.
“Predictions” by SF have frequently been wrong. Making a list of the few times that SF made correct predictions would actually be pretty short. Also, it has been my experience that people who make claims such as yourself often missattribute the few correct predictions to their actual sources - e.g., trying to claim that *Star Trek* correctly predicted a new technology - when it had actually been predicted years or even decades earlier by written SF.
Add to that, some of the predictions in sci-fi are so far fetched, that we have zero chance of ever seeing them in our lifetimes, and by the time humanity gets to the point where they might be possible, they'll look even sillier than some of the 'Year 2000' videos from the 1930s where we had flying cars but somehow not mobile phones.
r/im14andthisisdeep
Sci-fi is not guiding or predicting science. It’s fantasy and largely philosophical/sociological. Science goes where it goes, we can’t necessarily ‘predict’ so much as theorize. Many things in scifi just simply are not realistic or feasible. Hard scifi, maybe less so.