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Since 2011, on the fourth of May, Star Wars fans around the world have taken a day to celebrate the movie franchise.

May techUK be the first to wish you a very happy Star Wars day. Since 2011, on the fourth of May, Star Wars fans around the world have taken a day to celebrate the movie franchise. This year’s celebrations are likely to be bigger than ever with the release of episode seven “The Force Awakens”, which was filmed and produced here in the UK. The Force is strong with Star Wars fans once again, particularly those that work at techUK...

A (not so) long time ago in a technology industry association far, far away, the techUK team took a moment to consider what the Star Wars movies tell us about how technology could evolve in the future. And whether many of the technologies George Lucas envisaged back in 1977, when Star Wars was first released, have in fact become part of our everyday lives.

“In the Star War Universe, farmers really are the Chosen Ones. Or nerf-herders depending on your perspective. So how does real-life agricultural technology shape up in relation to the films? Recent advances in technology are piloting a revolution in precision farming, moving from a per herd or field to a per animal and plant approach. Robotics will play a huge role in driving this. Now if you are thinking about C3PO then maybe these aren’t the droids that you are looking for. But with automated tractors alone delivering 10% fuel savings via GPS controlled steering and optimised route planning you may be seeing them on a farm near you sooner than you think.

Although not as iconic as moisture vaporators that Luke tended to on the Lars Homestead, water-from-air units are sold on a commercial basis and are occasionally thought of as a solution in drought areas like California. Like Yoda, it’s a technology that shouldn’t be judged on their size with water bottle level technology also available. Whilst these tend to be high-tech solutions Polythene mesh has also been used. It’s trap! for water in clouds or fog banks and has proved to be so successful that small-scale agriculture has become possible in places such as the Atacama Desert.” Matt Evans, Executive Director, BSG, SmarterUK, Internet of Things

“Security systems for mission critical infrastructure have come on a bit since the late 1970s, which is good news for our data centre operators and the many customers who depend on them. Unlike the Empire’s engineers, data centre designers avoid building single points of failure (SPOFs) into facilities. So the Death Star proved vulnerable to two droids, three rebels, a smuggler and a wookiee because there were no security fences, inadequate search procedures and no biometric controls. It was obliterated by a single, well placed shot because it ran on a single, highly explosive fuel and had no back-up power supply. Without a mirrored facility or any software enabled backup, contingency planning amounted to building it all again from scratch. Fortunately Darth Vader’s idiosyncratic approach to customer relations always kept complaints to a minimum.” Emma Fryer, Associate Director, Climate Change Programmes, Energy and Environment

“George Lucas had the foresight to include Augmented and Virtual reality technologies way back in the first Star Wars movie in 1977. R2-D2 relays a 3D Holographic message from Princess Leia to Luke Skywalker and Luke uses head up display technology and advanced visual graphics to fly the Millennium Falcon, as do Rebel Alliance and the Imperial Forces fighter pilots. Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies are on the cusp of huge growth potential as the applications broaden out beyond gaming and traditional commercial applications such as airline pilot training. 9 million VR headsets are forecast to be sold in 2016 alone and the combined AR/VR market value is forecast to reach $120 billion by 2020. To Paraphrase Star Wars, “We have a good feeling about this”. Paul Hide, Director of Operations

“Three potentially habitable planets were discovered in our galactic backyard, it was announced this week. These planets orbit an ultracool (red) dwarf star much fainter than our own Sun, so unfortunately no twin-Tatooine sunrises. Located in the constellation of Aquarius about 39 light-years from Earth, we are going to have to develop a much faster way of travelling to compete with the Millennium Falcon, which supposedly made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.” Skye MacLeod, Programme Manager

“On this note, a new project called Breakthrough Starshot has been proposed by Stephen Hawking and Russian venture capitalist Yuri Milner with the goal of exploring technologies needed to create small, light-powered spacecraft capable of reaching the nearest star to our Sun, Alpha Centauri, in just 20 years. Alpha Centauri is more than four light years ( 25 trillion miles) away which means that Breakthrough Starshot will need to travel at more than 134 million miles per hour. The project is intended to investigate the feasibility of developing ulltra-light and highly compact space versions of sailboats, called “lightsails” similar to the one launched by Bill Nye and the Planetary Society last year. Such spacecraft use the Sun’s light or solar wind for propulsion. In addition, Breakthrough Starshot would also use a giant laser array (as well as light sails) to provide the impetus to achieve the high speeds. Starshot's sails would measure a few meters wide but only a few hundred atoms’ thickness to achieve low mass. Emerging nanotechnology will make it possible to develop very small spacecraft called "StarChips" carrying functionalities such as power supplies, photon thrusters, cameras, sensors, power supplies, communication and navigation equipment, and photon thrusters, to be towed behind the sails. The challenges to be surmounted cannot be underestimated but slowly but surely the imaginative ideas that have captivated us in Star Wars are being transformed into realistic steps. “ Raj Sivalingam, Executive Director, Telecoms and UK Specturm Policy Forum

“Whether it’s R2-D2 storing Princess Leila’s secret message and the Death Star’s technical plans or the map of Luke Skywalker’s location held within the DD-8 droid in the Force Awakens, information plays a pivotal role in the Star Wars films. You could argue that without the role played by data there wouldn’t be much of a story at all. No one would have been able to attack and destroy the Death Star 2, and save the Ewoks home planet in the Return of the Jedi, without the information that sadly many Bothans died for!

While the importance of data and information is a theme that runs throughout the franchise, what we also see is the coming together of data and machines with the abundance of automated robotics droids undertaking both mundane jobs as well as tasks that even humans today would struggle with. For example, C3-PO is an intelligent protocol droid that has been programmed to be fluent in over six million languages. What we see in the films are droids that have been programmed to perform specific civil and military tasks. What we perhaps don’t see however is evidence of the existence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven droids that are making specific decisions without human involvement. This is perhaps because back in 1977 Artificial Intelligence was not a common technological concept that even George Lucas envisaged becoming a reality by the times of the Clone Wars or the Age of the Empire. With the recent victory of Google’s DeepMind AI technology beating the professional champion player of the Chinese game Go, in a 4-1 victory, and other companies such as Facebook and IBM also investing in AI research perhaps we are already a step closer to a world that George Lucas never imagined, where decisions that impact the way we work, live and shop may be made autonomously by machines, or drones, based on data. Perhaps these are the drones we are looking for!” Sue Daley, Head of Programme Cloud, Big Data and Analytics

From the comments above it would seem that there is much that the technology sector could learn from the way technology is depicted in the Star Wars movies and maybe even try to apply today. But as Yoda would say there is no try, only do!

From all of us here at techUK May the fourth be with you.