Star Trek fans, I’m one of them, have praised
the show for the way it has anticipated technology. It used to be quite the thing to
compare a flip phone to the Trek
communicator.
However, have you ever
watched a rerun of the show and seen something that now seems quaint, even
ridiculous, especially when it comes to computers? Back in 1999, Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg published observations like this,
along with a few kudos for the shows, in The
Computers of Star Trek.
The book covers episodes
from the original series (TOS), The
Next Generation
(TNG), Deep
Space Nine, Voyager and the films through Insurrection. While all the series, even the more
recent prequel series Enterprise, depict a technologically advance
future, none are focused on technology. They are more focused on telling
stories that deal with the social issues in the periods in which they were
made.
Gresh and Weinberg note
this: Trek computers are mainly
supersized versions of the computers of the time the show is made. In some
ways, the Federation computers in the show are throwbacks to 1970s and earlier era mainframes, even
though smaller, networked computers were becoming the dominant model when the
revival series started in the late 1980s. This continued even as the Internet emerged and became part of the
popular culture.
Of course the producers
of the show aren’t especially interested in how computers actually work; they
want to make an entertaining TV show and sometimes explore what is going on the
society around them through the lens of a fictional future. Trek is interesting in this regard
because it shows the attitudes of people about computers over time. In TOS
computers are regarded with skepticism: computers break down, Spock is a hacker who takes over the ship,
artificial intelligences take over planets but get fried by the illogic of
emotions. By the time of TNG, computers are ubiquitous and acceptable—everyone
uses them—but the threat of the Borg show concerns that computers might take
over our lives and cause us to be depersonalized, destroying our individual
identities.
An almost 20 year old
book can’t help to be out of date, and the authors inevitably miss on some
predictions. For instance, in their criticism of Trek’s take on medicine (not very advanced at all except when
it is practically magic), the mention Army research into smart shirts that will monitor wearers for
vital signs and injuries. It was a tee shirt with sewn in sensors that could be
made for $30 (in 1998 dollars). Though we now have a lot of wearable
technology, hospitals, soldiers and health nuts aren’t making use of cheap tees
that keep track of their status moment by moment.
I don’t bring this up to
knock the authors’ predictions. It’s hard to predict the future, especially by
projecting from the current state of the art. Trek writers arguably haven’t tried very hard, but the show really
isn’t about technology anyway.
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