My imagination goes wild sometimes. I come up with ideas for books, series of books, even occasionally TV shows and movies.
Two of my ideas became rather successful: the TV show "Early Edition' (done exactly as I had envisioned it) and Orson Scott Card's "Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus" (a lot better than my idea, really). But I can never take credit for these ideas: I never submitted them, leaving others to run with it.
One idea I had in the mid 1970s involved some sort of future telecommunication thing called M.A.R.I.A. (Microwave And Radio Information Access). On MARIA, anyone could access recordings of just about every radio or TV program made at any time. Sure, the Internet was already created by then, but I'd never heard of it and I doubt anyone was talking about it being uses so people could watch old TV shows.
Well, between Hulu, Ch131.com, and Youtube, it looks like we were mostly there. Not much like how I envisioned it, but I got the "microwave and radio' part right, as much of the Internet goes over microwave and radio, along with the cables. I got the part about old radio and TV right (especially TV), even if I did not guess a thing about movies, or that the Internet would be used about anything else at all. Thinking back, I was probably inspired by the idea that TV shows I loved like Sebastian Cabot's 'Circle of Fear" / "Ghost Story" that no one else cared about would never be seen again. The name of this TV-oriented version of the Internet probably came from "West Side Story" (see image above to the right). And yes, the Sebastian Cabot TV show is now on Youtube. Sebastian, better known as the first Mr. French, is seen below.
I still have
the ideas for the science-fiction stories that MARIA was part of, but if I ever write them, I'd just call it Youtube or something, if I even left it in at all. It's a lot more fun to predict things than to just name what is already there.Have any other writers or imaginative types here come up with predictions that have happened at all, or not happened at all? Or really good ideas that someone else ended up running with?
7 comments:
Next, you'll say you invented Windows 7.
As you may recall, the script I wrote in the mid-'80s predicted a black man being elected president in 2008.
I always tell David that my sister and I invented the Frisbee. When we were supposed to be setting the picnic table, one of us would whirl a paper plate through the air for the other to catch. We didn't make any money on that invention, either, but we had a lot of fun.
Did any of the paper plates fly well? Most I remember would quickly flip off to one side.
Wow. That's so cool. Next time get a patent. You might be able to quit your day job.
What happened to my post about loving "The Circle of Fear" and "Ghost Story". This may be a conspiracy ;-)
Cube: If you find that post, let me know!
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