The iconic TV series, known for its ingenuity and futuristic vision, featured a variety of inventions that seemed straight out of science fiction. However, with the advancement of technology, several of these innovations are already part of our daily lives. What are they?
We already talked about the inventions of the famous saga “ Back to the Future ” that became reality, such as 3D screens, the use of fingerprints, holograms or voice control and recognition. Today, we go one step further and get closer to the humorous science fiction animated series called “Futurama” – created by Matt Groening -, which started in 1999 and, to this day, continues to delight lovers of the young purple-haired cyclops Turanga Leela, the former pizza delivery man Phillip J. Fry and the hilarious and eccentric robot, Bender Bending Rodriguez, among others.
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From script to reality: Futurama inventions made real
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It’s been 25 years since the animated classic Futurama first aired, offering a hilarious depiction of Earth in the 31st century . It’s a cult science fiction series in which New York deliveryman Fry is cryogenically frozen on New Year’s Eve 1999 and wakes up 1,000 years later in a reality quite different from the one he knew. From here on out it’s all about the absurdity and futuristic technology.
Throughout the series, just like the Back to the Future films, Futurama features a number of technological innovations that are part of the daily lives of its protagonists. And how many of these inventions have become reality ? At least 15 of them, since the fictional world of the 31st century depicted in the series, which skillfully mixes satire with speculative science fiction, is actually quite similar to our own in the 21st century .
They created an app that tells you if you are drinking microplastics
What Futurama inventions do we use today?
Even though many of the futuristic devices that appeared in Futurama seemed purely fictional at the time, many of them have found their way into our reality. An example of this are robots, which in Futurama are shown in the form of Calculon (the protagonist of Bender’s favorite soap opera) and many others, representing famous figures, and in our world, we already have many robots applied both to customer service, the educational field and even to sales, in a society that is moving towards an increasingly widespread presence of humanoid robots in our daily lives.
In the field of robotics
sex robots are also part of everyday life, like Lucy Liu-bot, and in our world, robots geared towards the intimate field are becoming more and more realistic by beginning to integrate AI to simulate conversations and increase the realism of interactions with robots, as the company RealDoll is doing.
Drones with cameras are another example of futuristic inventions that appear in the series and are already part of our reality. Those robotic eyes in the sky were common in Futurama, where we saw them flying over cities and carrying out various tasks. Today, drones are used for many applications, such as aerial photography, filmmaking with unique perspectives that were previously quite difficult to achieve, and even to monitor crops in the field of agriculture.
Protecting the planet from potential threats from space
such as a large asteroid, is part of the planetary defense section of space agencies like NASA. We saw the beginning of these strategies for detecting and deflecting asteroids with DART , which was a huge success, but they had already brought up this same topic in Futurama many years before, in which the famous episode entitled “A Piece of Trash” exposed a dramatic scenario in which an asteroid impacted the Earth and, to avoid such a catastrophe, they decide to send another asteroid into space, made entirely of trash, to deflect the first one.
Another invention that no longer sounds like science fiction is the Hyperloop
a concept of high-speed travel through low-pressure tubes using magnetic levitation and electric propulsion initially proposed by Elon Musk and which China is materializing in the T-Flight that aims to reach 6,000 km/h ( for now it has reached 623 kilometers per hour ). The Chinese Hyperloop is advancing without pause. And, precisely, this type of transport already appeared in the Futurama series, where the protagonists traveled using a network of pneumatic tubes that transported them through the city in seconds.
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Again
smartwatches are common in science fiction, and Futurama was no exception. Characters often interact with such devices that look spectacularly like today’s smartwatches in a vision of the future. Today, smartwatches allow us to make contactless payments, control our home technology, provide voice assistance, and track our physical activity and daily sleep.
The same goes for virtual reality headsets
In Futurama, some characters wore a headset to enter a virtual reality world where they embodied their own character in the digital world within an immersive game. Today, virtual reality headsets such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR have transformed the gaming industry, offering users realistic and interactive environments and we know that we are only at the beginning of integrating this technology into our modern world.
And there are many more to come : the universal translator or language translator, cargo delivery spaceships ( SpaceX is now the company leading this emerging market), implanted chips… The future is now more than ever.
