A space to dream

Oscar Wilde once said that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. I often see great truth in Wilde’s musings. For example, from the hard-hitting reporters of YouTube’s All Time 10s, we find out television screenwriters imagined many inventions before scientists and techies could design them.

• In the 1960s, the Jetsons described flatscreen TVs, video-conferencing, moving walkways and tanning beds.
• In 1974, the Six Million Dollar Man had a protagonist with bionic limbs.
• In the 1980s, Inspector Gadget showed a precursor to a laptop, with a search engine and a GPS.
• In the 1990s, Star Trek predicted something quite like Google glass.
• In 1995, a futuristic Simpson’s episode shows Lisa using her watch to make a phone call.