10 Times Star Trek Changed The World

When it comes to new technologies, there’s a fine line between prognostication and innovation. Often, predictions are not followed by reality – if you’ve ever seen an episode of Tomorrow’s World, you’ll know that – and, yet sometimes a depiction of future tech is so irresistible that every effort is made to ensure its existence.

Little represents more the technological and cultural essence of the late 20th and early 21st centuries than the mobile phone. Unfortunately, however, it’s a bit of a myth that Star Trek directly inspired the invention of the very first mobile phone in the 1970s. But, it’s a myth that was started by the inventor of the cell phone himself, Martin Cooper, who confirmed claims as such in the 2005 documentary series How William Shatner Changed the World. He recanted this later. Apparently, it was Dick Tracy’s two-way radio watch instead.

Nonetheless, with the immense global popularity of Star Trek, and the evident similarities with the flip phone of the 1990s/2000s, it is not hard to see why the link had already been made in our collective imagination. The first Motorola fully clamshell flip phone was even called the 'StarTAC'. Steve Wozniak also credits his interest in Star Trek from a young age, and attendance at conventions, as the inspiration for co-founding Apple.

So woven into the culture has Trek tech become that there was a multimillion-dollar reward offered to make the tricorder a reality (with some success): The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize. Robert Picardo (The Doctor) even appeared in the promotional video. Other Star Trek technologies that we either live with or are in development are the universal translator (with limitations), voice computing, 3D printers, and versions of the holodeck to name but a few.

And then there’s the transporter…