Genetically modified people in flying cars erase the memory of other citizens. Fantastic? Of course, but … not quite. We have collected technologies from science fiction that are already working or are about to work.
China has officially confirmed the birth of genetically modified children - twins Lulu and Nana. As a result of DNA editing of embryos, newborns have lifelong immunity to HIV - their corresponding gene is changed.
Now we can say for sure: the invention of science fiction writers and screenwriters about how people with new abilities and characteristics are born in the course of genetic experiments has become a reality. A similar idea is used, for example, in the films "X-Men" and "Chimera".
AiF.ru studied which other technologies presented in the cinema are soon ready to step into our everyday life.
Unmanned vehicle
By golly, it would be strange if people in the distant future still bother driving cars. Car without a driver in science fiction films has long been a stamp. "Total Recall", "Minority Report", "I, Robot", "Fifth Element" - this is just the first thing that comes to mind. In many films, the drone car flashes simply as an element of a futuristic cityscape.
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What's in life?
Self-driving cars are now engaged in many countries, but so far everything is limited to test drives. In order to release a car without a driver on public roads, relevant legislation is needed. In some countries, they have already been adopted, while in Russia, manufacturers expect to submit a corresponding bill to the State Duma only in 2020.
Among the world's giants developing self-driving cars, it is enough to name General Motors, Nissan, BMW, Volkswagen, Audi, Volvo and Google. Among Russian companies - Yandex, KAMAZ, Cognitive Technologies.
Flying car
Another favorite topic of science fiction writers and filmmakers. For the first time, a flying car with retractable wings appeared in the film "Fantômas Raged" (1965!), Then it could be seen in the trilogy "Back to the Future", "Blade Runner", "The Fifth Element", the domestic "Black Lightning". And, of course, in "Harry Potter" - however, there was not a product of scientific and technical work, but just a magic car.
What's in life?
In the modern world, cars still do not surf the air, but there are more than enough prototypes and samples. As recently as January 23, Boeing conducted the first test flight of an air car in an urban environment - vertical takeoff, intermediate hover and landing were practiced.
Uber develops its air taxi business - Uber Elevate. As planned, electric aircraft will be used. Even in Slovakia, they created a car with retractable fenders that can soar over city traffic jams - the AeroMobil 3.0. Moreover, they began testing it five years ago.
Of course, as in the case of self-driving cars, there are many issues (primarily related to safety) that need to be carefully considered before giving the green light to such vehicles.
Erasing memory
We each have skeletons in our closets and memories that we would like to get rid of. Whatever one may say, many events of the past are reflected in our present and shape the future. Or there are situations when a person has learned something superfluous, received secret information, which can harm him. How people erase their memory is shown in the films "Total Recall", "Men in Black", "Reckoning Hour", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".
What's in life?
In fact, the technology of erasing memory has already been mastered at the laboratory level. Of course, animals.
In 2009, the discovery of a protein molecule was announced, which scientists jokingly called the "memory molecule." It's kind of a regulator of our memories. A "memory molecule" controls the number of other molecules in the neuronal network. And if you block it, then the memory that was stored in this particular part of the brain will disappear. Experiments on rats have shown the effectiveness of the method. When they were injected with a blocker of that very protein, the animals forgot, for example, how they were beaten with an electric current - the previously fixed conditioned reflex disappeared.
The difficulty is that neurophysiologists do not yet have the technology to selectively affect the necessary neurons (say, those where bad memories are stored) and not hurt others. There are too many neurons in the brain and this "instrument" is too complex. Moreover, it is unclear how to do this (and whether it is possible in principle) with the help of a pill or a potion that a person could drink after breaking up a love relationship or, at worst, defeat of a favorite team in the final of a sports tournament.
The virtuals of the dead
In the second season of Black Mirror, there is an episode about a young woman trying to recreate the image of her recently deceased husband using modern technology. At the initial stage, she used the services of an Internet service, which, after analyzing everything that her husband wrote on social networks, designed a chat bot. On behalf of the deceased, he communicated with the inconsolable widow. Then the heroine uploaded the video archive to the system, and the program learned to speak to her in the voice of her deceased husband. Then they brought an android made of synthetic flesh to her house, but you can stop there. Because we are still far from the robots copying the dead. But the virtuals of deceased people, it seems, will soon become a mass phenomenon.
What's in life?
We can safely say that of all the fantastic technologies listed in this review, this one is the nearest tomorrow. Of course, if there is a demand for it.
There are now a lot of startups that create applications that can digitize any person (with facial expressions, individual manner of moving and gesturing). Machine learning can be used to model the personal characteristics of speech (a technique called "voice cloning"). Therefore, to have a virtual double of a deceased relative in your computer is a completely realizable task. And there are examples. After the death of her friend, the journalist and co-founder of the startup Luka Evgenia Kuyda collected all messages from their correspondence, his photos and posts on social networks. Based on them, the program created a chat bot for her deceased friend. Now he is in correspondence with everyone who knew him during his lifetime.
And in South Korea, they wrote an application that allows you to take a selfie with the deceased. I'm not sure that this is what the Russians were waiting for, who have a reverent attitude towards the deceased, but the world is great and diverse. Someone will come in handy.
Monitoring and recording dreams
The ideas of lucid (or controlled by someone from the outside) dreams are filmed in the films Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Vanilla Sky, Good Night, in the sci-fi thriller Inception. The latter is particularly impressive. The hero of Leonardo DiCaprio is engaged in industrial espionage in his sleep - he obtains the necessary information, penetrating into the subconscious of other people while they are sleeping. Moreover, he plunges into dreams to a depth of three levels!
What's in life?
Several scientific groups are working on the technology for recording dreams in the world. One of them, headed by Dr. Moran Cerf from Northwestern University (USA), has been trying for several years to create a device that can capture sleep using electronic images of brain activity. Scientists claim that they have found a method of video recording and decoding of dreams, but they have not yet been able to implement it "in hardware".
When the technology is implemented (and Moran Cerf has no doubts that this will happen), psychoanalysis will become its main application. If you are puzzled by today's dream, send the video to your psychologist and he will figure it out. And if you dreamed about something funny, you can share it with your friends on the same Facebook.
Dmitry Pisarenko