by Michael Brumfield

Created on: December 16, 2009

In order to see the influence that science fiction has on a society all you must do is look around. We are living in a time that science fiction is becoming or has already become science non-fiction. Sure we may not have warp speed, transporters, or even a light saber but we are living in a time that the cell phone is a common item. A time in which we now have this wonderful thing called the internet for all to enjoy. The hybrid car is just one more example of how our technological know how is catching up to the human imagination. 

R2D2 and C3PO may not be running around our city streets but the advances that we have made in robotics is a huge leap into that direction. Scientists have worked very hard at and come very close to being able to replace a lost human limb with a robotic prosthetic that not only resembles the look of an actual limb but the limbs actual ability. Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker can vouch that this is a very good thing along with all of our disabled veterans as well. 

Quantum physics is another great leap into that direction. With this still young science time travel seems a very real possibility along with inter-dimensional travel. Sliders was a very popular television show about just that very thing and here we are now looking at it as if it was only predicting the future because in reality that is what science fiction really does. The imagination of one human being is pushed to obtain something that is great and unobtainable while at the same time the imagination of another human being is pushed to some how obtain that very thing. 

Science fiction once spoke of space travel to the moon and mars. Finding life or evidence of life in those very places. The human will drove us to explore space and to reach those places. We may not have found what it was that we thought we would but we did find a lot more than was ever thought possible. If you would have told my grand mother that we would land on the moon and send a robot to mars when she was growing up she would have laughed at you and asked where it was that you got your story book from.

Today we still dream of holidecks, light sabers, aliens, alternate dimensions, time travel, and traveling at the speed of light but it wouldn't surprise me if my children got to see at least some of these things become an everyday occurrence. I'm not sure how the human imagination is going to fold on itself in order to create even more spectacular things for us to dream of ways to accomplish but I am sure that somehow it will. That is what drives us to continue to explore, build, and create after all. No matter the goals that we may set for ourselves as a civilization or the impossibilities that they may create. The human being will push, will learn, and will invent a way to ensure that they become possible.  

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