What was once “fantastic” is now “ordinary”—thanks in large part to advances in edge computing and cloud connectivity.
When machines can speak and write better than many humans, and 7 billion people carry the equivalent of a supercomputer in their pockets, you know we’re living in a different world than most of us were born into. Of course, we saw glimpses of it growing up, thanks to popular science fiction.
“What’s important about science fiction is how it speculates on how changes in technology change us as people,” says Kirk Bresniker, HPE Fellow and chief architect at Hewlett Packard Labs. “Does it dehumanize us, or does it allow us to more fully realize our most authentic selves?”
The future technologies that imaginative science fiction writers like Gene Roddenberry, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip K. Dick envisioned are becoming real, thanks to major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), computing power, and connectivity. And that means the future societies they foretold, from utopian to nightmarish, are also becoming real.
