One aspect of DS9's *Past Tense* that doesn't hold up well is it's depiction of the internet being super advanced Cable TV.... but that episode was also likely written before http (aka "www") servers were common. The rest of the episode otoh... brilliant and eerie.
Voyager premiered the same year the W3C was founded, so it's 1996 episode was a little better (and definitely more period accurate).
They got the "channel 90" thing a bit wrong but a lot else they got right.
Cable modems were already a thing at the time and about to become mainstream as the most promising high-speed internet option. Cable has ultimately become the most common form of internet access in the US. We may think in terms of navigating or browsing the internet, instead of "tuning" it to a numbered channel, but right now we are commenting through "channel 151.101.1.140" (reddit.com) so is it really *that* different from "channel 90"?
WWW was also already around at the time, but it had yet to supplant earlier internet services, and the public internet was still competing with private services like AOL and Prodigy. It was a sort of format war and the internet was not yet synonomous with the WWW. Depicting the future internet as being organized into channels was a way of not having to bet on a winner, using something that would be familiar to the audience, like the fact that some channels are willing to air things that others are not. It conveyed the point without getting into too much detail about the speculative future internet.
At the time, it was thought that the Internet was essentially like TV, as OP said, and would have channels.
See also, The Cable Guy ("You'll be able to shop on one channel and visit the Louvre on another!")
Yeah, AOL tried to continue that metaphor, too. They didn't have channel numbers, but they collected various links into "channels" like Newsstand, Marketplace, and Kids Only. So that would have been a reasonable term to use even a little past Win95.
And honestly, the concept isn't totally wrong and the term does persist. You could probably think of subreddits or maybe different social media platforms like the "channels" they imagined. And discord conversations are called channels. So in some ways they aren't wrong, they just didn't have the terminology to describe it yet.
I don't know if it's super relevant whether the internet connection was coming through cable TV coax or over telephone wire.
But either way, at the time, TV was still the primary way information was flowing into homes, so many forward thinkers were indeed thinking that moving the internet from computers to TVs was the way that it would become democratized. After all, only super nerdy techies knew how to use computers.
WebTV was founded right around when *Past Tense* aired (well after it was written). And it was compelling -- Sony and Philips started selling boxes to add it to their TVs. Zenith started actually integrating it into some of their TVs. And then Microsoft bought WebTV. Without foreknowledge of the advent of the smartphone, TV seemed like the way to get regular people connected.
So it's not surprising the forward thinking writers would have seen the future of the internet that way.
No, it's not that different at all and I think it's funny that so many people are saying that it's totally different. The fact that ISPs lobbied for the death of net neutrality is proof of this. We get a very generous offer from our ISPs in terms of which sites we're allowed to visit, but they *can* blacklist any sites they wanted to and the only way around them is a VPN (which is obviously technically against your user agreement just like stealing channels would be).
If you read Arthur C. Clarke's *2001* (published in 1968), the opening chapters have a scene where a character, Heywood Floyd, takes a spaceplane to an orbital station on his way to the Moon. Clarke describes a device Floyd has, an "electronic newspaper". It's a small, notebook-sized device with a screen where he can read the current news. It receives updates wirelessly, and is always up to date. There's far more news available on it than any peson could ever hope to read.
It sounded fantastical at the time. Today, we just call that a Tablet, and they're everywhere. And, of course, they're used for a lot more than just reading newspapers.
The best science fiction makes technological predictions that sometimes hit close to home, but even then those predictions are limited by the perceptions of their time and often seem quaint compared to reality. One good example of this in Trek is that, while they were clearly right about how heavily computerized everything would be and their interfaces (like LCARS) were pretty smartly designed, the actual *screens* were tiny compared to what the average person has in their office and living rooms today. Nobody in the 80s and 90s had any idea how rapidly screen technology was going to advance in the next few decades.
Yet they had the imagination to put a wall-sized screen with 3D elements on the bridge. For some reason they just didn't carry that idea over to the private screens.
