Fiction creates Reality
The human hand hasn't evolved at all in the last 50,000 years. If you place your hand against the hand impressions in cave paintings from the hunter-gatherer era, it will fit just right in.
Most ideas are like that hand impression that's been done before. Humans before us had the same questions about life, meaning and purpose. So the questions keep repeating themselves no matter how psychologically advanced our brain becomes. Hence, some of the answers are bound to repeat as well.
I see the same with the fundamental tech. First we imagine it as a fantasy. A possibility. Then to communicate that possibility, we wrap it up in a story. People like the story, they tell it to their friends. One friend goes home and tells the story to his kid as a bedtime story. The story spreads and gets to be known as science fiction, folklore or magic.
For kids, that possibility is possible. Many inventors had a dream that was inspired by a story they saw or read in a movie or book. From Da Vinci to Stephen King to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, they all had an influence of science fiction in their life.
Imagination is the atomic unit of creation which is safely packaged as a story before passing onto the next generation. Any technology that we have today isn’t new. Their seeds were sown ages ago — whether that’s wearable technology like smartwatches, fitness trackers and augmented reality glasses from Neal Stephenson’s book, ‘The Diamond Age’ or future flying cars developed by robotic arms, inspired by the writing of Philip K. Dick.