Read Before Assembly: The Influence Of Sci-Fi On Technology And Design

In 1966 a television series called "Star Trek" introduced the communicator, a device Captain Kirk flips open to talk to his crew remotely. Decades later, in the mid-1990s, Motorola released its StarTAC model phone--credited as the first flip phone and clearly inspired by the communicator device from the science fiction series. Likewise, "2001: A Space Odyssey," a movie released in 1968, introduced the idea of video calling, with which most of us have become all too familiar in the past year. And the list goes on--autonomous cars, cars that can fly, smartwatches and virtual reality, just to name a few more. There are several visionaries who have inspired our thinking and design principles.