A ring that hopefully means more than a 5 year mission

There may be some terms in this post not everyone is familiar with, and that's ok, and it presupposes some knowledge of Star Wars among others. To be honest, I'm not actually sure how related this is to tech or even to this class, but I thought these were pretty incredible, and they involve a great contribution to tech from a pop-culture perspective. Over on Etsy is a jeweler who makes science-fiction themed jewelry, and the ring I noticed first is one based on the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. Here's the picture from the artist's Etsy shop:

Pretty nifty, yeah? If your significant other presents you with one of those, they're a keeper! But it gets better, this ring isn't the only one. Browsing through his collection you'll also find rings based off of R2-D2 and Boba Fett, Chewbacca's bandolier, my personal favorite Han Solo in carbonite, Wonder Woman, the Triforce, and even a Pokeball (that one should give you second thoughts about whoever gives it to you). Of course, if pendants/necklaces are more your thing, well, say it with the Enterprise or go more Han Solo style, although that can be had in cufflinks as well, complete with pictures! Some versions of the rings are available as pendants, as seen in the image below.

Some of them are serious jewelry items, with prices as high as $3,000. Other are more reasonable at the $100 range or thereabouts.

So back to my initial mention of Star Trek, before I got carried away with all the rest. It turns out Star Trek, which only ran for three seasons between 1966 and 1969, was a surprisingly astute predictor of future trends. Communicators emulated years later by flip-phones, flat-screen monitors, in-ear communicators like today's Bluetooth headsets, phasers (Tasers) set to stun, and on and on and on. In fact, it was so good at these predictions that a television show was created called "How William Shatner Changed the World," and it focused on all the technology we have today that was predicted or inspired by Star Trek.

Look familiar?

Of course, subsequent entries in the series made predictions of their own. Here we see a scene from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where they accurately predicted the future release of the Android phone.

It was hardly the only show to do that, however; another, well known predictor of future trends and technologies was The Twilight Zone, full episodes of which can be seen here if you're interested, which tackled issues such as robotics, space travel, technology overload and bioengineering. 2001: A Space Odyssey brilliantly predicted intelligent machines, the very thing we've been discussing recently. In fact, many shows, books, movies, even songs made surprisingly astute predictions about what the future would hold. I could write lengthy dissertations on each title I just linked.