In every Star Trek TV series and movie, we have seen a replicator. It helped the crew get food in seconds and also replicate important ship parts for repairs. Today, maybe we can’t replicate food yet, but we have a 3D printer that is used to create parts for machines, as well as human organs.

In the book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the adventures were all in a submarine. While not everyone at that time knew whether this type of transportation would ever possible, it was considered fiction. However, today we have modern submarines that can do a lot more than just travel underwater.

In movies like Hackers, many of us have seen a technology similar to or even the same as the VR we have now. Today we can truly enjoy virtual reality and even play games using this technology.

It seems like Star Trek not only entertained us, but helped scientists with ideas about technology. If you remember the diagnostic device on the show, you know how beneficial would be to have it today. While a similar device is being developed, we can take the infrared thermometer as a modern example of something that everyone has the chance to use at home today.

In the past, billboards were simple and had only one image. However, like in the movie Blade Runner, today billboards show entire commercials and very interesting announcements.

The taser was actually invented by Jack Cover, who was inspired by the book Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. He even named the device after the book, “taser” which is basically an acronym for the book’s title. Today this gadget can easily protect us without putting someone’s life on the line.

Many of us loved and probably still love watching cartoons and animated movies like The Peanuts Movie. Well, Otto Dieffenbach decided to recreate the flying Snoopy doghouse and today we can even fly it ourselves.

Self-driving cars were seen in many different movies, even before we could imagine driving one. One of those movies was I, Robot. However, today many companies are on the verge of releasing a self-driving car in production, which means we’ll most probably see them hit the roads in 2020 or later.

From computers to phones, gesture activated devices are starting to become more common. It was really fun seeing them in movies, like in Minority Report, but now those ideas seem even better and more useful when we have them at our disposal daily.

While voice control was only possible in movies and on TV series like Star Trek, now it’s part of our daily life. We can control our phones, computers, and even our homes with our voices.

In most detective and secret agent stories, movies, and TV series like Golden Eye, Spy Kids, or Dick Tracy comics, they had watches that helped them communicate. Today, we have smart watches that we can connect to our phones and talk with our friends and family. Now everyone can feel like a secret agent.

Before credit cards were even a thing, the book Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy from 1887 talks about a type of payment that he calls a “credit card.”

All 3 Back to the Future movies were about a technology that we can still only imagine, a time travel machine. But in the second part of the movie, they showed what they think the future will look like. There have been hoverboard prototypes and we can’t wait to try one in the future.