 In today's edition of Insight, let's take a look at the journey of our modern-day gadgets from science fiction to reality. Science fiction has been a source of inspiration for inventors, engineers and scientists alike. Science fiction is full of fantastic ideas, some of which have found their way into real life. Many of the technologies seen in the science fiction movies such as smartphones, tablets and computer networks have now become a reality. It was a future foretold in the comic strips, movies, animation and science fiction TV shows. Let's see what they predicted and what we got in the real world. Smartwatches have been around for less than a decade. Apple Watch was released in 2015, but the idea of a multi-functional watch can be traced to a comic strip from 1930s. Detective Dick Tracy's famous watch communicator, which appeared on his wrist in 1946, was a two-way radio link with police headquarters. It was atom-powered and supremely high-tech. In 1964, the watch was upgraded to include video functionality and a wrist-sized display screen. About 35 years later, in 1999, Samsung launched the SPH WP-10 watch communicator, nicknamed the Dick Tracy Watch. It had a digital directory, voice-activated dialing, and displayed time. It didn't quite take off because it was tedious to use and so bulky that it looked like there was a phone tied to the wrist. Video calling devices were everywhere in the Jetsons, an animated series of 60s and later 80s. The video phones seen in the series were TV-sized monitors controlled via console. Though it was not clear how exactly the call system worked, but each family member had their own device. Wife Jane Jetson seemed the privileged one, as she had a sleeker and newer device. The first flip phone appeared in the fiction about 30 years before it did in the real world. Star Trek's Captain Kirk used a handheld communicator to contact Starships in orbit. The device, which appeared twice in original series Star Trek, was created by a prop designer called Wah Chan and is said to have inspired Motorola's StarTac. Released in 1996, it was the first phone in the real world to flip open and shut, just like Kirk's communicator. During some lawsuit hearings in 2011 between Samsung and Apple, Samsung argued that Steve Jobs' company didn't invent the design and functionality of the iPad at all and cited scenes from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2002 A Space Odyssey to support the claim. In this sci-fi classic, astronomer Haywood R. Floyd journeys through the space and could be seen flipping through newspaper items from Earth on a newspad. The text on the pad is automatically updated every hour. In fact, Apple wasn't exactly the first in the real world either. Microsoft released Tablet PC in 2001. It came with a stylus, Windows interface and fairly limited capability. In the satirical film Zoolander released in 2001, Ben Stiller could be seen flipping open the tiniest of small phones, the size of a matchbox. At a time when phones in the real world were shrinking fast and possessing the smallest phone was a matter of prestige. This was a riff on how far people might be willing to take the miniaturization trend. Of course, later the smartphone turned everything around, getting bigger better again as the handheld devices became stand-ins for the laptop. So you see how science fiction provides a platform for innovative thinking by thinking outside the box and imagining what could be possible, new technologies and ideas can be explored. This type of creative thinking can spark the development of revolutionary products, services and techniques. It can help to motivate and encourage young people to pursue their dreams and in turn create a better future for all of us.