The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: the Holographic Interface

Holography may be one of the few scientific developments that we see no real glimpse of in fiction before it happened. I think it's easy to understand why that is. Maybe not. At any rate, holography was introduced to the world in the early 70s when Dennis Gabor won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of the holographic method. The techniques involved in this go all the way back to the 1940s, but it wasn't until the invention of the laser, in the 60s, that what we know of as holograms were developed.

Writers may not have seen the hologram coming, but they certainly saw where it could go well before science did. I don't know about you, but I remember the little hologram trinket craze of the late 70s and early 80s. At the time, that seemed to be all we were going to get from holographic technology. Things like

which are pretty cool but don't really do anything.

However, in 1983, we were introduced to

and the ideas of what holography could do began to change. Okay, it probably wasn't just Return of the Jedi that did that, but it certainly sparked the imagination of a lot of kids that would grow up and advance the field.

Of course, we also had Quantum Leap in the late 80s with its holographic sidekick played by Dean Stockwell. And there was the lesser known (because of not being very successful) show Automan in 1983

with the first holographic super hero. Not to mention Red Dwarf with its hard light hologram character.

But all of that is beside the point, because I want to get to something real. This:

That's an image from Minority Report. At the time, that thing that Tom Cruise is doing with that holographic screen was purely fictional. Here's another image:

And it was purely fictional in the sense that no one had thought of it before. At least, not like this. Spielberg did something interesting, though. He wanted a movie that looked and felt real, so, instead of just making a bunch of stuff up, in 1999, he invited... well, he invited some experts to help him devise a plausible future reality. The holographic interface he used in the movie was one of the ideas they came up with, and it has since become a reality. Well, maybe not quite to the extent that it's used in the movie, but it's on its way.

In fact, when Microsoft was developing this technology for the Xbox 360, they hired engineers to "create Minority Report inspired user interfaces." I don't know how you can get a more direct link from fiction to reality than that. It's really one of those "Hey, that's cool! Let's make one of those for real!" kind of things.

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Exo-suits

Exo-suit isn't really a very common term being tossed around these days, but it's a very exciting concept to me. Let's get you up to date. When you think of an exo-suit, you should think of

Or maybe

Iron man is probably the most famous fictional character to wear an exo-suit, and comics have been the genre where these things have been the most prevalent.

And I could just go on and on posting pictures from comics, but I'm sure you get the idea. Exo-suits have been working their way into movies, too.
From Alien:

And Avatar:

But, for me, it all really started with a game:

That's not what the game I started playing back in the '80s looked like, but it's pretty close. A (board)game where you get inside a big, robotic exo-suit and fight other guys in big, robotic exo-suits. There have been all kinds of video games based on the whome mechwarrior thing along with some tabletop miniature games. I'm still waiting for the MMO.

These things are already entering reality. Not the giant ones, but ones that look like

and

Hybrid Assistive Limb (or HAL)

The HAL is already commercially available in Japan. Currently, it's targeted at people with disabilities, but it allows the wearer, any wearer, to lift up to 5 times as much as they normally can. The newest model, the HAL-5, has a system that is integrated with the wearers nervous sytem, making it the world's first fully integrated cyborg system.

And this is what the US military is working on:

This particular model isn't available yet, but they've been working on prototypes for a while now.

At the moment, Iron Man is just entertainment. A comic book series. Some movies. But it won't be long until an iron man will be coming to a town near you!