The future of computing as predicted by nine science-fiction machines

Science fiction has an uncanny ability to predict the future of technology, from Star Trek's Padd, essentially an iPad, to the Jetsons' robot vacuum, basically a Roomba. Now that the voice assistant is here, that's another checklist off the sci-fi predictor, but while our Alexas, Siris, Cortanas and Google Assistants are pretty basic right now, if sci-fi continues its great prelude to the future, what will the computers of the future really be like? According to Amazon's head of devices, Dave Limp, the next phase in computing is less about the physical thing and more about how and where you access it. He says: "We think of it as ambient computing, which is computer access that's less dedicated personally to you but more ubiquitous. "Our vision is to create that Star Trek computer and work backwards from that.