Fictional technology is proposed or described in many different contexts for many different reasons:

Examples of such fictional technologies are:

Many technologies are fictional for a long time before they become real. Examples are:

There are also technologies that have been proven to work beyond question, but are simply not practical given the alternatives, i.e. there is a more appropriate technology for that purpose:

  • robot (only economically feasible with rather drastic energy and material subsidy, or in extremely hazardous applications that probably no one should really be doing at all)
  • death ray (easier to kill people in other ways)
  • jet pack (while rocket packs are useful in space, jets are only useful in the atmosphere where there are better ways to get around than strapping this on your back)
  • artificial intelligence (any intellectual task that can be reduced to instructions and the sensory data inputs provided is in theory automatable, but, the human effort to do so is almost always not worth the gains made - even the Turing Test is quite often passed in limited contexts)

Proposals for further development of these are thus more and more likely to be seen as fictional, misleading or amusing. Robot toys for instance have become popular. One could argue that the atomic bomb, given the consequences of its use, also belongs in this category.

See also