From Fiction to Fact: The Flying Car.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

From Fiction to Fact: The Flying Car.

The Fiction: In Hanna-Barbera’s classic cartoon, The Jetsons, family man George Jetson commutes to work in his bubble-topped flying aero-car. During his blissfully traffic-free commute, George drops off family members for their daily activities. Upon arriving at Spacely Space Sprockets his aero-car neatly transforms into a briefcase.  How cool is that?

The Fact: While anyone has yet to build a car that can transform into a briefcase, the flying car is here—and apparently it handles like a motorcycle. Dutch company PAL-V  (watch video below) has created a flying car, called the PAL-V ONE. Drive it like a car, or unfold the single rotor and you’re ready to fly. No flight plan required.

From Fiction to Fact:; Transparent Aluminum

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

From Fiction to Fact : Transparent Aluminum

The Fiction: Star Trek is a wellspring of sci-fi to sci-fact ideas. Take, for example, transparent aluminum. In Star Trek 4, Scotty gives a present day engineer a formula to create transparent aluminum in exchange for building a giant tank to hold a Humpback whale. If you haven’t seen Star Trek 4, you’re probably wondering how they get the whale into the tank, but that’s another sci-fi bit of technology at work.

The Fact: Transparent aluminum exists! In 2009, scientists at Oxford created a transparent form of aluminum by firing a powerful laser at the material. For a brief moment, after blasting it, the material itself transformed. What does that mean? Well, imagine if you could turn lead into gold with just a shot of light. It’s the same thing. Transparent aluminum is just the beginning of what’s possible.

From Fiction to Fact. Facial Recognition/Personalized Ad Delivery. Video.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

From Fiction to Fact.  Facial Recognition/Personalized Ad Delivery. Video.

Science fiction is a genre like no other. It takes our reality as it is and imagines what possibilities the future might hold — time travel, parallel universes, teleportation, ray guns — they’re all part science, part imagination, and all fiction. Or are they?

Could these imaginings of the future actually be driving science forward? Absolutely. Science fiction writers have long inspired “real” science to catch up and create functioning, real-world versions of the technology found in their books, TV shows, and movies. For some writers, their visions of the future have literally become the technologies we all know and love today .

Here’s part 1 in the top 10 list of technologies that have made the leap from science fiction to science fact :

1.- Facial Recognition/Personalized Ad Delivery

The Fiction: Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report is on the run and trying to blend into the crowd at a local mall.  As he approaches a store, he is scanned and identified.  Suddenly, the holographic salesperson calls him by name and has an exclusive offer just for him based on his likes and dislikes from past shopping experiences.

The Fact: It’s here. New York’s immersive labs recently introduced CARA, a powerful computer platform   that can read a person’s face, determine that customer’s gender, age, etc., and instantly analyze that information to deliver targeted offers–all in real-time.

You can watch on the video below how CARA works: