#technoscience

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SpaceX 2020s Dragon 2

“Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction.”

― Ray Bradbury

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2020s Hibernation

The 2014 film Interstellar, the movie Alien (1979) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) all have employed human hibernation as a means to help astronauts travel deep into space. While this could be one real-life application, human hibernation may be useful here on Earth too. The science of adapting to cold weather could change treatment of inflammatory diseases, insomnia, and trauma. You Could Probably Hibernate.

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IRON OX´s Agrobots (2020)

Star Trek: Picard (2020) describes a future in which agrobots help the retired astronaut to harvest and produce wine in his chateau.In the early 21st century, universities and startups like Iron Ox use smart machines to follow the path of the 23st century farm.

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2020 Vision

In the 70s, different science fiction authors such as Poul Anderson, Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, Norman Spinrad, or Ben Bova tried to imagine what the world would be like in 2020. They published their predictions in the book 2020 Vision, edited by Jerry Pournelle, and agreed that those who were alive in that year would meet to discuss them.

50 years have passed since then. Some of their predictions were a little misleading: they debated a kind of giant world brain in which everyone would be permanently connected, a sexual partner for life or an adult playground where the law would be applied by remote control.

Other predictions were not completely misguided. For example, they imagined a future with robot chefs. Currently, in addition to kitchen robots capable of crushing, cooking, whipping and frying food, there are also androids unfolding their robotic arms to follow the steps of a recipe completely autonomously and clean later. And there are even restaurants who bet on robot cooks and waiters.

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Amsterdam's Schiphol airport body-scanning

Paul Verhoeven´s Total Recall (1990) is full of iconic moments. One of them is the scene with the body scanner. Nowadays, just like in the movie, upon arrival or departure at an airport, you are screened by similar devices.

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PAYPAL 1998s cryptocurrency

Cryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson, set in two different time periods. One group of characters are World War II-era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park (UK), and disillusioned Axis military and intelligence figures. The second narrative is set in the late 1990s, with characters that are (in part) descendants of those of the earlier time period, who employ cryptologic, telecom, and computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency, with a long-term objective to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare.

Peter Thiel states in his book Zero to One that Cryptonomicon was required reading during the early days of PayPal. Thiel also played Dungeons & Dragons, was an avid reader of science fiction, with Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein among his favorite authors, and a fan of J. R. R. Tolkien's works, stating as an adult that he had read The Lord of the Rings over ten times. Six firms (Palantir Technologies, Valar Ventures, Mithril Capital, Lembas LLC, Rivendell LLC and Arda Capital) that he founded adopted names originating from Tolkien.

PayPal is an online payments company located in San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1998 by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, it operates internationally and is one of the largest in the business for being able to make fast payments and assist in sending money ...

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