27 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts in 2012

http://myscienceacademy.org/2013/01/03/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2012/

Maybe I'm a little late on the uptake, but I recently came across this article on Facebook and I just think that it is absolutely incredible.  Being an aspiring research scientist myself, I think that the discoveries being made these days are so amazing but also so extraordinarily terrifying.  I mean, some things that are on that list are literally science fiction come to life.  Who would've thought that one day we would have the technology to use the mind to control robotic body limbs?  Or that we would one day have the designs of a 'holodeck'?  Or legalized self-driving cars and the technology for an invisibility cloak?  I have certainly thought of these ideas when I was a kid, but I had never thought that they would come to pass so soon--I'd assumed that they'd be in place perhaps when I'm older or in the 2050's or so.  But they are here and the science to do the unimaginable is expanding rapidly.  For example, in the field of neuroscience itself, understanding of neural functions have grown 10-fold, 20-fold in the last 15 years itself due to invention of MRI machines.  The part that's frightening about all of this, however, is how much they can change everything.  If you think about a simple invention like an iPhone and the impacts it has had socially, economically, politically, in the last few years--and then imagine the effects that other more groundbreaking inventions that are all rapidly being discovered and invented and manufactured can have, it makes your head spin a little.  All I'm saying is that I think it will be hard to settle down to any sort of solid thought or daily pattern for the next few decades, what with new inventions changing the face of everything we thought possible every few years or so.  But living in the 21st century as we are, what else is new?