WEBVTT - Does science fiction inspire real tech?

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<v Speaker 1>I read science fiction, and I read a lot of

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<v Speaker 1>it to escape into another universe where the rules have

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<v Speaker 1>changed and what it's like to be human and to

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<v Speaker 1>be alive can be a totally different experience. But I

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<v Speaker 1>also read science fiction to be inspired and to glimpse

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<v Speaker 1>potential futures for humanity. In my view, science fiction authors

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<v Speaker 1>are part of the science and engineering enterprise. Scientists are

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<v Speaker 1>trying to understand the universe and engineers are trying to

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<v Speaker 1>bend it to our needs. But science fiction authors are

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<v Speaker 1>part of that too. They live on the far forward edge,

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<v Speaker 1>imagining what we might create and thinking through what it

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<v Speaker 1>means for living and loving and dying. At least that's

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<v Speaker 1>the story. But how true is that in history? What

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<v Speaker 1>are some examples of ideas from science fiction that actually

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<v Speaker 1>inspired real engineering or scientific leaps. That's the topic we're

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<v Speaker 1>diving into today while we're waiting for our warpship to

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<v Speaker 1>be completed. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

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<v Speaker 2>Hello, I'm Kelly Wintersmith. I study parasites and space, and

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<v Speaker 2>today we're talking about some of my favorite topics, which

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<v Speaker 2>are technology and sci fi.

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<v Speaker 1>Hi, I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist, and I read

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<v Speaker 1>a lot of science fiction.

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<v Speaker 2>You do read a lot of science fiction. So what

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<v Speaker 2>I want to know is what piece of technology in

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<v Speaker 2>science fiction if you could bring to life right now,

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<v Speaker 2>would you want to bring to life to have in

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<v Speaker 2>your own personal life.

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<v Speaker 1>Oh well, I have two answers to that. One is

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<v Speaker 1>a replicator. I would love, like, essentially a three D

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<v Speaker 1>printer that could make any I find it really frustrating

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<v Speaker 1>that there are things that we know can exist, but

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<v Speaker 1>we don't know how to make them, like how to

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<v Speaker 1>arrange the atoms very easily, and so I would love

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<v Speaker 1>a replicator. That would be amazing.

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<v Speaker 2>I'm having trouble following the dream there, Like what in

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<v Speaker 2>particular would you replicate if you could.

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<v Speaker 1>I mean, imagine being able to make food without having

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<v Speaker 1>to go through this complex food chemistry process to start

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<v Speaker 1>from ingredients and end up at soufle a. Right. Yeah,

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<v Speaker 1>you literally make anything in any shape, any arrangement. If

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<v Speaker 1>you're doing like a complex baking project and you want

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<v Speaker 1>like chocolate in the shape of a dolphin or whatever,

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<v Speaker 1>like getting it in that shape is hard. Sometimes you

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<v Speaker 1>have to like coerce it. So yeah, I want to

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<v Speaker 1>skip over all of chemistry essentially.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean in white, like you're cancer when you

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<v Speaker 2>could have chocolate in the shape of a dolphin. Yeah.

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<v Speaker 2>I see where you're going.

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<v Speaker 1>Okay, all right, all right, But I recently had the

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<v Speaker 1>opposite experience, which is I read a science fiction novel

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<v Speaker 1>in which something I invented appeared.

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<v Speaker 2>What.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, go on. So I'm reading this science fiction novel

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<v Speaker 1>about somebody who's listening for messages from outer space and

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<v Speaker 1>they rely on a distributed network of smartphones called crafus

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<v Speaker 1>in order to capture the data. They actually reference the

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<v Speaker 1>name of the experiment.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, what did one of our listeners send you give

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<v Speaker 2>me more information? This can't be Do you know this person?

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<v Speaker 1>I do not know this person. And I emailed the

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<v Speaker 1>author and I was like, wow, thanks for including our

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<v Speaker 1>experiment in your book. And he wrote back He's like, oh,

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<v Speaker 1>this is so fun. And we had a nice conversation.

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<v Speaker 2>Oh well, what's the name of the book.

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<v Speaker 1>The book is called The Receiver by Seth Jaffe and

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<v Speaker 1>you can find it on Amazon. I'm about halfway through

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<v Speaker 1>it right now.

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<v Speaker 2>That is so cool. Oh my gosh, you've inspired science fiction.

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<v Speaker 1>Well, it plays a minor role, but it was fun. Yeah,

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<v Speaker 1>it was fun to appear in science fiction. I mean

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<v Speaker 1>there's no Daniel whites in character, but they took the

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<v Speaker 1>experiment and use it and they got the science right,

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<v Speaker 1>So kudos Seth.

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<v Speaker 2>Wow. I mean, do you think that it would be

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<v Speaker 2>more interesting if there was a Daniel Whitson character or

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<v Speaker 2>more interesting if there's a tech div I loved by

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<v Speaker 2>Daniel Whitson.

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<v Speaker 1>I've even mortified to see myself in science fiction. It's

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<v Speaker 1>just very cool to influence somebody else's view of like

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<v Speaker 1>what's possible out there in the universe? What can we do? Oh,

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<v Speaker 1>this is a new capability and that's exactly why we

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<v Speaker 1>came up with the experiment to create new sensing capability.

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<v Speaker 1>So that was really fun.

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<v Speaker 2>That's awesome. So you know, over time, I've done like

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<v Speaker 2>a bunch of interviews where people have asked about, like

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<v Speaker 2>how do you inspire people to like do space stuff

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<v Speaker 2>and like you know, invest in space, and then there's

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<v Speaker 2>a lot of this conversation about how science fiction inspires

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<v Speaker 2>people to do space stuff, and so I have actually

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<v Speaker 2>pretty often said this phrase that like science fiction inspires technology,

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<v Speaker 2>and then physics and technology inspires science fiction, and so

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<v Speaker 2>I realize that when you sent me the outlined that

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<v Speaker 2>I have said those words many times but never actually

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<v Speaker 2>dug in to like figure out what examples you know

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<v Speaker 2>there are of that, And so I am super excited

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<v Speaker 2>that today we're talking about this and now I will

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<v Speaker 2>know you know how much meat there is behind that statement.

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<v Speaker 1>Exactly. I do the same thing all the time. I

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<v Speaker 1>credit science fiction with inspiring technology. I say it's a healthy,

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<v Speaker 1>two way inspirational street. And I expected, when digging into

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<v Speaker 1>this episode to find lots and lots of examples to

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<v Speaker 1>back up the claims I've been making for years. But

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<v Speaker 1>as you know, when you started researching your book about Mars,

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<v Speaker 1>sometimes when you dig into the details, you learn that

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<v Speaker 1>the popular story isn't always accurate.

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<v Speaker 2>Oh no, you're giving away the punchline. I wasn't gonna

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<v Speaker 2>give away the punchline. But yes, you had the City

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<v Speaker 2>on Mars experience where you thought it was going to

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<v Speaker 2>go one way, and then you're as you're researching it,

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<v Speaker 2>you're like, I'm going to lose all of my friends.

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<v Speaker 1>Well maybe not all of them stick around. There are

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<v Speaker 1>some really fun tidbits in here, all right, But before

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<v Speaker 1>we dig into some fun examples, I want to out there,

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<v Speaker 1>and I asked the extraordinaries what they thought might have

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<v Speaker 1>been inspired by science fiction. Here's what folks had to say.

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<v Speaker 1>Star Trek communicators are probably the easy one. Inspired flip

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<v Speaker 1>phone technology, cell phone.

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<v Speaker 3>I mean, just taking Star Trek as a great example.

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<v Speaker 3>Their pads inspired tablets, their communicators inspired cell phones, their

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<v Speaker 3>medical devices inspired well, I guess medical devices and their

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<v Speaker 3>replicators inspired the replicators that we all have in our

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<v Speaker 3>homes today. Wait, wait, you don't.

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<v Speaker 1>You don't have one.

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<v Speaker 2>I bet Star Wars inspired a lot of great new

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<v Speaker 2>theme park ride technology.

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<v Speaker 4>At Disney we have.

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<v Speaker 3>Self driving cars, harveboards, lasers.

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<v Speaker 1>Flip phones. Yeah.

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<v Speaker 2>From Star Trek communicators.

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<v Speaker 4>No, I don't know.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm sure there's a bunch one missing.

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<v Speaker 4>Maybe rovers to other planets we thought of before we

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<v Speaker 4>actually created them.

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<v Speaker 1>I'd be I only so.

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<v Speaker 4>I read the Neil Stephenson novel Snowgrash, which was about

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<v Speaker 4>metaverse and how you can live these elaborate lives online

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<v Speaker 4>in this virtual reality world.

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<v Speaker 3>Well, the first thing that comes to mind is the

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<v Speaker 3>Star Trek communicator and the flip phone.

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<v Speaker 2>All right, so I'm seeing a lot of communicators, tablets,

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<v Speaker 2>cell phones, flip phones. Those are some of the things

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<v Speaker 2>that I would have guessed initially. So should we start there.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, this is the most common thing. People like Kirk's

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<v Speaker 1>Flip communicator. It's iconic. You know, people see it, they

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<v Speaker 1>see the connection to smartphones, you know, the Motorola phone,

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<v Speaker 1>and it's often cited is the most common example of

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<v Speaker 1>science fiction inspiring something in reality.

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<v Speaker 2>Should we explain the Motorola phone for the like five

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<v Speaker 2>young listeners we might have.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, So, Flip's communicator is a little handheld device. It's

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<v Speaker 1>the size of your palm, and it flips it open

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<v Speaker 1>like does this move and it makes this sound, and

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<v Speaker 1>you know, something you carry with you. And the cool

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<v Speaker 1>thing about it is that it's like always on, you know,

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<v Speaker 1>like punch in a number to call Spock. You just

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<v Speaker 1>open it and you talk and the Enterprise can hear you.

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<v Speaker 1>And I think the most important thing about the communicator

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<v Speaker 1>in the show was that it was kind of boring.

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<v Speaker 1>It was like not a big deal. Kirk treated it

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<v Speaker 1>as like, well, of course we can talk to the

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<v Speaker 1>Enterprise even though it's in orbit or far away, right,

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<v Speaker 1>And it's this amazing thing that he can do that

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<v Speaker 1>we couldn't do. Sitting in our boring, real universe, and

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<v Speaker 1>that was exciting. And I love the conflict there, the

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<v Speaker 1>fact that he's so casual about it.

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<v Speaker 2>I love that he was comfortable with the Enterprise listening

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<v Speaker 2>at all times, just like we're comfortable with Alexa and

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<v Speaker 2>Siri listening to us at all times. They were also like,

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<v Speaker 2>I'm going to give away all of my information and

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<v Speaker 2>all of my personal conversations to the Enterprise.

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<v Speaker 1>And in science fiction, this was kind of novel. We

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<v Speaker 1>already had an existence like two way walkie talkies, and

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<v Speaker 1>there were mobile phones at the time, but they were

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<v Speaker 1>only in cars.

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<v Speaker 2>So this was the nineteen sixties and there were already

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<v Speaker 2>mobile phones in cars.

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<v Speaker 1>There were already mobile phones in cars, that's right, okay,

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<v Speaker 1>And we had wireless communication with radios and transistors were

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<v Speaker 1>shrinking everything. So it was sort of a novel idea,

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<v Speaker 1>but it also inspired by a lot of similar technology.

