- info@peopleforresearch.co.uk
- |
- 0117 921 0008
- |
- Looking for participant recruitment?
There’s no denying that the creators of our favourite TV cartoons are clever, clever people – we’ve got a lot to thank people like Matt Groening and Seth MacFarlane for! Not only have they given us countless laughs, but it turns out they’re also pretty good at inventing new technology (on paper, at least). Here’s some of the best technology our favourite TV shows predicted; to say they were ahead of their time would be a massive understatement!
Elon Musk’s potentially game-changing idea of ‘The Hyperloop’ has been admired by many, but it seems like he may have been inspired by one of our favourite shows two decades ago. Futurama was first shown way back in 1999, and the opening credits clearly show people travelling around the city in clear tubes, alongside flying cars. Sound familiar, Elon?
The idea of the Hyperloop was born from a joint effort by Tesla and SpaceX (both of which are owned by Elon Musk), and plans to transport people in human pods through a vacuum tube. They’re already building test tubes in the Nevada desert, and other companies are developing similar ideas.
This isn’t the first time our favourite TV shows predicted new tech to help us get from A to B either. The Jetsons painted the classic vision of how we saw the future long before Futurama was even created, back in the early 60s – flying cars with high-pitched whizzing noises, swerving their way through a high-rise city with sphere.
It seemed so far off and we certainly didn’t expect to see it in our lifetime, yet the first flying cars are already becoming available for those who can afford the luxury, at a hefty price tag of £425,000. The current mode is more of a car-plane hybrid, which can change its mode of transport within 5-10 minutes. Something tells us it won’t be long before we have a more effortless transition between the two modes!
When the creators of South Park were asked back in 2016 if they’d ever tackle Pokemon Go in future episodes, they responded:
“We made fun of Pokémon Go in 1999!”
They weren’t kidding! In the 1999 episode “Chinpokomon”, kids become obsessed with a strangely similar Japanese fad, involving collectable anime characters that secretly track each player’s location, sending this information back to their developers in Japan – much like Pokemon Go!
The Simpsons is up there when it comes to big news that our favourite TV shows predicted: from the Ebola crisis in 2014 to Trump becoming president, the writers seemed to see these global events coming. One of their more seemingly far-fetched storylines involves a furry toy that comes to life. Despite looking like a happy children’s toy, Funzo soon turns evil and starts to wreak havoc in the Simpsons household.
With the rise of smart toys in the real world, there have been disturbingly similar stories emerging of toys being hacked and controlled by outside attackers, or being used to listen into people’s homes and to send data back to large corporations. The National Security Agency in the US even banned Furbies, after it was thought that the toys contained the ability to listen to classified conversations, so there must be some truth to this!
It may have seemed totally unrealistic at the time it was aired, but 3D food printing was first shown on the Simpsons. In the episode ‘Future-Drama’, Marge takes a photo of Bart and Lisa before their senior prom and the seemingly normal Polaroid prints an edible cake, with their photo iced on the front.
3D food printing is now the talk of every major tech event, and the reality of this becoming an in-home technology is ever-growing.
It’s not just technology that our favourite TV shows predicted either. There are some unbelievable examples of what seems to be the writers scripting real life events, years before they eventually happen.
Family Guy famously predicted Bruce Jenner’s gender change to Caitlin Jenner back in 2009, with an episode showing Stewie and Brian arguing about the star’s gender. Another somewhat more disturbing prediction by Family Guy writer Seth MacFarlane involved a 2012 episode, where a “Robin William’s curse” eventually leads to Peter Griffin attempting to commit suicide. It was two years later that the devastating news broke that Robin Williams had taken his own life.
While some of these predictions can only be explained by sheer coincidence, some of them have really got us thinking about modern day inventors, like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. Are they as intelligent as we’ve made them out to be all this time, or are they just really big fans of our favourite TV shows too? Perhaps it’s the writers of these shows that are the big brains behind some of the world’s most exciting new technology…
Sign up to hear about the latest technology you could help develop, or browse our current opportunities to start shaping the future with your opinion!