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Keep the technology in the background
How The Jetsons did it
The Jetsons did this. The family dynamic and an ordinary day were the show, while a robot did the housework and a flying car sat in the background, ambient and assumed. Nobody was beating viewers over the head with how much technology would improve their lives.
Dystopia and utopia
Dystopian stories put the technology in the foreground. Blade Runner is about the tech, and it shows a future people don't want. Utopian stories fail when they try the same thing: once the tech becomes the focus, people write it off as PR.
Fiction that inspires
Science fiction that inspires people works through the human story. Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age is about Nell and her family, with the technology in the background as an enabler. Many founders started their companies after being inspired by science fiction, and Palmer Luckey is one of them. These stories show a better world and the human stories within it, with technology in the ambiance.
How did The Jetsons come to be?
The Jetsons premiered on ABC in September 1962 as Hanna-Barbera's space-age counterpart to The Flintstones. It was among the first series broadcast in color on the network. The original run lasted 24 episodes before cancellation, and Saturday morning reruns made it widely known. New episodes were produced in the mid-1980s.
How does The Diamond Age use its technology?
Neal Stephenson's novel, published in 1995, is set in a world where nanotechnology can assemble nearly any object from raw materials. The plot follows Nell, a poor girl who receives an interactive book that teaches her as she grows up. The book, called A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, was built for the daughter of a wealthy family and reached Nell by accident. The novel won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1996.
How has science fiction inspired real inventors?
Martin Cooper, the Motorola engineer who made the first handheld cell phone call in 1973, has said that the communicators on Star Trek inspired him. Robert Goddard, the rocket pioneer, said he was inspired as a teenager by H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket in 1926.
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