"We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters."
Speaking to the BBC in 2010, Mr Thiel said the 'collapse of science fiction' since the 1950s and 60s is a big reason for this.
"There was a great deal of literature about the future and what the world would be like, the future history of the world, and that has really dissipated," he said.
Instead most mainstream sci-fi is about technology gone bad. So do scientists and technologists need sci-fi to inspire new products?
