Are we Living in a Sci-Fi World?

The Today Programme on BBC Radio seemed to rubbish the capacity of Sci-Fi to predict the future.  It seemed to imply that while it could tell a good yarn, the things it predicts are marginal and most never have, or could have, come true.  However, that's not the point of Sci-Fi.  Its really about the world now as we live in it and the fantasy elements are meant to throw this into perspective.  The debate centres around whether technological advances that first occurred in Science Fiction and then happened in reality were cause or effect. Did scientists see things that were described in fiction and then go on to puzzle out how to make them, or does Sci-Fi offer some real prediction about how the future will shape itself.  We will probably never know unless we could invent a time machine and go back to experiment with the past and see how things work out.....  Now there's a story.