Where Fantasy Blends With Reality

It wasn’t long ago when cellphones and space travel were purely confined to the imaginings found on the silver screen.   We all remember scenes of Captain Kirk beaming down to an alien planet and using his tricorder to scan native flora and to determine the potential threats lurking behind cardboard and foam scenery.

But the fantasies of yesterday are quickly being surpassed by their current-generation equivalents.  Bulky prop communicators that sparked imaginations world wide have given rise to sleek cellphones and tablets that now define the way we connect and interact.

Star Trek to contemporary tech doesn’t stop there.  Holograms, or telepresence, is fast becoming reality.  In the show, Kirk and crew might mingle with galactic foreign powers face to face by projecting a holographic replica of themselves across empty space.  But we’ve already seen the starts of this capability through creative use of video projection that has opened the way for, say, Snoop Dogg to rap alongside a hologram of Tupac.

Image courtesy of fanboy.com

What about those fancy specs from Star Trek: The Next Generation that grant perceptually challenged Georgi La Forge a look at all he’s been missing?  While we haven’t yet mastered the art of restoring vision through tech, Google is already rolling along with its high tech glasses that augment reality, feeding instant data to users about their immediate surroundings.  Scientists have also been developing methods to tap into the other senses to provide taste and touch to those who have previously gone without.

What’s on the Horizon You Ask?
So what does the future hold in stock for us?  What’s the next fantasy tech come to life we’ll see in everyday use in the coming years?  It may be impossible to say, but it’s always fun to speculate.
The creators of Biowars have a few ideas.  The makers of this free comic book have envisioned a world that blends the real-life biological aspects of the human immune system with the fantastic other-worldly elements that make science fiction so fun.  In their story, the cells within us that fight off infection and disease are given humanoid forms that transform and evolve while maintaining their real-world biological powers.  The B-Cells, vanguard of the body’s defenses, shift into BioWarrior mode and battle against malicious microbes and virulent viruses.  These comics certainly delve into the fantastic, but they use real-world science as a framework.
Might this been the next phase in fighting pathogens and curing disease?  It may seem like an extreme leap, but advances in nanotechnology and developments in medicine are proving that we’re battling illnesses in ways thought impossible just a few decades ago.

What do you think?  You might be surprised—it could sooner than you think before you’re lounging in a star-trek-style holodeck or your next prescription contains a nano-engineered micro batch of disease-fighting BioWarriors.  Great advances in tech are on the horizon, and just as it has been for decades, science fiction is giving us a sneak peek at what that horizon might hold.

Guest Author: W. Craig Smith is a writer from Salt Lake City whose subjects include lifestyle, business, arts and culture.