I’ve been thinking about science fiction’s influence on technology and vice versa. Are authors technologically prescient or are inventors avid sci-fi fans? I’d guess it works both ways.
I always wondered about the “communicators” in the original Star Trek series (1960s). The characters carry little hand held devices with flip covers, which they use to contact other people in their landing party or on the spaceship. The guy who created the first clunky mobile phone was indeed a Trekkie and took inspiration from there. In later series they didn’t need phones. They moved on to little voice driven technology devices pinned to their shirts. Plus, let’s not forget the Enterprise’s standard use of Zoom calls for ship to ship communication.
When 3D printing came out, I also thought of Star Trek. By The Next Generation series (1990s), Star Fleet had fired their spaceship chefs, gotten rid of their onboard vegetable gardens, and replaced them with food “replicators”. Picard could go to a little hole in the wall (literally), order dinner, and it would be created for him seemingly out of nothing. NASA hasn’t yet made it that far, but have been experimenting with 3D food printing for space travel since 2006.
In a more chilling look at the future, Alice Glaser wrote “The Tunnel Ahead” in 1961, a short story about a family returning from the beach. It’s a piece of speculative fiction that explores a world of overpopulation and government mandated restrictions. The story takes place in the family car which is set to “automatic”, or as we would understand it, “self-driving”. The cars are programmed to follow a path, stop, start, and keep equal distance from each other until they pass through the tunnel. Built-in TV screens keep the occupants of the car entertained. While advanced technology isn’t the focus of the story, Glaser correctly identified a few modern vehicular trends.
Of course, while I’m thinking of sci-fi tech, I had to look up robots. The word “robot” first appears in a 1920 play by Czech writer Karel Capek, called Rossum’s Universal Robots. The origin of the word is ‘robota’ which means “work”. As far back as the 1700s inventors made automatons, mechanical dolls that performed a set of coded tasks. These were created as entertaining curiosities rather than useful machines. Capek envisioned a more complex creation that was actually a living being in itself. The robots were humanoid looking, but not mechanical, and were created to do the jobs humans didn’t want to do. His play ended with a robot revolution and paved the way for other sci-fi authors to run wild with the idea. Thanks to Capek we now call any type of machine that does automatic tasks a robot, whether it looks like a person or not.
What other stories can you name that predict a future technology?
Write Free or Die 
Just a minor quibble: “robota” in the Slavic languages simply means “work.”
My example is sort of in line with what you’re asking, but Ray Bradbury’s horrific “There Will Come Soft Rains” took the appliance and convenience culture of the 1950s to the next level. (https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_There%20Will%20Come%20Soft%20Rains%20by%20Ray%20Bradbury.pdf)
And then there’s the classic Hugo Gernsback who foresaw in 1911 all sorts of things, most importantly for World War II — radar. https://invention.si.edu/hugo-gernsbacks-unconventional-inventions
I’ve only had a limited interest in science fiction but what interests me about it as a genre is what a modern phenomenon it is — an attempt to imagine a future where people live differently (better/worse) than we do today. Fantasy has always been around but sci fi is specifically designed to explore how advancing technology transforms humanity. It’s a genre that even a couple of centuries ago, say at the time of our Revolution, would have been very novel and shocking.
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As you are a highly trustworthy source, I edited the definition of robota. The article I took the definition from was connecting it with serfdom, so that may explain why it was defined that way.
I like your examples. I think in some ways we can predict future technologies based on what we see trending in the present. Tech and culture are so tied together that one influences the other. But also, sci-fi is so often based on the present. In the Bradbury story I’m assuming the family was vaporized by some sort of nuclear explosion, a hot topic at the time. He seems to be writing about a 1950s suburban household with eggs and bacon for breakfast and games of bridge accompanied by martinis in the evening, even though he’s set the story in 2026. Meanwhile, the tech is kind of describing a smart house. All these contextual layers make it really interesting to a modern-day reader like me.
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BTW in addition to RUR (upon which I wrote a term paper for “Modern European Drama” back when “modern” meant stuff that we’d call “quaint and retro” nowadays) – but Fritz Lang’s great film “Metropolis” contains some great musing – visually presented – on the dangers of runaway technology.
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Interesting that there are two sides to technology. Some writers use it as “isn’t this great? it makes life better!” like in Star Trek, others are saying “beware of getting too cocky or technology will turn on you” like in robot uprising stories.
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I suppose it’s not a specific prediction but Captain Nemo’s “Nautilus” in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” was described as being powered by a technology that looked a lot like nuclear fission (hence the name of the first real-life nuclear-powered sub). I’m also reminded of the old joke wherein Spock and Kirk travel to late-20th century Earth with their communicators and observe the denizens with their Smartphones. Spock asks, “Captain, how come our communicators don’t take pictures?”
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