The Simpsons has surprised us, and on more than one occasion terrified us with its… coincidences. From stolen lemon trees to the candidacy of Donald Trump for the presidency of the United States, The Simpsons has covered a lot of ground with its 27 seasons, and when it tried to anticipate, inspire, or why not predict technological advances, the truth is that it didn't do too badly. Here are ten examples.
With almost thirty years on the air, it's logical to conclude that The Simpsons managed to anticipate or directly predict more than one event. The attacks of September 11, problems with voting machines, the Ebola outbreak, mutant tomatoes, food adulterated with horse meat, the Rolling Stones still on tour in 2010... the list goes on. But what about technological advances? Honestly, I can't remember how many episodes explored "the future" of the characters, and in those segments the creators had the opportunity to throw all kinds of strange ideas onto the table... which somehow ended up being true. The folks at Alltime10s prepared a video with ten of those ideas:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ndTglH25dDYThe first example refers to 3D printing, or rather, 3D printing of food. A photo taken by Marge magically becomes a cake, and although its transition wasn't identical, food printing is something real, and even NASA is investigating it. The next one is FarmVille. The "inspiration" in this case comes through the "work in the garden simulator", something that Bart and Lisa completely refused to do in reality. FarmVille extended the concept to an entire farm, and those with a Facebook account know what it generated. Hamburger earmuffs, baby translators (an iPhone app, in essence), and recycled planes as restaurants close out the first half of the list.
The rest of the predictions take us to things like the autocorrect, and especially its mistakes. Dolph tries to enter a reminder to hit Martin on an Apple Newton, and the device converts "beat up Martin" into "eat up Martha". In fact, some Apple employees cited that episode as an "influence" during the development of the autocorrect for the iPhone. Then come smartwatches, with a brief appearance as a futuristic communicator in the episode "Lisa's Wedding", left-handed stores, which went from being an idea of Ned Flanders to a real store in San Francisco, the sarcasm detector (thanks to an algorithm), and finally, the blood-throwing billboards, courtesy Tomy, Daly (or Itchy and Scratchy), and a real Kill Bill Vol. 2 billboard in New Zealand. I imagine that The Simpsons will continue to anticipate advances as long as it stays on the air... I just hope they are good things.