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<v Speaker 2>I thought that it was like the seventies or the

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<v Speaker 2>eighties where you had those giant phones in cars, but

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<v Speaker 2>that was even earlier. I guess it was like the

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<v Speaker 2>super duper rich, we're able to have them, and maybe

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<v Speaker 2>it took up like the whole trunk to make it

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<v Speaker 2>work or my family didn't have one, that's for sure.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So the history of the mobile phone development is

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<v Speaker 1>super fascinating. In the forties, already Aight and T introduced

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<v Speaker 1>car phones. These were big, They were stuck in a car. Yeah,

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<v Speaker 1>it's not very widespread service in the forties. The late forties, Yeah,

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<v Speaker 1>it's amazing. And eighteen and T kept working on car

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<v Speaker 1>based phones, and Motorola was aiming for a handheld phone.

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<v Speaker 1>So this guy at Motorola Martin Cooper, and he's the

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<v Speaker 1>guy who invented the first hand held mobile phone. It's

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<v Speaker 1>called the Dine Attack and it came out in seventy three,

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<v Speaker 1>and it's nicknamed the Brick because it's like five pounds

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<v Speaker 1>and you know, it's like twenty centimeters by ten centimeters

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<v Speaker 1>by five centimeters. Like you should look up a picture

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<v Speaker 1>of this thing. It looks like somebody's holding up like

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<v Speaker 1>a couple of bricks actually, And the thing could talk

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<v Speaker 1>for like thirty minutes at a time and took ten

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<v Speaker 1>hours to reach ourge.

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<v Speaker 2>So for emergency use only.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, exactly, And this is awesome. The first call ever

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<v Speaker 1>made on a handheld mobile phone was from Martin Cooper

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<v Speaker 1>to his chief rival at eight and t.

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<v Speaker 2>That's amazing.

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<v Speaker 1>And then Motorola kept working on the phones and it

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<v Speaker 1>wasn't until like nineteen eighty nine they we had the

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<v Speaker 1>first sort of small animal flip phone that looked like

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<v Speaker 1>a Star Trek communicator.

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<v Speaker 2>Okay, that's amazing.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and then you know, the iconic in the nineteen

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<v Speaker 1>nineties is the Motorola star Tack, which is this flip

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<v Speaker 1>phone which is super popular and everybody who was alive

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<v Speaker 1>at the time had one, or saw one or new one. Right,

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<v Speaker 1>And this is connection in people's minds between the Motorola

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<v Speaker 1>Startack and the Star Trek communicator. And this guy Martin

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<v Speaker 1>Cooper at Motorola, the inventor of the mobile phone, explicitly

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<v Speaker 1>cites Star Trek as inspiration for this. There's a two

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<v Speaker 1>thousand and five movie called How William Shatner Changed the World,

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<v Speaker 1>and he says in that movie in an interview, we

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<v Speaker 1>were inspired by Captain Kirk.

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<v Speaker 2>Okay, wait, a couple thoughts. One, how William Shatner changed

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<v Speaker 2>the world? Did the shat do the writing or shouldn't

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<v Speaker 2>like the writer it shouldn't have been How the writers

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<v Speaker 2>of Star Trek changed the world. That feels like the

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<v Speaker 2>credit's not going to the right person.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and it's not even the writers, it's the prop designer.

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<v Speaker 1>There's this guy Wa Ming Cheng who created so many

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<v Speaker 1>iconic props on Star Trek. The Communicator, the Romulan bird

0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.640
<v Speaker 1>of Prey, the Vulcan harp, all these things, the tricorder,

0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:11.000
<v Speaker 1>so many things that we identify with Star Trek were

0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:14.520
<v Speaker 1>invented by this one guy. While I'm being chang so, yeah,

0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:16.360
<v Speaker 1>he should definitely get the credit. I bet he read

0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:17.280
<v Speaker 1>a lot of science fiction.

0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:20.239
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, no doubt he changed the world.

0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:23.480
<v Speaker 1>That's right. So that's the sort of story that's going around,

0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:26.160
<v Speaker 1>And if you only dig in superficially, it seems like

0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:30.080
<v Speaker 1>this is a great example of science fiction Star Trek,

0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.880
<v Speaker 1>in this case coming up with a new idea, of course,

0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:35.160
<v Speaker 1>building on ideas that have been out there already, but

0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:37.080
<v Speaker 1>coming up with a new idea which caught on and

0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:40.840
<v Speaker 1>then inspired scientists in the real world to make something real. Right.

0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:43.800
<v Speaker 2>I am so glad that I was correct on all

0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:46.320
<v Speaker 2>of those podcasts where I know said the thing.

0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:50.360
<v Speaker 1>So let's move on, But actually, oh yes, if you

0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:56.400
<v Speaker 1>dig deeper. In twenty twenty one, Martin Cooper recanted that story. Yes,

0:12:56.640 --> 0:13:00.840
<v Speaker 1>what exactly? Apparently there was this popular myth that Star

0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.720
<v Speaker 1>Trek inspired the flip phone. Everybody says it. Kelly Winersmith

0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:06.680
<v Speaker 1>says it, and she does a lot of research, so

0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:07.600
<v Speaker 1>you gotta believe it.

0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:09.920
<v Speaker 2>Right, He's wrong sometimes, guys, I know.

0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:12.760
<v Speaker 1>And it turns out that when he was being interviewed,

0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:16.400
<v Speaker 1>he says he felt pressure to endorse this popular myth

0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:19.520
<v Speaker 1>even though it wasn't true. Here's a quote from him.

0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.480
<v Speaker 1>I got caught up in this thing. Their premise was

0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:25.240
<v Speaker 1>that the cell phone came from William Chatner and Star Trek,

0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:27.880
<v Speaker 1>and I didn't argue with them. This is show business.

0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:30.079
<v Speaker 1>We don't worry about facts. And I've had to live

0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:31.600
<v Speaker 1>with that for how many years now.

0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:33.960
<v Speaker 2>I think when he sleeps on his bed of money,

0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:37.120
<v Speaker 2>he probably sleeps pretty well. But some of them where

0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:38.079
<v Speaker 2>did he get the idea?

0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.679
<v Speaker 1>So there's another twist. Right first, we're thinking, oh, it's

0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:44.000
<v Speaker 1>inspired by Star Trek. Then it turns out no, But

0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:47.760
<v Speaker 1>the answer is it's inspired by a different science fiction source.

0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:50.520
<v Speaker 1>As a kid, he read Dick Tracy, comic strips and

0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.840
<v Speaker 1>Dick Tracy. For those who don't know, is this famous

0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:58.720
<v Speaker 1>detective and he had a two way radio wristwatch. And Cooper,

0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:01.600
<v Speaker 1>who's like ninety nine by now, read this in the

0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:05.160
<v Speaker 1>forties and he was inspired by the Dick Tracy wristwatch

0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:08.680
<v Speaker 1>that was the real inspiration for mobile communications.

0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:10.320
<v Speaker 2>Okay, well, so here's what I want to know. So

0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:15.520
<v Speaker 2>was Star Trek inspired by Dick Tracy or is this

0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:19.320
<v Speaker 2>the case of like an idea. Like I feel like

0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:22.960
<v Speaker 2>some ideas, when their time comes, they're just obvious, right,

0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:26.360
<v Speaker 2>And so like maybe someone was going to come up

0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:28.520
<v Speaker 2>with this idea, or like many people were going to

0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:30.600
<v Speaker 2>come up with this idea independently, and it was just

0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:32.200
<v Speaker 2>gonna it was an obvious thing that was going to

0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:32.880
<v Speaker 2>happen eventually.

0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:34.720
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think a lot of people came up with

0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:39.080
<v Speaker 1>this idea. You know, we had wireless communication already, you know,

0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:41.360
<v Speaker 1>in World War One. And then if you look at

0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:45.520
<v Speaker 1>like cartoons depicting the future, there's examples in like nineteen

0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:48.360
<v Speaker 1>twenties of a cartoonist drawing a crowd in the future

0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:51.320
<v Speaker 1>where everybody's walking around holding their own personal phone. So

0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:55.040
<v Speaker 1>the idea was definitely there. There's lots of drawings like that,

0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:57.880
<v Speaker 1>and it appears all over the place in science fiction,

0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:02.720
<v Speaker 1>So the idea of small personal communicators was everywhere already

0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:05.520
<v Speaker 1>sort of in the zeitgeist. I think that Star Trek

0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:07.880
<v Speaker 1>made a really cool prop and a really cool noise,

0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:10.440
<v Speaker 1>and it was just seen by everybody and sort of

0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:12.600
<v Speaker 1>coalesced into this one concept.

0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:15.240
<v Speaker 2>So do you give this initial idea to sci fi

0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:18.640
<v Speaker 2>or do you give this to the engineers? Where does

0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:19.120
<v Speaker 2>the point go?

0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:21.880
<v Speaker 1>I think science fiction really did inspire this. I mean,

0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:24.840
<v Speaker 1>Cooper says, if we can trust him now, that he

0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.960
<v Speaker 1>was inspired by science fiction. And this timeline also makes

0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:30.320
<v Speaker 1>more sense. I mean, by the time that Star Trek

0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:33.520
<v Speaker 1>came out in the late sixties, like Motorola, was practically

0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:35.640
<v Speaker 1>in the home stretch. It's not like they saw Star

0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:37.440
<v Speaker 1>Trek and then a few years later they put this

0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:40.440
<v Speaker 1>thing together. They had been working on this project for decades.

0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:43.280
<v Speaker 1>People had had mobile phones already in cars, they were

0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:47.400
<v Speaker 1>working towards handheld devices. So I think this story makes

0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:50.320
<v Speaker 1>a lot more sense. But you know, the flip phones

0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:53.080
<v Speaker 1>that we have still can't do some of the things

0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:55.760
<v Speaker 1>that Star Trek communicators could do, So they still work

0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:59.480
<v Speaker 1>out there for engineers to do. For example, Kirk's communicator

0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:05.120
<v Speaker 1>used subspace transmissions which could bypass electromagnetic interference and have

0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:09.360
<v Speaker 1>almost instantaneous communication, which of course our cell phones can't

0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:11.320
<v Speaker 1>do because we're limited by relativity.

0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:14.760
<v Speaker 2>Okay, but like I don't sense a delay, so I

0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:17.000
<v Speaker 2>don't know, does that seem worth investing in?

0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:20.800
<v Speaker 1>Well, don't you want to have faster communication with the

0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:24.320
<v Speaker 1>Moon and with Mars? Like, wouldn't that be great?

0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:25.080
<v Speaker 4>All right?

0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:27.240
<v Speaker 2>Okay, by the time we're you know, spending a lot

0:16:27.240 --> 0:16:28.920
<v Speaker 2>of time on the Moon or Mars. Yes, we should

0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:30.120
<v Speaker 2>figure that out. I'll give you that.

0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:33.080
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And in star Trek, the next generation, they had

0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:35.760
<v Speaker 1>this version of the communicator with badges, like you could

0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:38.240
<v Speaker 1>just press your badge to talk to somebody, which is

0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:41.160
<v Speaker 1>not something you see anybody really working on. I don't

0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:43.760
<v Speaker 1>know if it's just not cool enough or what, but

0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:46.720
<v Speaker 1>it's the capability of communicators in Star Trek which we

0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:48.000
<v Speaker 1>haven't yet seen in the market.

0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:48.400
<v Speaker 3>I don't know.