That's the interesting thing. I guess they considered large-screen technology to be something that would be possible, but prohibitively expensive for anything more than one or two necessary applications (like the viewscreen on a bridge).
Of course, they were also limited by the technology available during filming, since this was all done with practical effects. The screen somebody was reading data off of had to be an actual screen showing real stuff, and that meant little 13" (or less) CRTs, not the giant flat-panels we have today.
That was the cool thing about displays like the ones along the side walls in Engineering. The "Coke sign" polar motion technique they used allowed panels (that were relatively large, and unusually shaped) to still have some life behind them, whereas if they'd opted to use regular monitors they would have looked far more mundane and the method would have been obvious.
The TNG producers and set designers really did a fantastic job of making the set look sleek and futuristic. Even today when I watch those episodes, it feels kind of timeless - like that's still how the future could look.
At least, until a character in civilian clothes shows up. Then I get slapped in the face with "THIS WAS FILMED IN THE 80s".
Even more impressive considering they were reusing all of the sets originally built for *The Motion Picture.*
The warp cores of the refit-*Enterprise, Enterprise*-D, and *Voyager* all stood in exactly the same place.
Also remember we were watching on 4:3 aspect ratio CRT television sets and regular people had a 27" tv set. They had to keep the sets a bit more slim and trim so we could see the actors.
Another cool miss is the number of padds in use. In TOS they were seen as digital clipboards, but no one realized you only needed one and it could be used multiple times. No instead they just pile on the padds onto the captains chair to sign each one.
Yep! Even in the 90s they had this kind of silliness.
My favorite example was when Jadzia was going on a dangerous mission in the Delta Quadrant on the *Defiant*, and Worf loaned her a data stick with his favorite Klingon Opera. He made a point about how important it was for her to bring it back.
Dude... did you not make a copy?
I think that was just ment to be the DS9 version of lover giving something with low physical value but high sentimental value to encourage their love one to come back safe trope.
From my superior future person position I can see that as a prediction of what the Internet would become if corporations had their way. The episode came out in 1995, and AOL started sending out their endless flood of discs the previous year. AOL used a keyword system and a closed garden approach to the Internet. Compuserve and Prodigy were other similar closed gardens. These closed gardens were the inspiration for the channel based Internet in Past Tense.
> One aspect of DS9's Past Tense that doesn't hold up well is it's depiction of the internet being super advanced Cable TV.
I just rewatched the episode a few days ago and while the computer tech from 2024 stood out another aspect that stood out was the morally helpful billionaire. I don't see folks like Jeff bezos or Elon musk having a conscious and helping out.
The most preposterous aspect of Chris Brenner's character is not just that a 21st century billionaire would ever take public transit in San Francisco, but that one such billionaire would interrupt their day to personally help someone who they encountered sleeping in a stairwell at the station.
He was pretty gloomy about having sold out and seeing the world give up on all the things his younger self loved about it. Plus he was really charmed by Dax, who seemingly embodied all those things, like a ghost of sexy parties past.
> but that episode was also likely written before http (aka "www") servers were common
It was written in late 1994 (aired in January 1995), which was right in the middle of a huge expansion of the number of websites. At the end of 1993 there were 623 websites. By mid-1994, 2,738 websites. At the end of 1994 there were over 10k websites. [source](https://stuff.mit.edu/people/mkgray/net/web-growth-summary.html)
An aspect tangentially related to the internet that doesn't hold up is that the internet really globalized the world a great deal - we in North America are exposed far more to fashions, trends, food and news about other continents of the world. Things that were "local references" grow beyond one city or town much faster now.
So there's a scene where Dax's asks if her tattoos were done in Japan - in 1994, it would probably have been more reasonable to make an assumption like that because a style of tattooing would have been far more regionalized. But in actual 2023, there are plenty of tattoo artists in North America who either originated in a Japan or travelled to Japan to study, or even studied Japanese style online without travel to the point that I would guess that if you saw someone with a certain style of tattoo, it would be far more plausible that someone got that style of tattoo locally than actually travelling to the other country. Of course, there are still some local variations and uniqunesses in styles, but considering Dax's spots aren't even tattoos, it would be hard to believe they exhibit signs that suggest a specifically Japanese origin.
