By Tierra Harris

The future is closer than we thought.

It is pretty hard to say that the future isn’t “now” when you’re surrounded by talking cell phones and driverless cars. Yes, I said it, driverless cars. The advancement in technology has had a larger impact than we think.

I remember being about 12 years old, my little brother and I stuffing our faces with popcorn, as we binged on Back to the Future movies. I would’ve never thought that Marty McFly’s signature hoverboard would’ve been a real thing but, 2015 proved me wrong. The far-fetched idea is now, two years later, a social norm; Seeing a few kids hovering down the street instead of riding skateboards isn’t as eye-catching as I thought it would be.

Fifty years ago, we were barely able to fight off disease. The development of something as simple as the flashlight was big at the time, but, today, it’s a common idea. Who knows where we’re headed 50 years from now? Within less than two decades, we were given text messaging in 2000, then the development of Wikipedia in 2001, and not to mention Apple releasing the first iPhone in 2007. Not even ten years later, these inventions are conceived as more than common ideas; they are necessities.

Companies like Apple, Amazon and Panasonic are just a few upscale companies that have altered the world around us. At an estimated $13 billion annually, Apple products are in over half of American homes. Steve Jobs may have only given us Apple, but his ideas inspired Google to start its own phone industry, along with many other rises in small industries. More children are dreaming of creating the world’s next big thing and the industry is widening for thousands of prospective individuals that plan to change the world.

According to the New Economy, science fiction is the reason behind it all. Our imagination is the root of every ounce of technology on Earth. Simple things like credit cards and automatic doors were all mentioned in books or movies hundreds of years ago, and they all were perceived as jokes, yet today, these things are simply a part of our culture. If Mark Twain would never have written about a “large storage of data” in London Times of 1904 back in 1898, we most likely wouldn’t have the world wide web today.

Scientist Edward Teller believes that, “the science of today is the technology of tomorrow.” Something as simple as an idea can affect the lives of millions for millenniums. Regardless of generations to come, technology will never cease because our imaginations will never expire.