0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:50.880
<v Speaker 2>Let's kind of like just talk into your your wrist

0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:53.800
<v Speaker 2>Apple watch, isn't it. I Mean, I don't really want

0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:56.120
<v Speaker 2>to have to like touch my chest to like make

0:16:56.160 --> 0:16:58.840
<v Speaker 2>a phone call, but touching my wrists feels like way

0:16:58.920 --> 0:16:59.480
<v Speaker 2>less weird.

0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:03.040
<v Speaker 1>I have not bought into the Apple Watch thing, so

0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:04.159
<v Speaker 1>I can't speak to that.

0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:06.200
<v Speaker 2>No, I don't have one either. I'm way too clumsy.

0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:07.920
<v Speaker 2>I would smash it into a wall and break it.

0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:09.280
<v Speaker 2>But okay, all right, you.

0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:11.119
<v Speaker 1>Can get an app on your phone which makes the

0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:13.400
<v Speaker 1>sounds of a communicator so you.

0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:15.360
<v Speaker 2>Can feel Star Trek y amazing.

0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:17.200
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but we still can't use subspace.

0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:21.080
<v Speaker 2>All right, Well maybe one day, okay, So score one

0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:24.880
<v Speaker 2>for science fiction. Although as a person who has married

0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:26.919
<v Speaker 2>a cartoonist, I feel like maybe they should be score

0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:30.080
<v Speaker 2>one for like comic books or comic strips, and they

0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:32.800
<v Speaker 2>should get a little bit more cred. But let's take

0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:34.800
<v Speaker 2>a break, and when we come back, we will move

0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:59.520
<v Speaker 2>on to our next potentially science fiction inspired technology. And

0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.760
<v Speaker 2>we're back to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe and is

0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:06.560
<v Speaker 2>our next science fiction technology also inspired by Star Trek.

0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:09.480
<v Speaker 1>Daniel, it is Star Trek has like really wormed its

0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:14.120
<v Speaker 1>way into the minds of engineers. Nerds out there love

0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:17.880
<v Speaker 1>Star Trek. And something that's ubiquitous in Star Trek, which

0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:22.000
<v Speaker 1>we now also have are these tablet computers. Right in

0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:26.760
<v Speaker 1>Star Trek next generation, they had these padd personal access

0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:31.000
<v Speaker 1>displayed devices and if you watch the show. Now it

0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:33.959
<v Speaker 1>looks a lot like an iPad. These things are flat,

0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:37.439
<v Speaker 1>you use them by touching them. They're really portable. They

0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:39.639
<v Speaker 1>use them for all sorts of stuff like reading information,

0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:44.160
<v Speaker 1>like signing documents, sharing data, all sorts of stuff. And

0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:47.639
<v Speaker 1>just like the flip phone, it was treated casually, like

0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:49.879
<v Speaker 1>you treated like a piece of paper. It's not like

0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:52.520
<v Speaker 1>this is some cool piece of technology. Everybody be careful

0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.480
<v Speaker 1>around it. You just like casually tossed it on a desk, right,

0:18:56.320 --> 0:18:58.400
<v Speaker 1>And so these things are everywhere in Star Trek.

0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:00.560
<v Speaker 2>Am I wrong in queuing into the fact that it's

0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:05.719
<v Speaker 2>called a pad and we now have iPads? Was that

0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:08.480
<v Speaker 2>on purpose? Or am I jumping the gun?

0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:11.360
<v Speaker 1>You're a jumping the gun. There's an interesting twist there

0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:13.919
<v Speaker 1>at the end whether or not the iPad was inspired

0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:16.920
<v Speaker 1>by the Star Trek pad. Oh, it's certainly very similar.

0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:18.080
<v Speaker 2>I can wait, I can wait.

0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:22.280
<v Speaker 1>And they appeared briefly in the original series, and they're hilarious,

0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:25.160
<v Speaker 1>like I love the Star Trek Next Generation Technical Manual,

0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:28.840
<v Speaker 1>which gives you like ridiculous sciencey, so sounding stories like

0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:31.119
<v Speaker 1>how things work. And so I look this up and

0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:35.280
<v Speaker 1>apparently the padd is powered by Serium Krelie power cells

0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:38.920
<v Speaker 1>and have an outer casing of boronit whisker epoxy, allowing

0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.639
<v Speaker 1>them to drop thirty five meters without any damage.

0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:45.240
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow, wow, boronight whisker.

0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:48.159
<v Speaker 1>Boron nit whisker epoxy. I'm going to go get that

0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:49.119
<v Speaker 1>at the hardware store.

0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:51.960
<v Speaker 2>That yeah, that's a meaning. Where did you find those specs.

0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:54.040
<v Speaker 1>In the Star Trek next Generation Technical Manual? Of course?

0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:56.760
<v Speaker 2>Is that something you can buy online? Or do you

0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:58.000
<v Speaker 2>have that on your bookshelf.

0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:00.280
<v Speaker 1>I do not have that on my bookshelf, but you

0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:01.800
<v Speaker 1>can look it up online these days.

0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:03.440
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, okay, amazing.

0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:06.560
<v Speaker 1>And this is not actually the first time this kind

0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:10.240
<v Speaker 1>of device appears in science fiction, but it's the first time.

0:20:10.400 --> 0:20:13.400
<v Speaker 1>It's so similar to the device we have now. Back

0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:17.240
<v Speaker 1>in nineteen fifty one, in the novel Foundation, Isaac Asimov's

0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:20.320
<v Speaker 1>characters have this thing called a calculator pad, and then

0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:23.399
<v Speaker 1>in nineteen sixty eight two thousand and one Space Odyssey

0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:26.960
<v Speaker 1>they have flat displays, which was a big thing. They

0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:29.680
<v Speaker 1>don't have touch screens, but they don't have like CRTs

0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:33.080
<v Speaker 1>with a crazy curve monitors and that that made it

0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:37.280
<v Speaker 1>seem really futuristic. And lots of books from the Golden

0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:41.000
<v Speaker 1>Age of science fiction have things like e readers, e books.

0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:43.840
<v Speaker 1>We don't have like physical printed pages, but most of

0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:45.560
<v Speaker 1>those have things like, you know, a button at the

0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:48.440
<v Speaker 1>bottom you press to change the page, not like really

0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.600
<v Speaker 1>a touchscreen device. Okay, And fans of Doctor Whom I

0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:54.480
<v Speaker 1>remember that one of the characters there has a tablet

0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:57.159
<v Speaker 1>in which he can input data using swipe gesters. This

0:20:57.200 --> 0:20:59.919
<v Speaker 1>is nineteen sixty seven, So like, the idea is so

0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:04.119
<v Speaker 1>out there, even before it's again coalesced into an awesome

0:21:04.160 --> 0:21:05.280
<v Speaker 1>prop on Star Trek.

0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:07.600
<v Speaker 2>Well, so is this so surprising? So look, if you've

0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:10.440
<v Speaker 2>got this idea of like a flip phone where you can,

0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:14.199
<v Speaker 2>like c Spock when he pops up, an iPad is

0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:18.320
<v Speaker 2>just like the flip phone wider like, So it's not

0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:20.200
<v Speaker 2>that different, is it.

0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:23.280
<v Speaker 1>You sound like all the naysayers who were like, the

0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:26.240
<v Speaker 1>iPad is not going to succeed, and meanwhile it's like

0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:29.320
<v Speaker 1>a zillion dollar business. You're right, it's very similar to

0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:32.639
<v Speaker 1>the smartphone, but it's something different, right. That's why people

0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:36.919
<v Speaker 1>buy tablets and also smartphones, because it's like a bigger

0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:40.440
<v Speaker 1>window into the Internet. Somehow. I was also skeptical. I

0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:43.120
<v Speaker 1>remember being like it's just a big smartphone, and smartphones

0:21:43.119 --> 0:21:46.600
<v Speaker 1>are already too big. But lots of people like their tablets.

0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:49.600
<v Speaker 2>You're right. When the iPad first came out one, I

0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.360
<v Speaker 2>thought the name was hilarious, and when the Saturday Night

0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:55.680
<v Speaker 2>Live jokes were coming out about how it's named after

0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:59.040
<v Speaker 2>a feminine hygiene product, I was laughing. I was like,

0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:01.120
<v Speaker 2>this is never gonna work, and now my family had

0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:02.960
<v Speaker 2>you know, every member of my family has one, so

0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:07.840
<v Speaker 2>definitely in my face exactly, But I don't think it's

0:22:07.880 --> 0:22:11.280
<v Speaker 2>a big jump to imagine that, like you might want

0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:15.359
<v Speaker 2>bigger screens for some ideas, Like it doesn't seem like

0:22:15.359 --> 0:22:17.359
<v Speaker 2>a completely different technology to me.

0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:21.200
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, exactly. And you know, Apple didn't invent the idea

0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:23.760
<v Speaker 1>of a tablet, as in many cases, they came in

0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:27.600
<v Speaker 1>very late, made it awesome, and sold billions of them.

0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:28.080
<v Speaker 4>Right.

0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:32.399
<v Speaker 1>The idea for like a touchscreen tablet goes way way back.

0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:35.680
<v Speaker 1>The first patent was in nineteen seventy nine by team

0:22:35.680 --> 0:22:39.800
<v Speaker 1>at Hitachi for the idea, and Apple had a touchscreen

0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:43.159
<v Speaker 1>mac andsoft concept as early as nineteen eighty four. You

0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:46.240
<v Speaker 1>can see a prototype of it in the SF MoMA. Actually,

0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:50.320
<v Speaker 1>and in nineteen eighty nine, the predecessor to the Pom Pilot.

0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:54.520
<v Speaker 1>The first maybe successful tablet was this grid pad, which

0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:57.600
<v Speaker 1>is based actually on MS DOS for those who remember that.

0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:00.520
<v Speaker 1>And then in ninety three, Apple came out with Newton,

0:23:00.880 --> 0:23:03.600
<v Speaker 1>which is, you know, like a little tablet device and

0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:06.280
<v Speaker 1>you could interact with it. It didn't have a keyboard, right,

0:23:06.320 --> 0:23:08.800
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't a smartphone. It really was like a proto tablet.

0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:11.520
<v Speaker 1>But there were lots of failed devices in the nineties,

0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:14.359
<v Speaker 1>like Microsoft came in and tried to build one, the

0:23:14.400 --> 0:23:18.480
<v Speaker 1>wind Pad, which never went anywhere, and people kept trying

0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:20.520
<v Speaker 1>to build this and say, like consumers are going to

0:23:20.600 --> 0:23:23.760
<v Speaker 1>want it. In two thousand and one, Nokia developed a

0:23:23.760 --> 0:23:26.600
<v Speaker 1>tablet internally but decided not to sell it because they

0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:29.719
<v Speaker 1>said the market wasn't ready. And in two thousand and

0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:32.000
<v Speaker 1>five they finally came out with a tablet. And then

0:23:32.040 --> 0:23:36.120
<v Speaker 1>again before Apple and the iPad, in two thousand and eight,

0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:39.160
<v Speaker 1>the first Android tablets came out, so Apple wasn't even

0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:41.840
<v Speaker 1>the first like to produce the tablet like what we

0:23:41.880 --> 0:23:44.280
<v Speaker 1>see today. In twenty ten, Apple came out with the

0:23:44.320 --> 0:23:47.840
<v Speaker 1>iPad and pushed to the mainstream, and by like twenty twelve,

0:23:48.160 --> 0:23:50.280
<v Speaker 1>one third of US households.

