From cinema to reality:

I find it fascinating to remember how the technology we saw in cinema a few years ago seemed completely impossible to reach. Things like touch screens, virtual assistants, artificial intelligence, or video calls were perceived as simple futuristic ideas created just to entertain us for a while in the movie theater. However, time flew by, and many of those crazy ideas stopped being fiction to become the daily bread of our lives.

One of the examples that blows my mind the most is Iron Man. If you remember, Tony Stark spent his time interacting with "JARVIS", his virtual assistant, who was capable of answering questions, executing complex tasks, and controlling smart systems with simple voice commands. And look now, the tools we have based on Artificial Intelligence and current assistants do practically the same thing, automating tasks and making it perfectly normal for us to talk to devices.

Or what happened with Back to the Future II. That movie showed us automated houses and video calls long before they existed as we know them today. And look at us, now videoconferences are the daily routine for working, studying, or talking with family. The creators of the 80s had an impeccable vision, just like those of Minority Report, who left us wide-eyed showing facial recognition, touch screens, and interfaces controlled by moving hands in the air. Today you go anywhere and that technology is already embedded in security and our phones.

Even going into deeper topics, remember the movie Her, where the protagonist connected emotionally with an AI that spoke in a super natural way. It seemed very strange and distant, but today conversational tools and AI models answer you, generate content, and assist you with a naturalness that feels increasingly human. The same goes for the robotics in I, Robot; although fortunately we are not in a dystopia dominated by rebel machines, industrial automation and intelligent systems already perform very heavy and complex tasks in today’s factories.

And moving more towards our era, series like Black Mirror have put us in front of the mirror with technological scenarios that make us question everything. Many of its episodes touch sensitive fibers about social networks, digital privacy, Artificial Intelligence, and our deep technological dependence; situations that, curiously, today head real debates around the world.

In the end, all these stories prove that the imagination of the creators ended up anticipating the tools we use daily. What we previously saw as an unattainable fantasy is now our digital reality. Technology will not stop advancing and, very probably, many of the science fiction ideas we see in theaters today will become everyday tools in the coming years. The real challenge will be in how people and companies decide to use them to improve our lives, drive innovation, and build a future worth living.