This story is part of a series on how we learn—from augmented reality to music-training devices. For the students in Emanuelle Burton’s ethics class, the story is tricky to grok. “They’re like, you ...

It takes a dreamer to think outside the box, imagine something impossible, and conjure up uses for an object previously undreamt. Artists and authors have created unbelievable situations in their ...

Many researchers acknowledge the role that science fiction has played in triggering their interest in science and inspiring breakthroughs. Indeed, there are many examples of fictional technologies ...

There are well understood terms of engagement between the people who write for publication, on one hand, and the academics and critics who discuss it, on the other. Writers write. Then the academics ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover aerospace, astronomy & hosted The Cosmic Controversy Podcast. As the recent Worldcon 2025 Convention here in Seattle ...

The current cultural fascination and frustration with artificial intelligence is nothing new. As far back as the 1921 Czech play R.U.R. — the workers-rights story that first coined the term “robot” — ...

Science fiction (SF) influences everything in this day and age, from the design of everyday artifacts to how we—including the current crop of 50-something Silicon Valley billionaires—work. And that’s ...

What does the future hold? In our new series “Imagining the Next Future,” Polygon explores the new era of science fiction — in movies, books, TV, games, and beyond — to see how storytellers and ...