0:23:49.800 --> 0:23:52.600
<v Speaker 2>Had a tablet that's amazing.

0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:54.879
<v Speaker 1>And you know the powered Apple and their design and

0:23:54.920 --> 0:23:57.960
<v Speaker 1>their slick interface and their marketing. I don't know, all right,

0:23:58.000 --> 0:24:02.600
<v Speaker 1>So did the Star Trek pad inspire the iPad or

0:24:02.640 --> 0:24:05.520
<v Speaker 1>other similar devices? So if you ask the guys at

0:24:05.520 --> 0:24:09.320
<v Speaker 1>Star Trek, they think it did well. Doug Drexler, he's

0:24:09.359 --> 0:24:12.479
<v Speaker 1>one of the designers behind the pad. He said that

0:24:12.520 --> 0:24:16.840
<v Speaker 1>iPads felt quote eerily similar to his team's vision. Quote.

0:24:16.920 --> 0:24:20.240
<v Speaker 1>It's uncanny to have a padd that actually works, he said,

0:24:20.560 --> 0:24:24.600
<v Speaker 1>calling it the true Star Trek dream. And so they

0:24:24.640 --> 0:24:27.800
<v Speaker 1>see a connection, right, They claim credit for it, But

0:24:27.880 --> 0:24:30.320
<v Speaker 1>if you ask Apple execs, they are mum on the idea.

0:24:30.440 --> 0:24:34.160
<v Speaker 1>Like nobody Apple admits that Star Trek inspired their work

0:24:34.280 --> 0:24:37.440
<v Speaker 1>or even earlier designers of tablet computers. I don't know

0:24:37.440 --> 0:24:40.199
<v Speaker 1>if that's an intellectual property issue, and the lawyers have

0:24:40.280 --> 0:24:42.720
<v Speaker 1>weighed in, but the engineers deny it.

0:24:43.040 --> 0:24:46.800
<v Speaker 2>Would Doug Drexler say that he was inspired by earlier

0:24:46.880 --> 0:24:48.720
<v Speaker 2>science fiction that came before him?

0:24:49.280 --> 0:24:52.520
<v Speaker 1>Probably, I mean, I'm sure as a designer on Star Trek,

0:24:52.680 --> 0:24:55.040
<v Speaker 1>he's read all that earlier science fiction and he knows

0:24:55.040 --> 0:24:57.120
<v Speaker 1>it didn't come up with the concept all on his own.

0:24:57.880 --> 0:25:00.720
<v Speaker 1>But again, you know, it's a big step forward, right

0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:03.280
<v Speaker 1>having it be ubiquitous, having it be in casual use,

0:25:03.720 --> 0:25:06.080
<v Speaker 1>having them to be so small and portable. These were

0:25:06.160 --> 0:25:08.120
<v Speaker 1>new things for Star Trek to come up with.

0:25:08.280 --> 0:25:11.639
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So I'd say this is definitely a point for

0:25:11.680 --> 0:25:15.560
<v Speaker 2>science fiction. Yeah, and probably actually a point for Star Trek.

0:25:16.000 --> 0:25:18.359
<v Speaker 2>So you're not having the full a city on Mars

0:25:18.400 --> 0:25:21.359
<v Speaker 2>experience here. In fact, this is a very light, a

0:25:21.480 --> 0:25:22.480
<v Speaker 2>calm experience.

0:25:24.280 --> 0:25:26.200
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot more nuance here than I expect you.

0:25:26.400 --> 0:25:28.480
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yes, all right, So are we going to get

0:25:28.480 --> 0:25:30.840
<v Speaker 2>to a technology that doesn't have anything to do with

0:25:30.880 --> 0:25:35.760
<v Speaker 2>Star trekkers, Star Trek the only thing that's driven technology forward.

0:25:36.160 --> 0:25:39.320
<v Speaker 1>No, let's go underwater. Many folks are under the impression

0:25:39.760 --> 0:25:42.840
<v Speaker 1>that the book twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, which

0:25:42.880 --> 0:25:47.080
<v Speaker 1>came out in eighteen seventy, inspired people to build submarines

0:25:47.119 --> 0:25:50.239
<v Speaker 1>and is like the reason we have submarines now, And

0:25:50.280 --> 0:25:52.080
<v Speaker 1>it was a really cool book. You know, a lot

0:25:52.080 --> 0:25:55.320
<v Speaker 1>of concepts in that book, like electric propulsion and driving

0:25:55.320 --> 0:25:58.440
<v Speaker 1>for a long time underwater and having self contained life support.

0:25:58.720 --> 0:26:01.119
<v Speaker 1>These were really cool concepts we now see, of course,

0:26:01.200 --> 0:26:06.199
<v Speaker 1>in submarines, and Simon Lake, who's a submarine pioneer, he

0:26:06.359 --> 0:26:10.359
<v Speaker 1>cites Jules Verne as an influence, right, Okay, but the

0:26:10.440 --> 0:26:13.280
<v Speaker 1>problem is that, like, people have been building submarines long

0:26:13.359 --> 0:26:13.840
<v Speaker 1>before this.

0:26:14.080 --> 0:26:15.119
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's a problem.

0:26:15.240 --> 0:26:17.480
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the history of submarines goes all the way back

0:26:17.520 --> 0:26:21.920
<v Speaker 1>to the fifteen hundreds, so like three hundred years before

0:26:22.040 --> 0:26:23.399
<v Speaker 1>Jeules Byrne wrote his novel.

0:26:23.720 --> 0:26:25.439
<v Speaker 2>I gotta be honest, I would not want to be

0:26:25.440 --> 0:26:29.680
<v Speaker 2>in a fifteen hundreds submarine. I can't imagine that was safe.

0:26:29.880 --> 0:26:32.480
<v Speaker 1>There's a record that in the city of Toledo, two

0:26:32.560 --> 0:26:36.560
<v Speaker 1>Greeks submerged and surfaced in the River Tagus several times

0:26:36.600 --> 0:26:39.359
<v Speaker 1>without getting wet, and with a flame that they carried

0:26:39.400 --> 0:26:41.959
<v Speaker 1>in their hands, still a light. So this is like,

0:26:42.240 --> 0:26:46.159
<v Speaker 1>you know, one record of maybe some prototype submarine all

0:26:46.200 --> 0:26:47.680
<v Speaker 1>the way back in fifteen sixties.

0:26:48.040 --> 0:26:50.040
<v Speaker 2>Did they probably have like a tube that went to

0:26:50.119 --> 0:26:50.880
<v Speaker 2>the surface or.

0:26:51.000 --> 0:26:53.120
<v Speaker 1>It's not clear. There's not a whole lot more details

0:26:53.119 --> 0:26:55.159
<v Speaker 1>there in the record, Okay, but it's like the first

0:26:55.240 --> 0:26:58.119
<v Speaker 1>reference to maybe what could have been a prototype submarine.

0:26:58.840 --> 0:27:02.320
<v Speaker 1>And then in fifteen seventy eight, the English mathematician William

0:27:02.359 --> 0:27:06.080
<v Speaker 1>Byrne recorded in his book Inventions or Devices, one of

0:27:06.119 --> 0:27:09.840
<v Speaker 1>the first plans for an underwater navigation vehicle. So there's

0:27:09.880 --> 0:27:13.000
<v Speaker 1>evidence that, like the idea was around. The first time

0:27:13.040 --> 0:27:17.040
<v Speaker 1>we're sure that somebody actually built a submarine is sixteen twenty.

0:27:17.440 --> 0:27:21.000
<v Speaker 1>A Dutchman named Cornelius Drebbel built this thing and it's

0:27:21.040 --> 0:27:24.280
<v Speaker 1>powered by ores, and it looks kind of like a submarine,

0:27:24.320 --> 0:27:27.199
<v Speaker 1>but with oars sticking out the side. Of course, the holes,

0:27:27.240 --> 0:27:29.680
<v Speaker 1>you know, have cloth or rubber or something to keep

0:27:29.720 --> 0:27:32.320
<v Speaker 1>it waterproof, and so it looks a little bit like

0:27:32.320 --> 0:27:34.720
<v Speaker 1>a sub and then it's you know, it swims along.

0:27:34.760 --> 0:27:36.720
<v Speaker 1>It's kind of like a mechanical fish.

0:27:36.840 --> 0:27:40.679
<v Speaker 2>Like underwater, Yes, underwater with like a I know, I'm

0:27:40.720 --> 0:27:42.680
<v Speaker 2>harping on this toobe, but like with like a tube

0:27:42.720 --> 0:27:44.880
<v Speaker 2>that attaches you to the surface for breathing air.

0:27:45.040 --> 0:27:46.040
<v Speaker 1>Oh that's a good question.

0:27:46.400 --> 0:27:48.200
<v Speaker 2>Also, I got to be honest, I would not trust

0:27:48.240 --> 0:27:51.960
<v Speaker 2>a man named Cornelius Drebbel. That sounds like someone who's

0:27:52.000 --> 0:27:52.760
<v Speaker 2>trying to put you on.

0:27:53.240 --> 0:27:55.960
<v Speaker 1>Apparently, this thing was tested many times in the Thames,

0:27:56.359 --> 0:27:59.399
<v Speaker 1>but failed to attract enough enthusiasm and was never used

0:27:59.440 --> 0:28:03.520
<v Speaker 1>like in bad or anything. So this guy basically invented it.

0:28:03.560 --> 0:28:04.560
<v Speaker 1>In sixteen twenty.

0:28:04.840 --> 0:28:05.679
<v Speaker 2>Holy cow.

0:28:05.920 --> 0:28:11.359
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. The first military submarine was the Turtle seventeen seventy five.

0:28:11.680 --> 0:28:14.239
<v Speaker 1>This thing is shaped like an acorn. It's basically for

0:28:14.280 --> 0:28:17.720
<v Speaker 1>like one person. It was designed by American David Bushnell,

0:28:18.240 --> 0:28:22.640
<v Speaker 1>and it's the first verified submarine capable of independent underwater operation.

0:28:22.720 --> 0:28:25.960
<v Speaker 1>And the first time they used screws for propulsion, right,

0:28:26.200 --> 0:28:28.760
<v Speaker 1>you know how like a modern submarine has basically a

0:28:28.760 --> 0:28:31.640
<v Speaker 1>propeller right to push it along. So instead of like oars,

0:28:31.960 --> 0:28:34.440
<v Speaker 1>they used screws, which basically, you know, you turn it

0:28:34.480 --> 0:28:35.480
<v Speaker 1>and it pushes the water.

0:28:35.800 --> 0:28:36.080
<v Speaker 2>Huh.

0:28:36.240 --> 0:28:36.560
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

0:28:36.600 --> 0:28:40.120
<v Speaker 2>And he would like run into things on purpose, Like

0:28:40.120 --> 0:28:42.280
<v Speaker 2>what can you do? I guess he's just spying to

0:28:42.280 --> 0:28:43.720
<v Speaker 2>figure out where things are, is that?

