British sci-fi author Sir Arthur C. Clarke threw around some wacky ideas in his novels, but it turns out he wasn't totally off-base. Besides writing escapist tales about space travel, he served in the Royal Air Force and was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, so this guy knew his stuff. In his writing, Clarke came up with more than a few futuristic predictions for technology, and some of them have actually come true. Don't worry, an evil autonomous robot named HAL isn't one of them..gif)
Brain BackupIn 3001: The Final Odyssey, Sir Arthur came up with the idea of brain backup, a way of storing thoughts and personality onto a CD-ROM so a person's mind could be saved long after they've died. He wrote, "First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and of gemstone." Only a sci-fi wizard could make storing the brains of the deceased the same way we do vacation photos sound poetic as opposed to creepy. Believe it or not, a researcher at Microsoft named Gordon Bell is currently working on a project that will allow him to preserve every aspect of his life - from letters to home movies - in a digital format for his loved ones after he's passed. In a few decades, who knows what we'll be able to store on our hard drives.
rotates at its standard 1,000+ miles per hour?