In honor of the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens this Thursday, December 17th, the New Jersey Institute of Technology computer science program wanted to commemorate the event with a video that looked at how Star Wars and other bedrocks of the science fiction canon influenced and predicted the future of computer science.

From bionic arms to holograms to the Internet, NJIT selected 7 modern computer science innovations that changed our world, citing Star Wars, Star Trek, and other science fiction works and how their creators paved routes for these new technologies and applications. For instance, the news pads from Space Odyssey 2001 and the touch-based control panels from Star Trek served as the inspiration for iPads.

Currently, there are 1-billion people worldwide who own an iPad -- an invention that has surely shaped our world. What NJIT set out to highlight was that our most remarkable innovations in computer science are usually started with a visionary to imagine the possibilities, and NJIT has found that the computer scientists steps in to make those dreams a reality.