0:28:43.880 --> 0:28:46.120
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? I think at this point it's spying. In the

0:28:46.360 --> 0:28:49.280
<v Speaker 1>US Civil War actually was one of the first uses

0:28:49.320 --> 0:28:53.840
<v Speaker 1>of submarines in actual battle. In eighteen sixty four, the

0:28:53.920 --> 0:28:57.280
<v Speaker 1>Confederate had a submarine called the h L. Hunley, and

0:28:57.320 --> 0:28:59.960
<v Speaker 1>it was the first military submarine to ever sink an

0:29:00.120 --> 0:29:05.000
<v Speaker 1>enemy vessel. It sank the uss Hausatonic problem is it

0:29:05.160 --> 0:29:10.040
<v Speaker 1>also killed the crew instantly and sank the submarine. Yeah,

0:29:10.320 --> 0:29:13.840
<v Speaker 1>thumbs down, But you know, progress, I guess of a

0:29:13.880 --> 0:29:17.280
<v Speaker 1>sort of a sort, and then the French developed the

0:29:17.320 --> 0:29:20.760
<v Speaker 1>first mechanically powered submarine in eighteen sixty seven, so we're

0:29:20.880 --> 0:29:24.320
<v Speaker 1>still before twenty thousand leagues under the sea. This was

0:29:24.360 --> 0:29:27.240
<v Speaker 1>the plung Gour, which is French for diver, and it

0:29:27.240 --> 0:29:29.720
<v Speaker 1>had compressed air inside, which I guess must have protected

0:29:29.720 --> 0:29:31.240
<v Speaker 1>the inside a little bit so you can go a

0:29:31.240 --> 0:29:34.360
<v Speaker 1>little bit deeper. And this probably was the inspiration for

0:29:34.480 --> 0:29:36.600
<v Speaker 1>Jules Vern, so I think in this case it actually

0:29:36.600 --> 0:29:39.920
<v Speaker 1>went the other direction. Jules Vern saw this like exciting

0:29:40.000 --> 0:29:43.080
<v Speaker 1>development in submarine technology, and then he went further.

0:29:43.360 --> 0:29:47.520
<v Speaker 2>So we've got a point for engineering now, all.

0:29:47.520 --> 0:29:50.600
<v Speaker 1>Right, yeah, and Vern probably saw this at the World's

0:29:50.600 --> 0:29:53.320
<v Speaker 1>Fair in Paris that year and then extrapolated.

0:29:53.600 --> 0:29:55.720
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so we've got two points for sci fi, one

0:29:55.760 --> 0:29:57.240
<v Speaker 2>for engineering exactly.

0:29:57.280 --> 0:30:00.000
<v Speaker 1>And then you know, submarine pioneer Simon Lake, he really

0:30:00.080 --> 0:30:03.360
<v Speaker 1>he was inspired by Vern, right, and he made the

0:30:03.360 --> 0:30:06.880
<v Speaker 1>first open ocean voyage by submarine in eighteen ninety eight,

0:30:07.160 --> 0:30:09.520
<v Speaker 1>and then Vern sent Lake a telegram. So I think

0:30:09.560 --> 0:30:11.080
<v Speaker 1>there might have been a little bit of healthy back

0:30:11.120 --> 0:30:14.480
<v Speaker 1>and forth here. Right, engineers inspier science fiction, who inspire

0:30:14.520 --> 0:30:18.040
<v Speaker 1>more engineers? Dot dot dot the U boats sink the

0:30:18.080 --> 0:30:20.120
<v Speaker 1>Lusitania and we get into World War One.

0:30:20.360 --> 0:30:26.560
<v Speaker 2>I love you in wet blanket mode. All right, I'm

0:30:26.600 --> 0:30:29.880
<v Speaker 2>still doing two for sci fi, one for engineering. If

0:30:29.920 --> 0:30:32.160
<v Speaker 2>I remember twenty thousand leagues under the sea. One thing

0:30:32.200 --> 0:30:36.680
<v Speaker 2>I think Vern did Pioneer was like a really posh submarine,

0:30:36.760 --> 0:30:40.400
<v Speaker 2>which I feel like most submarines have not taken up

0:30:40.440 --> 0:30:42.280
<v Speaker 2>yet as far as I know, most are a bit

0:30:42.520 --> 0:30:43.440
<v Speaker 2>cramped and stinky.

0:30:43.840 --> 0:30:47.560
<v Speaker 1>M no velvet couches and like nice table for your

0:30:47.640 --> 0:30:48.440
<v Speaker 1>drinks and stuff.

0:30:48.600 --> 0:30:51.000
<v Speaker 2>No, no, all right, but let's leave the sea and

0:30:51.080 --> 0:30:52.880
<v Speaker 2>let's start talking about communication.

0:30:53.320 --> 0:30:56.080
<v Speaker 1>So a famous science fiction author is Arthur C. Clark,

0:30:56.480 --> 0:31:00.360
<v Speaker 1>and he's written lots of influential stuff, including not fiction.

0:31:00.400 --> 0:31:03.320
<v Speaker 1>He's actually written essays, And in nineteen forty five he

0:31:03.360 --> 0:31:07.080
<v Speaker 1>wrote an essay proposing that we build a set of

0:31:07.120 --> 0:31:12.239
<v Speaker 1>satellites in geostationary orbit so we can have global communications. Right,

0:31:12.320 --> 0:31:15.920
<v Speaker 1>so this is pre Sputnik. This is like visionary and saying, hey,

0:31:16.000 --> 0:31:17.680
<v Speaker 1>let's put a bunch of stuff up in space so

0:31:17.680 --> 0:31:19.480
<v Speaker 1>that I can talk to people on the other side

0:31:19.520 --> 0:31:22.360
<v Speaker 1>of the world. Right at the time this was seen

0:31:22.400 --> 0:31:25.800
<v Speaker 1>as like wildly speculative, Right, we didn't have commercial satellites

0:31:25.840 --> 0:31:27.959
<v Speaker 1>at all yet, so it was kind of a cool idea.

0:31:28.360 --> 0:31:32.400
<v Speaker 1>We had already the concept of geostationary orbits. People understood

0:31:32.400 --> 0:31:34.320
<v Speaker 1>that like that was a solution, that was something you

0:31:34.360 --> 0:31:38.760
<v Speaker 1>can do. And in nineteen twenty nine, another guy, Hermann Patacnik,

0:31:39.280 --> 0:31:42.840
<v Speaker 1>already had thought about using satellites in space for observation

0:31:43.000 --> 0:31:45.720
<v Speaker 1>and communication, but Clark was the first one to have

0:31:45.760 --> 0:31:49.440
<v Speaker 1>this idea, like really specifically how this would work and

0:31:49.480 --> 0:31:51.760
<v Speaker 1>what the network would look like and to use satellites

0:31:51.800 --> 0:31:55.120
<v Speaker 1>for orbit. In fact, these orbits are sometimes called Clark

0:31:55.240 --> 0:31:58.080
<v Speaker 1>orbits now because they're inspired by this essay.

0:31:58.560 --> 0:32:00.560
<v Speaker 2>Was Clark also an engineer?

0:32:00.680 --> 0:32:00.760
<v Speaker 1>Like?

0:32:00.880 --> 0:32:04.400
<v Speaker 2>Was this the case of a sci fi writer also

0:32:04.560 --> 0:32:07.720
<v Speaker 2>being like an engineer? Like, I'm wondering if we could

0:32:07.800 --> 0:32:08.800
<v Speaker 2>split this point.

0:32:11.080 --> 0:32:13.960
<v Speaker 1>I think Arthur C. Clarke is not efficiently an engineer. Isn't

0:32:14.000 --> 0:32:18.080
<v Speaker 1>that no real education there? He's an all around nerd though, Okay,

0:32:18.120 --> 0:32:20.480
<v Speaker 1>I mean he was like inspired as a kid by dinosaurs,

0:32:20.480 --> 0:32:24.560
<v Speaker 1>cigarette cards, enthusiastic about fossils. He's sort of like a

0:32:24.560 --> 0:32:26.200
<v Speaker 1>futurist more than an engineer.

0:32:26.440 --> 0:32:31.200
<v Speaker 2>Did you say dinosaur cigarette cards? M? Yeah, what do

0:32:31.320 --> 0:32:33.160
<v Speaker 2>those three words being together, Daniel.

0:32:35.320 --> 0:32:38.280
<v Speaker 1>Cigarette cards are these things which appeared in like packets

0:32:38.280 --> 0:32:41.400
<v Speaker 1>of cigarettes that had like images on them. You could

0:32:41.400 --> 0:32:44.480
<v Speaker 1>have like actors, or you could have pictures of dinosaurs

0:32:44.640 --> 0:32:48.240
<v Speaker 1>or whatever, or like you know, football players or something.

0:32:48.040 --> 0:32:48.920
<v Speaker 2>That was a different era.

0:32:49.120 --> 0:32:52.120
<v Speaker 1>Okay, maybe I watched too much Edwardian or Victorian television,

0:32:52.160 --> 0:32:55.040
<v Speaker 1>so I like know these things. I'm all about Masterpiece Theater.

0:32:55.800 --> 0:32:59.000
<v Speaker 2>I watched Mausterpiece Theater when I was a kid. It

0:32:59.040 --> 0:33:04.000
<v Speaker 2>was Disney, So I guess we were different kinds of kids. Okay,

0:33:04.040 --> 0:33:06.160
<v Speaker 2>so it sounds like we're given this point to sci fi,

0:33:06.200 --> 0:33:06.960
<v Speaker 2>all right, keep going.

0:33:07.160 --> 0:33:09.520
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, absolutely, he got a lot of technical details, right.

0:33:09.680 --> 0:33:12.720
<v Speaker 1>Of course, these days, you know, we're all about satellite

0:33:12.720 --> 0:33:17.560
<v Speaker 1>based communications. It started like in the sixties, sixty four

0:33:17.680 --> 0:33:21.240
<v Speaker 1>sixty five with the first launches of commercial satellite based

0:33:21.240 --> 0:33:24.680
<v Speaker 1>communication systems. These days, of course, you know, most of

0:33:24.720 --> 0:33:29.280
<v Speaker 1>the satellites in orbit are starlink satellites for Internet. We

0:33:29.360 --> 0:33:32.720
<v Speaker 1>are using one right now to have this conversation. We

0:33:32.760 --> 0:33:35.280
<v Speaker 1>sure are thank you to Arthur C. Clark for pioneering

0:33:35.320 --> 0:33:35.920
<v Speaker 1>this idea.

0:33:36.400 --> 0:33:39.440
<v Speaker 2>But I don't think the starlinks are in geostationary orbit.

0:33:40.000 --> 0:33:42.600
<v Speaker 1>No, they're not. They're in low Earth orbit, right, and

0:33:42.640 --> 0:33:44.520
<v Speaker 1>the idea there is that they can be closer and

0:33:44.560 --> 0:33:47.520
<v Speaker 1>so they're a lower latency, but you're passed off from

0:33:47.560 --> 0:33:49.200
<v Speaker 1>one to another. It's a different system.

0:33:49.280 --> 0:33:53.720
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, but we'll still give that to Clark. All right,

0:33:53.840 --> 0:33:56.760
<v Speaker 2>let's take a break and we will move from Arthur C.

0:33:56.760 --> 0:34:21.359
<v Speaker 2>Clark to Hindline. All right, we are back, and we

0:34:21.360 --> 0:34:25.520
<v Speaker 2>were just discussing what Arthur C. Clark contributed to technology today?

0:34:25.960 --> 0:34:28.560
<v Speaker 2>What about Hindline? What did Hindline contribute?

