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The 2002 science fiction neo-noir film Minority Report, based on the 1956 short story of the same name by Philip K. Dick, featured numerous fictional future technologies which have proven prescient based on developments around the world. Before the film's production began, director Steven Spielberg invited fifteen experts to think about technologies that would be developed by 2054, the setting of the film. Background After E.T., Spielberg started to consult experts and put more scientific research into his films. In 1999, he invited fifteen experts convened by the Global Business Network, its chairman Peter Schwartz, and its co-founder Stewart Brand to a hotel in Santa Monica, California for a three-day "think tank". He also invited journalist Joel Garreau to cover the event. He wanted to consult with the group to create a plausible "future reality" for the year 2054 as opposed to a more traditional "science fiction" setting. Dubbed the "think tank summit", the experts included architect Peter Calthorpe, Douglas Coupland, computer scientist Neil Gershenfeld, biomedical researcher Shaun Jones, computer scientist Jaron Lanier, and former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) architecture dean William J. Mitchell. Production Designer Alex McDowell kept what was nicknamed the "2054 bible", an 80-page guide created in preproduction which listed all the decided upon aspects of the future world: architectural, socio-economical, political, and technological. While the discussions did not change key elements in the film's action sequences, they were influential in the creation of some of the more utopian aspects of the film, though John Underkoffler, the science and technology advisor for the film, described it as "much grayer and more ambiguous" than what was envisioned in 1999. John Underkoffler, who designed most of Anderton's interface after Spielberg told him to make it like "conducting an orchestra," said "it would be hard to identify anything [in the movie] that had no grounding in reality." For example, Underkoffler conscientiously treated his cinematic representation of the gestural interface as an actual prototype, “We worked so hard to make the gestural interface in the film real. I really did approach the project as if it were an R&D thing.” McDowell teamed up with architect Greg Lynn to work on some of the technical aspects of the production design. McDowell said that "[a] lot of those things Alex cooked up for Minority Report, like the 3-D screens, have become real." Product placement was used to depict the predicted lack of privacy and excessive publicity in a future society. The advertisements in Minority Report were handled by Jeff Boortz of Concrete Pictures, who said "the whole idea, from a script point of view, was that the advertisements would recognize you -- not only recognize you, but recognize your state of mind. It's the kind of stuff that's going on now with digital set-top boxes and the Internet." Nokia designed the phones used by the characters, and Lexus paid the producers $5 million for the rights to design the futuristic "Mag-Lev" cars. All told money raised through product placement accounted for $25 million of the film's $102 million production budget. Real world influence Spielberg described his ideas for the film's technology to Roger Ebert before the film's release: I wanted all the toys to come true someday. I want there to be a transportation system that doesn't emit toxins into the atmosphere. And the newspaper that updates itself... The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. they can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we're part of the medium. The scary thing us, we'll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us. News sources have noted the future technologies depicted in the film were prescient. The Guardian published a piece titled "Why Minority Report was spot on" in June 2010, and the following month Fast Company examined seven crime fighting technologies in the film similar to ones then currently appearing. It summarized that "the police state imagined in the Tom Cruise flick feels a bit more real every day." Other major media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal have published articles dedicated to this phenomenon, and National Public Radio (NPR) published an August 2010 podcast which analyzed the film's accuracy in predicting future technologies. Technologies realized Multi-touch interfaces Multi-touch interfaces, similar to Anderton's, have been put out by Microsoft (2007), Obscura Digital (2008), MIT (2009), Intel (2009), and Microsoft again, this time for their Xbox 360 (2010). A company representative, at the 2007 premiere of the then Microsoft Surface (later renamed to Microsoft PixelSense,) promised it "will feel like Minority Report," and when Microsoft released the Kinect motion sensing camera add-on for their Xbox 360 gaming console in 2010, the Kinect's technology allowed several programmers, including students at MIT, to create Minority Report inspired user interfaces. Iris scanners Iris scanners, a form of biometrics, already existed by the time the film appeared in theaters. Media outlets described the systems manufactured by a Manhattan company named Global Rainmakers Incorporated (GRI) (2010) as similar to that in the movie. GRI disputed the notion that its technology could be the threat to privacy it is in the film. "Minority Report is one possible outcome," a corporate official told Fast Company. "I don't think that's our company's aim, but I think what we're going to see is an environment well beyond what you see in that movie--minus the precogs, of course." The company is installing hundreds of the scanners in Bank of America locations in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has a contract to install them on several United States Air Force bases., though the technology does not work in the way depicted in the film. Technologies in development Companies like Hewlett-Packard (HP) have announced they were motivated to do research by the film, in HP's case to develop cloud computing. Autonomous cars In the film, Anderton uses vehicles which can be both driven manually and autonomously; in one scene the police remotely override the vehicle in order to bring him into custody. Spielberg commissioned Lexus to design a car specifically for Minority Report, resulting in the Lexus 2054, a fuel-cell powered autonomous vehicle which is seen being built in an automated factory in the film. Autonomous, or self-driving cars have been in development since 1984. As Artificial Intelligence and ground-sensing technologies like LIDAR began to improve in the 2000s, major automotive manufacturers such as Ford, Nissan and General Motors began developing self-driving prototypes. Google began developing a self-driving vehicle proto.... Discover the Neil Gershenfeld Alan Gershenfeld Joel C popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Neil Gershenfeld Alan Gershenfeld Joel C books.