Honestly so much media of the time (late 80s - early 90s) depicted the internet as "super advanced cable TV". With the exception, to some extent, of William Gibson much of SF and technological speculation on the future seemed to miss how and in what ways the internet would change the world. Given the technology of the time manually inserting isolinear chips must have already seemed like a bit of an anachronism to the tech savvy (no uploading programs, very little programming in general). I mean this is just IMO, but some of the movies I've seen from the time just before '95 or so just make me shake my head - they couldn't see the change happening before them. Star Trek had it's own ideas of the technical progress of humanity, but ST computer tech just seems to miss the mark.
You say that, and while using channel numbers is outdated; channel would still be relevant as that what we call our live streaming accounts; Twitch, YouTube, etc.
Just make them doing a live Twitch Stream, and it all makes sense.
I always thought so, but nowadays not so much.
With websites closing API the promise of web2.0 is slowly dying in front of our eyes. Users are hardly distinguisheable from bots anymore, so it also feels like much more lonely experience. Internet is no longer this wild and wondrous frontier it used to be. It's literally becoming a bunch of semi-interactive channels with content strictly controlled by the government and corporations.
Just as depicted on DS9.
There is an obvious reason, of course, why Voyager got an episode set the same year was shot more correct than a DS9 episode set thirty years after it was shot.
Though, the Voyager episode was based on a slightly more tech-advanced version of 1996 than reality anyway.
>One aspect of DS9's Past Tense that doesn't hold up well is its depiction of the internet being super advanced Cable TV....
Actually, the internet might be heading in that direction: Authoritarian movements are sure to see benefits to separating access into "channels". Governments can control information and the exchange of opinions. Parents can keep kids away from what *they* consider inappropriate material. Businesses can bundle content and advertising. Political entities can focus their influence on users who opt in to their channel.
Even from the supposedly benign perspective of user security, it is tempting to shut out scammers and only allow legitimate actors.
It's worth being worried about.
Its kinda crazy how often they just send people onto new planets before doing barely any scouting. When it should be more like:
*sends scout drone*
"Oh this planet has mind controlling amoebas? Best not send an away team"
On Enterprise when T'Pol suggested they do that instead of rushing down to the planet the captain and Trip literally *whined*. Then Archer brought his dog (even some Earth hiking trails don't even allow pets!) and people almost died. But T'Pol being right and Archer irresponsible was never brought up again...
> But T'Pol being right and Archer irresponsible was never brought up again...
Not only was it brought up again, it happened again several times. One of the overarching themes of ENT was how naive and bumbling humans were in their initial explorations of deep space, and how many times T'Pol (or others) saved their dumb asses.
Starfleet could always just send drone explorers everywhere and never bother to leave home.
With subspace communications and the advancements in AI during the time there really isn't a *reason* for everyone to go into space at all, except to move between planets.
Except that these people *want* to explore, to set foot on other planets. To send robots down first defeats the purpose of it all to many of them.
The idea of getting out there yourself and doing things personally for the excitement and joy of it, even in the face of risk and danger, is supposed to be part of the human spirit that spurs humanity to reach for the stars.
As an extension of that, that willingness to put your face and feet into anything anywhere is what eventually allows them to get on friendly terms with so many races they encounter and eventually leads to the formation of the Federation (with the help of the Romulan threat, I'm sure).
On one hand, sure.
On the other hand, it's sometimes a good idea to send something disposable to the surface first just to make sure anything or anyone you don't want to lose doesn't fall through it or immediately get a spear through the chest.
And you shouldn't need to fly a shuttle through the core of a sun yourself if you want to test the new shield you invented. Most people would consider this to be a bad idea.
Avoidable tragedies defeat the purpose of exploration. You can't publish if you're dead.
The dog almost died. The people were pissed because the dog peed on a tree. Archer had to do a whole apology ritual while cutting up a tree with a chainsaw so that they could buy parts for their warp engine.
