Yes, there are SF writers who made some good technological predictions.
You make enough predictions, some are going to pan out.
Consider Heinlein's prediction of the personal, portable telephone in Space Cadet.
But he was absolutely, insanely wrong with moving roads, and Heinlein was one of the best. He was horribly hoodwinked by the whole Duke "Extrasensory" perception hoax. SF is riddled with "extrasensory" perception nonsense.
SF can serve as a way of considering future technological possibilities, but I think reading technical journals would serve people much better.
Did you ever run across Mark Lauss? He was a genius I worked with at Yuma Proving Ground. He did a lot of network stuff.
Just as I said. ;^)
All The Times Science Fiction Became Science Fact In One Chart
A remote manipulator, also known as a telefactor, telemanipulator, or waldo (after the 1942 short story "Waldo" by Robert A. Heinlein which features a man who invents and uses such devices),[1] is a device which, through electronic, hydraulic, or mechanical linkages, allows a hand-like mechanism to be controlled by a human operator. The purpose of such a device is usually to move or manipulate hazardous materials for reasons of safety, similar to the operation and play of a claw crane game.
Avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character.
In Norman Spinrad's novel Songs from the Stars (1980), the term avatar is used in a description of a computer generated virtual experience. In the story, humans receive messages from an alien galactic network that wishes to share knowledge and experience with other advanced civilizations through "songs". The humans build a "galactic receiver" that describes itself:
The galactic receiver is programmed to derive species specific full sensory input data from standard galactic meaning code equations. By controlling your sensorium input along species specific parameters galactic songs astral back-project you into approximation of total involvement in artistically recreated broadcast realities ...[9]
From the last page of the chapter titled "The Galactic Way" in a description of an experience that is being relayed via the galactic receiver to the main characters:
You stand in a throng of multifleshed being, mind avatared in all its matter, on a broad avenue winding through a city of blue trees with bright red foliage and living buildings growing from the soil in a multitude of forms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(computing)#Popular_fiction