If you're watching this on your phone,
it's partly thanks to Captain Kirk.
In Star Trek, first broadcast in 1966,
he used a pocket-sized device to communicate with his crew.
Martin Cooper, the man who invented the mobile phone,
says the show was the inspiration for his idea,
which launched seven years later.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos based Alexa,
the voice-activated speaker on
Star Trek's talking computer.
Transporters engaged.
Welcome aboard.
Sci-fi fan Elon Musk
is building rockets that he hopes will one day
carry people to Mars.
Submarines, helicopters, rockets, and touch screens
all appeared in science fiction
before becoming science fact.
Sci-fi inspires real world technology.
It also provides a way to explore the moral dilemmas
that advanced technologies could pose.
Paul McAuley is a scientist turned science fiction writer.
All science fiction is basically about is presence,
so it's about a heightened version of the present.
It's about anticipating where technology is going to go
and it's about our fears of where technology is going to go
and what uses or misuses we might make of that technology.
Divers information paper's ready and--
Techno world, do you need to buy a suitcase?
Utopia, huh?
You know they set up shop here, right?
Few films better encapsulate this than
Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic Blade Runner.
The film is set in a dystopian future
where synthetic human workers are bio engineered
by a corporate power.
In London, fans are arriving for a Blade Runner
screening with a difference.
Keep moving, guys, come on.
Let's go, quickly scan.
We are in World Terminus, checkpoint 4.C
We're in Los Angeles in 2019.
Secret Cinema is a multilayer physical experience.
We build these physical sets,
creating a world inspired by a film.
So instead of just watching a film,
you literally buy a ticket, you become a character,
and you become part of an interactive theatrical experience.
Hey you lot in there!
You thirsty or what?
I think the science fiction genre allows us to dream
about another world.
We've taken the inspiration from Blade Runner
and built an entire world around it.
The film explores the ethical implications
of creating highly intelligent robots
that have thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
My wife's just back from a convention about AI,
artificial intelligence, in Cambridge.
A lot of the AI people think about what would happen
if real AI came on very powerfully
and what they'd do to us and that's one of the things
that science fiction has been exploring
for quite a long time now.
Steven Spielberg's latest movie,
Ready Player One, explores another emerging technology,
virtual reality.
The film imagines a future where overpopulation,
pollution, and climate change have forced
most people to live in sprawling, slum-like cities.
Young people escape the desolation by living much
of their lives in virtual reality.
Are you ready?
Although there is a wide gap
between the virtual world shown in the film
and the capabilities of current VR technology,
the idea that young people can get hooked
on virtual fantasies is a long-standing concern.
No, no, no, no, no!
To be compelling, science fiction
has to be convincing.
So writers and film directors enlist the help of
designers and engineers.
Syd Mead designed the look of some of Hollywood's
most seminal sci-fi films including
Blade Runner, Star Trek The Motion Picture, and Aliens.
In the real world, he's designed cars for Ford
and electronics for Philips.
Because I'm a trained designer,
I can imagine how things might be made.
People always say that my stuff looks real
even though it's futuristic.
The pods for Aliens that I designed were
real mechanical articulations.
When they opened, they looked absolutely real
for people to be in for long duration space travel.
I was hired to design the vehicles for Blade Runner.
Deckard's vehicle was, in my mind,
a decommissioned aerial limousine.
It's overlaying the familiar with the weird
and that's a surefire formula
for interesting things to look at.
Science fiction introduces
people to real world science and technology.
Some fans develop a lifelong passion.
The tech industry is led by sci-fi nerds
who are creating the things they read about
or saw on screen.
We all stand to benefit from their creations.
Provided, that is, they can avoid the ethical pitfalls
depicted in science fiction.