0:34:28.840 --> 0:34:31.560
<v Speaker 1>So there's a great book called Starship Troopers came out

0:34:31.680 --> 0:34:34.960
<v Speaker 1>nineteen fifty nine, which is mind blowing that it's so

0:34:35.239 --> 0:34:37.480
<v Speaker 1>old it feels much more modern.

0:34:37.800 --> 0:34:40.640
<v Speaker 2>You gotta watch out. We did a survey and we

0:34:40.760 --> 0:34:44.280
<v Speaker 2>have a number of listeners who are let's say older

0:34:44.280 --> 0:34:46.400
<v Speaker 2>than we are. Oh wow, And so I think that

0:34:46.480 --> 0:34:48.960
<v Speaker 2>you don't want to you don't want to be casting

0:34:49.000 --> 0:34:51.680
<v Speaker 2>dispersions on the year nineteen fifty nine.

0:34:52.160 --> 0:34:54.680
<v Speaker 1>No, No, it's the opposite. It's exactly the opposite. I

0:34:54.680 --> 0:34:56.640
<v Speaker 1>feel like, why that book didn't come out that long ago?

0:34:56.760 --> 0:34:59.520
<v Speaker 1>Did it? It makes me feel like, Okay, yes, maybe

0:34:59.520 --> 0:35:06.160
<v Speaker 1>I'm saying I'm old and our listeners are too. Yeah, Anyway,

0:35:06.480 --> 0:35:09.560
<v Speaker 1>a cool idea that's in that book is powered armor,

0:35:09.600 --> 0:35:12.880
<v Speaker 1>basically like an exoskeleton. And you know, we've seen this,

0:35:13.000 --> 0:35:16.480
<v Speaker 1>of course much more recently. It's all over Avatar and

0:35:16.560 --> 0:35:20.000
<v Speaker 1>it's an alien and all kinds of stuff. But some

0:35:20.040 --> 0:35:23.239
<v Speaker 1>people give credit to Hindline and Starship Troopers for the

0:35:23.280 --> 0:35:25.360
<v Speaker 1>idea of powered armor.

0:35:25.480 --> 0:35:28.080
<v Speaker 2>All right, so does this point go to sci fi?

0:35:28.160 --> 0:35:29.440
<v Speaker 2>Then give us the context.

0:35:30.080 --> 0:35:34.560
<v Speaker 1>It's nuanced. The idea for this definitely predates Starship Troopers.

0:35:34.960 --> 0:35:38.760
<v Speaker 1>In the eighteen nineties there was a Russian inventor, Nicholas Yagan,

0:35:39.040 --> 0:35:42.720
<v Speaker 1>who invented a spring and piston based apparatus for running

0:35:42.760 --> 0:35:47.279
<v Speaker 1>and heavy lifting, used like compressed gas and springs. This

0:35:47.360 --> 0:35:50.520
<v Speaker 1>is like real steampunk exoskeleton kind of stuff.

0:35:50.560 --> 0:35:54.120
<v Speaker 2>It must have been awesome, yeah, totally, unless it's like exploded.

0:35:54.680 --> 0:35:57.480
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'm sure it was super dangerous. And then in

0:35:57.600 --> 0:35:59.920
<v Speaker 1>nineteen seventeen in the US we had the pedal motor

0:36:00.360 --> 0:36:04.080
<v Speaker 1>powered soft exosuit, So this idea was definitely out there

0:36:04.280 --> 0:36:08.200
<v Speaker 1>to use like mechanical support for human labor. And even

0:36:08.239 --> 0:36:11.640
<v Speaker 1>in nineteen fifty eight, so a year before Starship Troopers,

0:36:12.040 --> 0:36:15.279
<v Speaker 1>General Electric came out with something called the Handyman, which

0:36:15.280 --> 0:36:18.080
<v Speaker 1>is basically like robotic arms that you could use for

0:36:18.160 --> 0:36:20.879
<v Speaker 1>like heavy lifting and this kind of stuff. And then

0:36:21.000 --> 0:36:24.359
<v Speaker 1>in nineteen sixties they worked on the hardy Man, which

0:36:24.400 --> 0:36:27.760
<v Speaker 1>was aimed at like full body augmentation, so like legs

0:36:27.800 --> 0:36:31.000
<v Speaker 1>in addition to arms. So this thing was definitely in

0:36:31.080 --> 0:36:35.440
<v Speaker 1>development and in the zeitgeist before Starship Troopers. I think

0:36:35.480 --> 0:36:39.160
<v Speaker 1>that Hindline here gets credited for like popularizing the idea

0:36:39.480 --> 0:36:42.960
<v Speaker 1>and maybe like codifying the concept and then influencing you know,

0:36:43.040 --> 0:36:45.160
<v Speaker 1>engineers and science fiction down the road.

0:36:45.280 --> 0:36:47.640
<v Speaker 2>So I wonder if GE was super excited when Starship

0:36:47.680 --> 0:36:51.040
<v Speaker 2>Troopers came out because they were like free advertising, or.

0:36:50.960 --> 0:36:52.719
<v Speaker 1>If they were like, hey we got scooped. That was

0:36:52.760 --> 0:36:57.360
<v Speaker 1>our right. And there's probably some grumpy engineer GE who's

0:36:57.440 --> 0:36:59.040
<v Speaker 1>mad that Hindline gets credit for this.

0:36:59.400 --> 0:37:01.319
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, probably fair enough.

0:37:01.320 --> 0:37:03.360
<v Speaker 1>Something we definitely learned is that like credit is not

0:37:03.400 --> 0:37:06.279
<v Speaker 1>being applied correctly, Like Kirk and Shatner do not get

0:37:06.360 --> 0:37:07.360
<v Speaker 1>credit for the flip phone.

0:37:07.719 --> 0:37:10.520
<v Speaker 2>Yeah right, okay, but you know welcome to Life, am

0:37:10.560 --> 0:37:10.920
<v Speaker 2>I right?

0:37:13.440 --> 0:37:14.000
<v Speaker 1>Exactly?

0:37:14.440 --> 0:37:17.799
<v Speaker 2>So it sounds like this point definitely goes to engineering, right,

0:37:17.880 --> 0:37:19.600
<v Speaker 2>m yeah exactly.

0:37:20.200 --> 0:37:23.080
<v Speaker 1>Another concept we see a lot is voice control. You

0:37:23.120 --> 0:37:24.960
<v Speaker 1>know in Star Trek, for example, was one of the

0:37:24.960 --> 0:37:28.719
<v Speaker 1>first places you saw natural language commands. In that show,

0:37:28.719 --> 0:37:30.799
<v Speaker 1>they can just talk to the computer. They ask it

0:37:30.880 --> 0:37:35.440
<v Speaker 1>complicated questions or require context and analysis. It solves problems.

0:37:35.640 --> 0:37:39.279
<v Speaker 1>It's like talking to a person. It's a very conversational interface,

0:37:39.760 --> 0:37:43.200
<v Speaker 1>whereas you know computers until very very recently, we're much

0:37:43.200 --> 0:37:44.920
<v Speaker 1>more like push button and you have to give them

0:37:44.960 --> 0:37:46.080
<v Speaker 1>very specific commands.

0:37:46.400 --> 0:37:48.799
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and now it's kind of amazing. Like I when

0:37:48.800 --> 0:37:50.400
<v Speaker 2>I talk to AI and I'm trying to use it

0:37:50.440 --> 0:37:52.799
<v Speaker 2>to like practice Russian or something, it is amazing how

0:37:52.880 --> 0:37:53.760
<v Speaker 2>natural it sounds.

0:37:54.080 --> 0:37:57.080
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's really incredible. It's improved a lot, but this

0:37:57.160 --> 0:37:59.160
<v Speaker 1>is something people have been working on again for a

0:37:59.200 --> 0:38:03.239
<v Speaker 1>long long time. In nineteen fifty two, men Labs had

0:38:03.239 --> 0:38:07.360
<v Speaker 1>something called Audrey, which was a tortured acronym for automatic

0:38:07.480 --> 0:38:12.120
<v Speaker 1>digit recognition, and its goal was just to recognize spoken

0:38:12.200 --> 0:38:14.600
<v Speaker 1>digits zero to nine. You know, you can just say

0:38:14.719 --> 0:38:17.600
<v Speaker 1>numbers and it would recognize them fifty two. So, like

0:38:17.880 --> 0:38:20.279
<v Speaker 1>you know, we did not have powerful computing back then.

0:38:21.040 --> 0:38:23.680
<v Speaker 1>And then ten years later IBM had the shoe Box,

0:38:23.960 --> 0:38:27.879
<v Speaker 1>which could recognize sixteen spoken English words, most of them

0:38:27.880 --> 0:38:30.480
<v Speaker 1>are like plus or minus this kind of thing. So

0:38:30.520 --> 0:38:33.799
<v Speaker 1>it's like a verbal calculator you can use. And this

0:38:33.840 --> 0:38:36.360
<v Speaker 1>is because natural language processing is really really hard, like

0:38:36.440 --> 0:38:39.359
<v Speaker 1>language is complicated. It takes a long time to teach

0:38:39.360 --> 0:38:42.720
<v Speaker 1>a human how language works because you know, there are rules,

0:38:42.760 --> 0:38:45.040
<v Speaker 1>but they're not precise and we don't always follow them,

0:38:45.400 --> 0:38:48.759
<v Speaker 1>and small changes can mean big differences in meaning, right

0:38:49.040 --> 0:38:51.760
<v Speaker 1>when Comma, for example, can really change what something means.

0:38:52.239 --> 0:38:55.200
<v Speaker 1>So at the time, Star Trek was really far forward thinking,

0:38:55.280 --> 0:38:59.319
<v Speaker 1>Like in nineteen sixty six, nothing came close to what

0:38:59.360 --> 0:39:02.000
<v Speaker 1>you saw on on Star Trek, and folks at Google

0:39:02.000 --> 0:39:05.160
<v Speaker 1>and Apple in this case explicitly cites Star Trek as

0:39:05.200 --> 0:39:08.360
<v Speaker 1>an inspiration for Siri and Alexa.

0:39:08.520 --> 0:39:10.719
<v Speaker 2>Huh, Well, so I guess I'm I'm gonna kind of

0:39:10.760 --> 0:39:14.760
<v Speaker 2>make a critique I made earlier, which is like, okay,

0:39:14.800 --> 0:39:17.600
<v Speaker 2>so yes, science fiction came up with this idea first.

0:39:18.000 --> 0:39:20.080
<v Speaker 2>But isn't it kind of obvious that at some point

0:39:20.160 --> 0:39:22.160
<v Speaker 2>we'd rather not have to type something in and we'd

0:39:22.200 --> 0:39:23.759
<v Speaker 2>want to just be like, you know, sit on our

0:39:23.840 --> 0:39:26.360
<v Speaker 2>lazy butts and yell across the screen, like turn the

0:39:26.440 --> 0:39:29.359
<v Speaker 2>DV on, you know, Like, isn't it kind of an

0:39:29.400 --> 0:39:30.120
<v Speaker 2>obvious thing.

0:39:30.600 --> 0:39:33.640
<v Speaker 1>It's kind of an obvious thing, but it sometimes only

0:39:33.680 --> 0:39:36.160
<v Speaker 1>seems obvious in hindsight. I think what science fiction does

0:39:36.200 --> 0:39:39.680
<v Speaker 1>really well is show you how technology can transform life.

0:39:39.680 --> 0:39:41.560
<v Speaker 1>What would life be like if we had this thing?