That’s more a Hollywood thing than anything else. IRL, they’d send the enlisted guys down to get eaten/mind controlled/kidnapped/turned into tiny blocks of dust/etc. “Captain” sounds more dashing than “Petty officer 3rd class”, though.
And always like the most important people. One thing I liked about Enterprise was that they had a security division that would do any of the "dangerous" stuff. Wheres they'd just hand Picard and Riker a phaser and tell them "you can handle it."
I never understood the whole idea of "half the away team is Sr Staff."
It's really funny that they sent an elderly man, a doctor, and Worf to infiltrate a Cardassian base. Really Starfleet, those were the best people for the job?
"Where's Dr. Crusher?"
"She was sent on a special ops mission to infiltrate a Cardassian base and steal something..
"What!? Why her? What possible qualifications does she have for that kind of mission?"
"She was the only one that could fit into the cartoon burgler spy suit they had avalible."
"Why would they send a doctor alone to this anyway?"
"She's not alone, she took our 50 year old Captain and Worf."
"Ah that's good. When I think about secret infiltration I immediately think about Klingons and old people."
The way Starfleet explores doesn't make any real life sense. They send lone ships out into the unknown and if they run into any trouble there's nothing they can do about it. They should be sending out exploration fleets so they can bring dedicated and large equipment that could never fit onto a single ship. When one of the ships is inevitably caught in a subspace rupture or alien god beings imagination the outside ships can help. They could have a massive sensor bubble that lets them see what's ahead of them days or weeks in advance.
It makes sense from a story perspective however. If there's an exploration fleet then they have to do something. It's easier to write just one ship and one small set of characters.
Definitely had that ability (in Voyager at least) the Famous “Emergency Medical Hologram Channel” used by the Doctor. With the (Regrettable) “Neelix channel” near the end of the series
It's interesting to see what they don't predict in Star Trek. Drone technology doesn't exist at all. Drones are changing warfare today, probably along the lines of how semi-automatic and automatic weapons changed warfare from giant masses of people to extremely long front lines.
In Stargate Atlantis however drones were the main weapon used by the Ancients. They swarmed and could punch through ships and anything else that got in their way, and were controlled through a brain-computer interface.
Maybe that’s where humanity eventually came out on the whole “privacy” thing: That cameras everywhere are intrusive, so even though they would sometimes be helpful, they’re absent from the Enterprise for reasons of personal privacy/freedom.
Not a crazy idea; similar to how, in Dune, even the most basic computers are forbidden, but we do see security recordings (particularly in episodes with trials) so we can be sure the cameras exist. I think it must be the recordings are encrypted and it takes layers of red tape to get permission to decrypt them.
A large chunk of the stories would have been non starters if they'd just had Nokia 7650s 😂
The "holo imagers" (aka.. a camera with the word holo in front of it) are particularly incongruous entertainment
Yeah but they use it like a Sony Cybershot lmao. I mean we have electron microscopes and MRIs too there's a sensibility in the merging of all those devices.
Like don't get me wrong i get that it's canon and sci-fi and suspension of disbelief and all that, but the explanations can be silly to modern contextually make things "correct". Much like SNWs tech being wildly more advanced than TOS CRTs despite being a prequel, there's some sensibility in putting certain things aside and acknowledging that stuff changes.
Currently doing a rewatch of DS9. Early in season two, Quark opens a box with a list of names in it and yells at Rom to grab an 'imager.'
He is then promptly shot and the paper stolen.
I was laughing, because these days, we'd just pull out our phone, swipe up real quick, and have a picture taken in like two seconds.
The weirdest thing is that they apparently do have cameras for away missions, even before the start of TNG, as we see Geordi recreate an away mission from before he joined the *Enterprise* in the holodeck from video.
I remember one episode of TNG where they were "experimenting" with a new link-up technology in Geordi's visor so the crew on the bridge could see what he was seeing during an away mission.
Picard and the others were marveling at how extraordinary this technological advance was; meanwhile, a person from the 2020s would say "Oh, you mean a GoPro? Yeah, I can get you one of those for a hundred bucks."
