Trying to look into the future is a grand old time, one that countless science fiction writers and visionaries have done more than a century. From Julies Verne predicting space rockets to Gene Roddenberry’s flip mobile phones to William Gibson defining cyberspace before it existed, science fiction writers have been leading the way towards technology’s future.

via Have we already caught up to science fiction? – thenextweb.com

What a dumb article. I thought The Next Web was better than this. Ignoring for a minute the two errors in that opening paragraph, what is the question exactly? Let me rephrase:

‘Are we living in the future already? Not the really distant future of course, just the near future. Because it feels like we’re really close to living in the near future if we aren’t already.’

The role of SF has never really been to predict the future anyway. It’s a genre more interested in exploring the themes of today, often by taking them to logical extremes to help us reflect. Verne didn’t predict space rockets – he imagined them. Likewise, Roddenberry didn’t invent the communicator – he devised a means of letting his characters communicate over vast distances.

I’ll leave you with Chad Catacchio’s insightful closing words:

“The future might not be now, but to me, it’s close.”