0:39:41.920 --> 0:39:44.399
<v Speaker 1>Like you can say, yeah, that would be cool, but

0:39:44.400 --> 0:39:46.560
<v Speaker 1>what would it really be like to be alive in

0:39:46.600 --> 0:39:49.040
<v Speaker 1>that world and to live that way? And it was

0:39:49.040 --> 0:39:50.920
<v Speaker 1>incredible what we saw on the screen, the way they

0:39:50.960 --> 0:39:53.839
<v Speaker 1>could talk to the computer, this assistant they had, which

0:39:53.920 --> 0:39:57.160
<v Speaker 1>was intelligent and never got tired. It was amazing and

0:39:57.280 --> 0:40:00.000
<v Speaker 1>very forward thinking. Even if they didn't invent the technology

0:40:00.360 --> 0:40:02.920
<v Speaker 1>or even the idea, they showed us what life could

0:40:02.920 --> 0:40:04.759
<v Speaker 1>be like if we had it, and I think that

0:40:04.960 --> 0:40:06.040
<v Speaker 1>is part of the inspiration.

0:40:06.560 --> 0:40:08.600
<v Speaker 2>I think that if I was trying to sell a

0:40:08.640 --> 0:40:11.960
<v Speaker 2>new technology, I would hire you to be a person

0:40:12.000 --> 0:40:15.680
<v Speaker 2>to pitch it, because that was very convincing. All right,

0:40:15.800 --> 0:40:19.319
<v Speaker 2>how about self driving cars, which I am hoping that

0:40:19.360 --> 0:40:21.160
<v Speaker 2>I can purchase by the time my kids are old

0:40:21.239 --> 0:40:24.560
<v Speaker 2>enough to drive, which is happening way faster than I

0:40:24.560 --> 0:40:25.440
<v Speaker 2>thought that it would.

0:40:25.719 --> 0:40:28.920
<v Speaker 1>I know. So this first appears in science fiction in

0:40:29.000 --> 0:40:32.800
<v Speaker 1>nineteen thirty five. There's a story called the Living Machine

0:40:33.239 --> 0:40:36.640
<v Speaker 1>where there are driverless taxi cars and a futuristic society.

0:40:37.280 --> 0:40:40.600
<v Speaker 1>And then it appears everywhere in science fiction nineteen fifties,

0:40:40.920 --> 0:40:44.640
<v Speaker 1>The Magic Highway, Herbie the Lovebug in nineteen sixty eight,

0:40:44.640 --> 0:40:46.799
<v Speaker 1>and one of my favorite movies. It's not really a

0:40:46.840 --> 0:40:49.400
<v Speaker 1>self driving car, it's sort of like a car with

0:40:49.480 --> 0:40:52.120
<v Speaker 1>a mind. And then of course night Rider in the

0:40:52.200 --> 0:40:55.479
<v Speaker 1>nineteen nineties. Right, that's a car that not only can talk,

0:40:55.560 --> 0:40:56.880
<v Speaker 1>but can drive itself.

0:40:57.200 --> 0:40:59.560
<v Speaker 2>I'm not familiar with any of these What you don't

0:40:59.600 --> 0:41:04.120
<v Speaker 2>know night Seriously, I know of night Writer. I didn't

0:41:04.160 --> 0:41:07.040
<v Speaker 2>know that it was spelled K and IGHD, but I

0:41:07.080 --> 0:41:09.680
<v Speaker 2>see that in your outline there's a K there.

0:41:10.840 --> 0:41:13.359
<v Speaker 1>I can still hum the theme song to night Rider, Okay,

0:41:13.360 --> 0:41:15.799
<v Speaker 1>go aheach, I will not do oh no, but.

0:41:15.920 --> 0:41:18.080
<v Speaker 2>Matt, Matt would give you a musical accompaniment.

0:41:18.239 --> 0:41:21.440
<v Speaker 1>Probably, let's just ask Matt to give us some musical

0:41:21.480 --> 0:41:25.640
<v Speaker 1>background right now, all right? Night Writer was very influential.

0:41:25.680 --> 0:41:28.080
<v Speaker 1>I actually went to the Automotive Museum in LA where

0:41:28.080 --> 0:41:30.880
<v Speaker 1>they have the night Rider one of the prop cars.

0:41:31.360 --> 0:41:33.080
<v Speaker 1>Very big moment for me. I have a picture standing

0:41:33.120 --> 0:41:33.560
<v Speaker 1>in front of it.

0:41:33.640 --> 0:41:38.920
<v Speaker 2>Of course, wow, whoa, yes, thanks Matt.

0:41:39.280 --> 0:41:41.600
<v Speaker 1>I watched that in the spinoff version with the helicopter

0:41:42.080 --> 0:41:45.000
<v Speaker 1>lots and lots as a kid. Anyway, this is big

0:41:45.040 --> 0:41:47.600
<v Speaker 1>in science fiction, and of course now it's maybe big

0:41:47.640 --> 0:41:50.400
<v Speaker 1>in the real world. But this is something that again

0:41:50.440 --> 0:41:54.320
<v Speaker 1>engineers were working on before it even appeared in science fiction.

0:41:55.040 --> 0:41:59.759
<v Speaker 1>So in nineteen twenty five, there were already cars without drivers.

0:42:00.040 --> 0:42:02.600
<v Speaker 1>These are radio controlled cars, so like think of the

0:42:02.719 --> 0:42:05.000
<v Speaker 1>RC car that your kids drive around, but just like

0:42:05.040 --> 0:42:08.800
<v Speaker 1>a real sized version. They had radio technology and somebody

0:42:08.840 --> 0:42:11.480
<v Speaker 1>like put radio technology together with a car. I was like, hey,

0:42:11.520 --> 0:42:14.279
<v Speaker 1>this is cool. That's not a car. You can get

0:42:14.320 --> 0:42:16.720
<v Speaker 1>in and tell it where to go, but the driver's

0:42:16.760 --> 0:42:19.719
<v Speaker 1>not literally in the car. So in principle it's a

0:42:19.880 --> 0:42:22.960
<v Speaker 1>sort of separating the driver and the car. And then

0:42:23.200 --> 0:42:27.560
<v Speaker 1>in nineteen thirties, popular magazines already envisioned the futures with

0:42:27.719 --> 0:42:31.480
<v Speaker 1>automatic cars. So you see articles and depictions where you

0:42:31.600 --> 0:42:35.719
<v Speaker 1>have driverless cars already in the popular imagination in the

0:42:35.800 --> 0:42:36.600
<v Speaker 1>nineteen thirties.

0:42:36.840 --> 0:42:39.120
<v Speaker 2>Oh, it sounded to me like engineering gets a point.

0:42:39.360 --> 0:42:41.839
<v Speaker 1>Yes, absolutely, And then people have been working on this

0:42:41.920 --> 0:42:44.160
<v Speaker 1>hard for a long long time. You know, DARPA had

0:42:44.200 --> 0:42:46.839
<v Speaker 1>these challenges, how long can you drive a car? Before

0:42:46.880 --> 0:42:49.600
<v Speaker 1>it crashes, and it was hard. This is like mostly

0:42:49.680 --> 0:42:52.480
<v Speaker 1>led by university teams, and most of the cars crashed

0:42:52.520 --> 0:42:55.279
<v Speaker 1>after like ten meters or something. So the fact that

0:42:55.320 --> 0:42:58.319
<v Speaker 1>we have like competing Endeavors and Waimo and Tesla and

0:42:58.400 --> 0:43:02.040
<v Speaker 1>Zooks and whatever these days they're like almost working is amazing.

0:43:02.600 --> 0:43:05.200
<v Speaker 1>And then take a full transparency. My brother works for Waimo,

0:43:05.600 --> 0:43:07.040
<v Speaker 1>So I have a conflict of interest there.

0:43:07.440 --> 0:43:11.040
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I didn't know that. Can your brother get me

0:43:11.080 --> 0:43:11.719
<v Speaker 2>a Waymo car?

0:43:13.320 --> 0:43:16.240
<v Speaker 1>My brother can't even get me a Waymo car? So yeah,

0:43:16.280 --> 0:43:18.600
<v Speaker 1>I know, or Waymo stock for that matter.

0:43:18.880 --> 0:43:21.000
<v Speaker 2>Oh all right, well bummer, Okay, So it sounds like

0:43:21.000 --> 0:43:23.160
<v Speaker 2>we're giving this one to engineering. I think we've got

0:43:23.200 --> 0:43:27.319
<v Speaker 2>time for one more technology. Let's end on three D

0:43:27.360 --> 0:43:29.239
<v Speaker 2>printers and we're back to star Trek.

0:43:29.280 --> 0:43:33.600
<v Speaker 1>I know, and Daniel's preferred device, the replicator. Right, this

0:43:33.719 --> 0:43:37.120
<v Speaker 1>is awesome on starcheck because again it's something you can

0:43:37.200 --> 0:43:39.200
<v Speaker 1>just use casually. It's not like you go into the

0:43:39.320 --> 0:43:41.040
<v Speaker 1>lab and you have to sign up and it takes

0:43:41.080 --> 0:43:43.560
<v Speaker 1>seven weeks to configure the machine. You just like want

0:43:43.560 --> 0:43:45.960
<v Speaker 1>a cup of hot tea, You just make a cup

0:43:46.000 --> 0:43:48.040
<v Speaker 1>of hot tea to your hot time.

0:43:48.480 --> 0:43:52.200
<v Speaker 2>That beverage has not been programmed into the replication system.

0:43:52.440 --> 0:43:55.600
<v Speaker 1>Or you can like build spare parts or whatever you need.

0:43:55.800 --> 0:43:59.040
<v Speaker 1>There's no ordering anything on Amazon anything you need. It

0:43:59.120 --> 0:44:02.960
<v Speaker 1>just assembles. It's from the raw ingredients. It's incredible, and

0:44:03.239 --> 0:44:05.439
<v Speaker 1>it's everywhere. It's not like the ship has one of them.

0:44:05.480 --> 0:44:07.640
<v Speaker 1>Like everybody's got one in their quarters. It's like having

0:44:07.680 --> 0:44:08.960
<v Speaker 1>a microwave.

0:44:08.840 --> 0:44:12.759
<v Speaker 2>Earl gray black. Oh no, wait, what was it?

0:44:12.800 --> 0:44:12.960
<v Speaker 1>Was it?

0:44:12.960 --> 0:44:16.239
<v Speaker 2>Earl gray black colst what do you want in it?

0:44:17.000 --> 0:44:18.719
<v Speaker 1>So this is exactly the kind of thing I would

0:44:18.800 --> 0:44:21.120
<v Speaker 1>love to have around, and it's the kind of thing

0:44:21.200 --> 0:44:25.240
<v Speaker 1>science fiction nerds love. But it was not invented again

0:44:25.360 --> 0:44:29.560
<v Speaker 1>by star Trek. This appears first in like nineteen forty

0:44:29.600 --> 0:44:32.840
<v Speaker 1>five and a short story by Murray Leinster. The idea

0:44:32.880 --> 0:44:35.920
<v Speaker 1>of like feeding plastics into something, and then there's a

0:44:35.920 --> 0:44:38.080
<v Speaker 1>moving arm that makes drawings in the air and the

0:44:38.080 --> 0:44:40.200
<v Speaker 1>stuff that comes out of it hardens. The idea of

0:44:40.239 --> 0:44:43.640
<v Speaker 1>like a three D printer really has much earlier roots

0:44:43.640 --> 0:44:46.799
<v Speaker 1>than Star Trek. And then in The Midas Touch, a

0:44:46.800 --> 0:44:50.000
<v Speaker 1>book by Frederick Pohl, there's the idea of matter conversion,

0:44:50.000 --> 0:44:53.520
<v Speaker 1>that you can turn anything into anything, and then more

0:44:53.560 --> 0:44:57.919
<v Speaker 1>recently the diamond age. Neil Stephenson has matter compilers, though

0:44:57.920 --> 0:45:00.839
<v Speaker 1>these are probably inspired by Star Trek, So there's sort

0:45:00.840 --> 0:45:02.719
<v Speaker 1>of thread here in science fiction.

