| Beyond Invention | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Documentary |
| Presented by | Steve Bennett John Hutchinson |
| Country of origin | Canada |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 8 |
| Production | |
| Producer | Peter von Puttkamer |
| Production locations | Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States |
| Running time | 46 minutes |
| Production company | Mystique Films |
| Original release | |
| Release | 12 February 2004 |
Beyond Invention is an 8-part documentary television series that premiered on February 12, 2004, on Discovery Channel Canada and, as of 2007 [update] , airs on the Science Channel.
The series was produced by Mystique Films in partnership with Gryphon Productions and is narrated by John Payne. It primarily focuses on cutting edge and fringe science and technology.
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Tom Swift is the main character of six series of American juvenile science fiction and adventure novels that emphasize science, invention, and technology. Inaugurated in 1910, the sequence of series comprises more than 100 volumes. The first Tom Swift – later, Tom Swift Sr. – was created by Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a book packaging firm. Tom's adventures have been written by various ghostwriters, beginning with Howard Garis. Most of the books are credited to the collective pseudonym "Victor Appleton". The 33 volumes of the second series use the pseudonym Victor Appleton II for the author. For this series, and some later ones, the main character is "Tom Swift Jr." New titles have been published again from 2019 after a gap of about ten years, roughly the time that has passed before every resumption. Most of the series emphasized Tom's inventions. The books generally describe the effects of science and technology as wholly beneficial, and the role of the inventor in society as admirable and heroic.
The USC Viterbi School of Engineering is the engineering school of the University of Southern California. It was renamed following a $52 million donation by Andrew J. Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm.
Small Wonder is an American children's comedy science fiction sitcom that aired in first-run syndication from September 7, 1985, to May 20, 1989. The show chronicles the family of a robotics engineer who secretly creates a robot modeled after a human girl, then tries to pass it off as their adopted daughter, Vicki. The series turned out to be a surprise hit, specifically with children, as many channels belonging to different nations witnessed while re-running the show. Owing to its popularity in some countries, the show had to be dubbed for different languages.
Look Around You is a comedic parody of British science television shows, devised and written by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, and narrated in the first series by Nigel Lambert. The first series of eight 10-minute shorts was shown in 2002, and the second series of six 30-minute episodes in 2005, both on BBC Two. The first series of Look Around You was nominated for a BAFTA award in 2003.
Meet the Robinsons is a 2007 American computer-animated science-fiction comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is loosely based on the 1990 children's book A Day with Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce. The film was directed by Stephen J. Anderson and produced by Dorothy McKim, from a screenplay that Anderson co-wrote with Don Hall, Nathan Greno, Joe Mateo, Jon Bernstein, Michelle Spitz, and Aurian Redson. The film stars the voices of Daniel Hansen, Jordan Fry, Wesley Singerman, Angela Bassett, Tom Selleck, Harland Williams, Laurie Metcalf, Nicole Sullivan, Adam West, Ethan Sandler, Tom Kenny, and Anderson. It follows an orphaned 12-year-old inventor, Lewis, who is desperate to be adopted. He meets Wilbur, a young time-traveler who takes him to the year 2037 to visit an eccentric family, the Robinsons. They must prevent a mysterious bowler-hatted man from changing Lewis' fate, and, by proxy, the future.
Tracey McBean is an Australian animated children's television series produced by Southern Star Entertainment and Film Australia. The show was aired from 2001 until 2006 on ABC Kids.
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance painter and polymath who achieved legendary fame and iconic status within his own lifetime. His renown primarily rests upon his brilliant achievements as a painter, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, being two of the most famous artworks ever created, but also upon his diverse skills as a scientist and inventor. He became so highly valued during his lifetime that the King of France bore him home like a trophy of war, supported him in his old age and, according to legend, cradled his head as he died.
Stanford Robert Ovshinsky was an American engineer, scientist and inventor who over a span of fifty years was granted well over 400 patents, mostly in the areas of energy and information. Many of his inventions have had wide-ranging applications. Among the most prominent are: the nickel-metal hydride battery, which has been widely used in laptop computers, digital cameras, cell phones, and electric and hybrid cars; flexible thin-film solar energy laminates and panels; flat panel liquid crystal displays; rewritable CD and DVD discs; hydrogen fuel cells; and nonvolatile phase-change memory.
The use of nanotechnology in fiction has attracted scholarly attention. The first use of the distinguishing concepts of nanotechnology was "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman in 1959. K. Eric Drexler's 1986 book Engines of Creation introduced the general public to the concept of nanotechnology. Since then, nanotechnology has been used frequently in a diverse range of fiction, often as a justification for unusual or far-fetched occurrences featured in speculative fiction.
Mind uploading, whole brain emulation, or substrate-independent minds, is a use of a computer or another substrate as an emulated human brain. The term "mind transfer" also refers to a hypothetical transfer of a mind from one biological brain to another. Uploaded minds and societies of minds, often in simulated realities, are recurring themes in science-fiction novels and films since the 1950s.
Future Fantastic was a British documentary television series which premiered in 1996. This show looked at the how science and science fiction complement each other, and how ideas and technologies from the past are helping to shape our future. The series was narrated by Gillian Anderson and co-produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation, The Learning Channel and Pro Sieben.
Nikola Tesla is portrayed in many forms of popular culture. The Serbian-American engineer has particularly been depicted in science fiction, a genre which is well suited to address his inventions; while often exaggerated, the fictionalized variants build mostly upon his own alleged claims or ideas. A popular, growing fixation among science fiction, comic book, and speculative history storytellers is to portray Tesla as a member of a secret society, along with other luminaries of science. The impacts of the technologies invented by Nikola Tesla are a recurring theme in the steampunk genre of alternate technology science-fiction.
Understanding is a documentary television series that aired from 1994 to 2004 on TLC. The program covered various things understood from a scientific perspective and was narrated by Jane Curtin, Candice Bergen, and Peter Coyote. It originally aired on TLC and as of 2013 is currently being shown on the Science Channel. The series is presented in a similar fashion to two other programs that also show on the Science Channel, Discover Magazine and Megascience.
Artificial intelligence is a recurrent theme in science fiction, whether utopian, emphasising the potential benefits, or dystopian, emphasising the dangers.
Transcendent Man is a 2009 documentary film by American filmmaker Barry Ptolemy about inventor, futurist and author Ray Kurzweil and his predictions about the future of technology in his 2005 book, The Singularity is Near. In the film, Ptolemy follows Kurzweil around his world as he discusses his thoughts on the technological singularity, a proposed advancement that will occur sometime in the 21st century when progress in artificial intelligence, genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics will result in the creation of a human-machine civilization.
The Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC) is a not-for-profit research institute of the State University System of Florida, with locations in Pensacola and Ocala, Florida. IHMC scientists and engineers investigate a broad range of topics related to building systems aimed at amplifying and extending human cognitive, physical and perceptual capacities.
The space-opera blockbuster, Star Wars franchise has borrowed many real-life scientific and technological concepts in its settings. In turn, Star Wars has depicted, inspired, and influenced several futuristic technologies, some of which are in existence and others under development. In the introduction of the Return of the Jedi novelization, George Lucas wrote: "Star Wars is also very much concerned with the tension between humanity and technology, an issue which, for me, dates back even to my first films. In Jedi, the theme remains the same, as the simplest of natural forces brought down the seemingly invincible weapons of the evil Empire."
AI takeover—the idea that some kind of artificial intelligence may supplant humankind as the dominant intelligent species on the planet—is a common theme in science fiction. Famous cultural touchstones include Terminator and The Matrix.