Home > Fictional technology

• Exploratory engineering seeks to identify if a prospective technology can be designed in detail, and simulated, even if it cannot be built yet - this is often a prerequisite to venture capital funding, or investigation in weapons research.
• Pro-technology propaganda often emphasizes a speculative potential of a specific technology in order to stimulate investment in it, or a counter-technology. This is a common motivation in any society dominated by a military-industrial complex, such as the 19th century British Empire or 20th century United States. See also militarism, technological escalation, arms race.
• Advertising which emphasizes some amazing potential of some technology that is "under development" (usually without any specific timelines) by a company that is seeking simply to present itself as being competent with technology. See also vaporwareThis article refers to the term as used in computing. For the company, see VaporWare (company). Vaporware (or vapourware is a term applied to software or hardware which is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge, persuasion technologyPersuasion technology is technology that can be used for presenting or promoting a point of view. Any technology designed and deployed for those purposes can be considered a persuasion technology. Such aids are regularly used in sales, diplomacy, politics.
• Science fictionScience fiction generally speaking, is a form of speculative fiction which deals principally with the impact of imagined science and/or technology upon society or individuals. There are, perhaps, exceptions to (or at least, some very unusual examples of) which explores the social or political or personal impact of some technology through storytellingStorytelling is the art of portraying in words, images, and sounds what has happened in real or imagined events. The oldest forms of storytelling were oral. Later, stories could be conveyed by sculptures or writings on stone, wood, or parchment. Modern te.

Examples of such fictional technologies are:

• mind transferIn Transhumanism and science fiction, mind transfer (also referred to as mind uploading or mind downloading depending on one's perspective) refers to the hypothetical transfer of a human mind either into a computer or other non-human receptacle, or from o
• brain transfer
• molecular assemblerA molecular assembler is a molecular machine capable of assembling other molecules given instructions, energy, and a supply of smaller "building block" molecules to work from. They can work individually as tiny stand-alone systems, or potentially be organ

Many technologies are fictional for a long time before they become real. Examples are:

• hypertextIn computing, hypertext is a user interface paradigm for displaying documents which contain automated cross-references to other documents called hyperlinks. Selecting a hyperlink causes the computer to display the linked document within a very short perio, e.g. the World Wide Web
• rocket pack
• atomic bomb
• expert system
• genetic engineering
• radiological weapon
• mobile phones

There are also technologies that have been proven to work beyond question, but currently are not practical given the alternatives, i.e., there is a more appropriate technology for that purpose:

• General purpose robots (only economically feasible with rather drastic energy and material subsidy, or in extremely hazardous applications that, arguably, no one should really be doing at all). However, note that specialized robots widely used in industrial production.
• death ray (easier to kill people in other ways)
• jet pack (while rocket packs are useful in space, jets are only useful in the atmosphere where there are better ways to get around than strapping this on your back)
• artificial intelligence (any intellectual task that can be reduced to instructions and the sensory data inputs provided is in theory automatable, but the human effort to do so is frequently not worth the gains made)

Proposals for further development of these are thus more and more likely to be seen as fictional, misleading or amusing. Robot toy s for instance have become popular. One could argue that the atomic bomb, given the consequences of its use, also belongs in this category.