0:45:03.200 --> 0:45:08.000
<v Speaker 2>Okay, all right, but did engineering predate the idea?

0:45:08.920 --> 0:45:13.040
<v Speaker 1>So engineering does predate this. In nineteen seventy one there

0:45:13.080 --> 0:45:16.880
<v Speaker 1>was a liquid metal recorder, basically sort of like printing

0:45:17.120 --> 0:45:19.640
<v Speaker 1>with metal. The idea that you could like, you know,

0:45:19.800 --> 0:45:21.880
<v Speaker 1>use something which was a liquid and then hardened and

0:45:21.920 --> 0:45:24.600
<v Speaker 1>you could use that to build up something. They call

0:45:24.719 --> 0:45:29.160
<v Speaker 1>this additive manufacturing. The idea really emerged in the eighties.

0:45:29.600 --> 0:45:32.360
<v Speaker 1>There's a guy named Chuck Hall who invented this concept

0:45:32.400 --> 0:45:36.440
<v Speaker 1>of additive manufacturing soft layers which are added one at

0:45:36.480 --> 0:45:39.880
<v Speaker 1>a time and then cured to make hard with like

0:45:40.160 --> 0:45:43.879
<v Speaker 1>UV radiation or particles or something, and so it goes

0:45:43.920 --> 0:45:46.120
<v Speaker 1>from soft to hard and then you can build something.

0:45:46.640 --> 0:45:49.000
<v Speaker 1>And so this came out in the eighties, which again

0:45:49.040 --> 0:45:53.359
<v Speaker 1>predates the next generation. And back then you could buy one,

0:45:53.560 --> 0:45:55.640
<v Speaker 1>you know, in the eighties, a three D printer that

0:45:55.680 --> 0:45:58.960
<v Speaker 1>would cost like two thirds of a million dollars in

0:45:59.000 --> 0:46:02.200
<v Speaker 1>today's money. People of asshole, like, were you trying to

0:46:02.239 --> 0:46:05.520
<v Speaker 1>build this thing from Star Trek? And there's no evidence

0:46:05.560 --> 0:46:07.839
<v Speaker 1>of that. He just thought this would be useful if

0:46:07.840 --> 0:46:11.200
<v Speaker 1>we could, like, you know, basically print stuff in three D.

0:46:11.760 --> 0:46:13.520
<v Speaker 2>You said he was doing it before Star Trek, so

0:46:13.520 --> 0:46:15.120
<v Speaker 2>he couldn't have been right.

0:46:15.200 --> 0:46:17.880
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, exactly. But the idea appeared before Star Trek in

0:46:17.920 --> 0:46:21.399
<v Speaker 1>science fiction, you know, a concept of a replicator. He says,

0:46:21.440 --> 0:46:23.799
<v Speaker 1>he was not inspired by science fiction. But you know,

0:46:23.880 --> 0:46:26.719
<v Speaker 1>once the idea came out and three D printers were

0:46:26.760 --> 0:46:29.960
<v Speaker 1>more ubiquitous, Star Trek again had already prepared people. It's

0:46:29.960 --> 0:46:32.680
<v Speaker 1>a lot like the flip phone. You know, this concept

0:46:32.840 --> 0:46:35.200
<v Speaker 1>was everywhere in Star Trek. People had the idea, what

0:46:35.239 --> 0:46:37.560
<v Speaker 1>if we could just build things out of their raw parts?

0:46:38.160 --> 0:46:41.160
<v Speaker 1>And now printers are everywhere. It's like, for two hundred

0:46:41.160 --> 0:46:43.160
<v Speaker 1>dollars you can get a pretty good three D.

0:46:43.120 --> 0:46:45.239
<v Speaker 2>Printer, and now we use them to build things like

0:46:45.440 --> 0:46:47.759
<v Speaker 2>rocket like I think Rocket Lab at least used to

0:46:47.800 --> 0:46:49.880
<v Speaker 2>three D print some of their rockets. Maybe they still do.

0:46:50.480 --> 0:46:52.720
<v Speaker 2>And people are trying to three D print things like livers,

0:46:52.760 --> 0:46:54.400
<v Speaker 2>and they can already do some stuff.

0:46:54.800 --> 0:46:59.319
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, absolutely, casts, right, bones, things you can put in

0:46:59.320 --> 0:47:02.200
<v Speaker 1>your blood vessel, Like if you need a really specific

0:47:02.239 --> 0:47:04.880
<v Speaker 1>shape for something, then you can three D print it,

0:47:04.920 --> 0:47:08.480
<v Speaker 1>and so biomedically, there's a lot of applications. So it's

0:47:08.480 --> 0:47:10.680
<v Speaker 1>a really cool thing, and it doesn't seem like it

0:47:10.719 --> 0:47:13.839
<v Speaker 1>was inspired by science fiction, but you know, maybe its

0:47:14.040 --> 0:47:17.000
<v Speaker 1>use and its adoption was inspired by science fiction. Science

0:47:17.000 --> 0:47:20.160
<v Speaker 1>fiction sort of prepared us for thinking about what life

0:47:20.200 --> 0:47:21.879
<v Speaker 1>would be like if we had this, and then made

0:47:21.880 --> 0:47:24.280
<v Speaker 1>people more enthusiastic when it came around.

0:47:24.800 --> 0:47:26.320
<v Speaker 2>So what do you think do we split that point?

0:47:26.320 --> 0:47:26.480
<v Speaker 4>Then?

0:47:26.760 --> 0:47:28.640
<v Speaker 1>I think maybe we should split it, you know exactly?

0:47:28.680 --> 0:47:30.400
<v Speaker 1>So where do we stand in the end? Kelly?

0:47:30.520 --> 0:47:32.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So here's the neat thing about the point system.

0:47:32.640 --> 0:47:35.520
<v Speaker 2>I wasn't writing this down anywhere or keeping track of

0:47:35.560 --> 0:47:40.319
<v Speaker 2>it at all, and so I think probably science fiction one,

0:47:40.520 --> 0:47:42.799
<v Speaker 2>but I can't be sure because I didn't write it down.

0:47:46.200 --> 0:47:48.359
<v Speaker 1>Well, for those of you keeping score at home, you

0:47:48.440 --> 0:47:52.160
<v Speaker 1>know more than we do about the outcome of this episode.

0:47:52.440 --> 0:47:55.000
<v Speaker 1>I was assuming Kelly was keeping track, so I don't

0:47:55.040 --> 0:47:55.680
<v Speaker 1>remember either.

0:47:55.960 --> 0:47:59.040
<v Speaker 2>No, nope. Well that's what you've come to expect from

0:47:59.080 --> 0:48:03.920
<v Speaker 2>an episode of Daniel Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. Extraordinary detail, but

0:48:04.360 --> 0:48:05.280
<v Speaker 2>not a lot of planning.

0:48:05.680 --> 0:48:10.200
<v Speaker 1>So I think my take on message is that a

0:48:10.200 --> 0:48:12.400
<v Speaker 1>lot of the stories that are out there about science

0:48:12.400 --> 0:48:16.680
<v Speaker 1>fiction inspiring real technology are on sort of shifty ground

0:48:16.840 --> 0:48:19.680
<v Speaker 1>and rely on facts that are more myth than reality,

0:48:20.040 --> 0:48:23.480
<v Speaker 1>but there is real inspiration here. People are reading science

0:48:23.480 --> 0:48:27.279
<v Speaker 1>fiction thinking about those future worlds and then trying to

0:48:27.320 --> 0:48:29.279
<v Speaker 1>build them, and it goes back and forth. So I

0:48:29.280 --> 0:48:30.760
<v Speaker 1>think that's definitely solid.

0:48:30.920 --> 0:48:33.720
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And I think that there are so many things

0:48:33.719 --> 0:48:35.719
<v Speaker 2>that you hear in your daily life that when you

0:48:35.760 --> 0:48:38.239
<v Speaker 2>dig in and you really look for the facts, the

0:48:38.280 --> 0:48:41.360
<v Speaker 2>stories are so much more nuanced, which is why I

0:48:41.480 --> 0:48:43.440
<v Speaker 2>kind of love that we have an hour long podcast

0:48:43.440 --> 0:48:45.120
<v Speaker 2>where we get to like dig in and try to

0:48:45.120 --> 0:48:47.960
<v Speaker 2>tell the more nuanced stories, and then we don't record

0:48:48.080 --> 0:48:51.360
<v Speaker 2>things like points, and you know, we just we do

0:48:51.440 --> 0:48:53.080
<v Speaker 2>whatever it is that we do here.

0:48:53.880 --> 0:48:56.640
<v Speaker 1>Well, if anybody's getting points, it's not William Shatner, it's

0:48:56.719 --> 0:48:59.520
<v Speaker 1>Waming Chang. For all the awesome props on Star Trek,

0:49:00.080 --> 0:49:02.320
<v Speaker 1>Thank you very much to all the science fiction authors

0:49:02.360 --> 0:49:05.239
<v Speaker 1>who envision possible future worlds, and thank you to all

0:49:05.239 --> 0:49:07.560
<v Speaker 1>the scientists and engineers who make them happen.

0:49:07.880 --> 0:49:10.920
<v Speaker 2>That's right, all right, until next time, extraordinaries, thanks for listening.

0:49:17.680 --> 0:49:20.120
<v Speaker 1>Thanks everybody for listening. Please go and do us a

0:49:20.120 --> 0:49:23.399
<v Speaker 1>favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using.

0:49:23.480 --> 0:49:25.040
<v Speaker 1>It really helps people find us.

0:49:25.600 --> 0:49:29.520
<v Speaker 2>Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing

0:49:29.520 --> 0:49:30.280
<v Speaker 2>Matt Kesselman.

0:49:30.480 --> 0:49:33.759
<v Speaker 1>He really is a wizard. You can also find us

0:49:33.840 --> 0:49:38.920
<v Speaker 1>online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and x D and K Universe.

0:49:39.000 --> 0:49:40.240
<v Speaker 1>Come engage with us.

0:49:40.440 --> 0:49:43.799
<v Speaker 2>You can email us at questions at Danielankelly dot org.

0:49:43.880 --> 0:49:46.120
<v Speaker 2>We really do want to hear from you, and you.

0:49:46.040 --> 0:49:50.080
<v Speaker 1>Can find our website www dot danieland Kelly dot org,

0:49:50.360 --> 0:49:53.480
<v Speaker 1>where you'll also find an invitation to join our discord

0:49:53.520 --> 0:49:56.759
<v Speaker 1>where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe.

0:49:57.040 --> 0:50:01.000
<v Speaker 2>And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is

0:50:01.040 --> 0:50:03.600
<v Speaker 2>an iHeart podcast. Thanks for joining us.