How Sci-Fi Got It Wrong and Why That's a Good Thing

It’s so obvious that you probably weren’t even expecting it.

No science fiction movie or story has ever accurately predicted our use of data storage. Old science fiction movies show a future filled with vast tape-storage cabinets. Newer science fiction imagined CDs turning into small CDs in plastic cases.

And forget about actual storage size.

For years, sci-fi used megabytes to describe the amount of space needed to hold the world’s information. After that, a few gigabytes became enough. And now that we have terabyte drives, petabytes have become the new black.

Essentially, they never considered the size needs of high-definition porn.

While science fiction doesn’t really feature them anymore, food pills used to be all the rage. Instead of enjoying the taste of prepared food, you could swallow your food all at once like a Denny’s regular.

Fortunately, scientists sort of realized how horrible this idea was and decided that cancer still hadn’t been cured.

You can’t copy someone’s memories through their eyes.

Let’s just get that out of the way first.

Eyes don’t work that way. They aren’t USB drives to the soul.

Human cloning is actually feasible, but certainly not the way it’s portrayed in science fiction. And it won’t be for a long, long, long time if ever.

In order to make human cloning the way people want it (as a shortcut to immortality), you’d need a way to instantly grow an adult human body, a way to record memories from a dead or dying brain, a way to copy memories onto a fresh brain, a way to ensure that the memories psychiatrically work in a body that doesn’t have the same wear and tear the memories are used to, and a way to let the clone whine for hours about the meaning of humanity.