Science fiction has always inspired the creation of great inventions, but we tend not to acknowledge the debt the everyday technology we take for granted has to the creative inventions in far-flung science fiction literature. Fantastic technological notions that had been spawned by visionaries such as Roddenberry and others inspired our modern scientists and inventors, who then saw fit to bring these ideas to reality.
Martin Cooper can recall the moment when he was at a break in his lab watching the episode of
Star Trek when
Kirk used his Communicator to call for help for an injured Spock, which later inspired him to invent the mobile phone.
The
inventor of the MP3 can look back to the episode of
Star Trek The Next Generation where
Data was playing music from his computer and conceived of the idea of the digital music file. The series
Star Trek: The Next Generation,
Deep Space Nine, and
Voyager pioneered the graphic art of the "
okudagram" (named after scenic art supervisor
Michael Okuda), the GUI interface in the
LCARS operating system, later used in the
PADD, (Personal Access Display Device), the hand-held computer interface that foresaw the design and touch functionality of Apple's iPad and iPad mini.