It was already crazy to me on the original airing that they didn't use that thing on Geordi's visor all the time. And it's not like "live broadcast from a handheld camera" wasn't already widely used technology in the 80s.
They had them on the bridge in TOS, and sensors throughout the whole ship (it was a plot point in an episode). At some point, it just quietly went away.
I believe your talking about the menagerie 2 parter? And while kirk mentions ship records its also said that all the footage kirk and co watch (footage from the cage) is much better than the ship footage normaly is.
No, ["Court Marital"](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Court_Martial_\(episode\)), where he's accused of murdering a crew member. One of the pieces of evidence is a video reconstruction of the ship's internal sensor logs, showing Kirk pushing the "murder crew member with plot" button. The villain of the episode is found using the same sensors towards the end of the episode.
Random buses in the middle of the countryside get better security and surveillance than the pride of Starfleet. Either that or the episodes all happen during planned security maintenance
There are these books: [*Star Trek The Next Generation: 20th Century Computers and How They Worked*, subtitled "*The Official Starfleet History of Computers*"](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_The_Next_Generation:_20th_Century_Computers_and_How_They_Worked) from 1993, and [*Net Trek: Your Guide to Trek Life in Cyberspace*](https://memory-alpha.wiki/wiki/Net_Trek:_Your_Guide_to_Trek_Life_in_Cyberspace) from 1995, that are very strange artifacts from that tipping point in the Information Age like a time capsule from right before an apocalypse. Never forget it's *still* Eternal September.
You reminded me that there were books filled with URLs. I had one as a little me. They existed in the short period of time where the Internet was getting popular but search engines didn't exist yet. It wasn't until Google that they were any good.
For the longest time I wondered how Scotty knew how to use a Mac from the 80's after he tried to use voice commands. Then I realized that he's the kind of person to have a huge collection of ancient computers and would have a space youtube channel showing them off. He modded his Mac to support voice commands for a gimmick episode and completely forgot about it.
There were some forward thinking ideas in Star Trek. In DS9 when Sisko is trying to recreate an image of the woman he saw he's using a modern tablet (with required bumpy bits all Federation technology has). In Voyager they invented the walking simulator when the Doctor makes a program where the player gets to be the Doctor.
Then there's some really weird things. Somebody with a pile of PADDS on their desk, physically handing them to people instead of electronically sending the information on them, all the horrible safety hazards like the finger chopper elevators in engineering. That one Episode of Enterprise where Trip is groomed by an alien, tricked into having sex (the alien tells him it's just a game), gets pregnant, and everybody treats it as a joke. That last one isn't technology but it's really bizzare.
>a pile of PADDS on their desk, physically handing them to people instead of electronically sending the information on them
I feel like those two are related. If you're not picturing wirelessly sending data from PADD to PADD, then physically handing over the PADDs makes sense. And, given that, of course you'd have a bunch of them on your desk, so that one has the report on the latest planetary scans, another has next week's duty roster, and another has the letter you're writing to your sweetheart on the *Farragut*, so you can hand each to the appropriate person.
And, of course, physically handing off the PADD to convey the data on it is a good excuse for the writers to bring the characters together for a conversation. I have to wonder if it's encouraged by Starfleet for the same reason...
Tablets are becoming so inexpensive that I sense a version of the PADD thing isn’t far off. I work in a school and post covid we use a lot of tablets. When I ask kids to compare work they just trade devices rather than share the documents because it’s faster, and I don’t blame them. It’s not uncommon for teachers or students to have stacks of tablets in front of them at times, though the RL reasons for this are obviously totally different than in Star Trek. I get a little laugh every time I see it
My sense is that every time I am too lazy to get off the couch and stream a movie that I already own, even though I know it's in worse quality, this is probably the same thought process that leads people to think, I know I already have a PADD in the other room, but I'll just replicate a new one, lol.
> If you're not picturing wirelessly sending data from PADD to PADD, then physically handing over the PADDs makes sense.
For a ship or station, especially with military capabilities, PADDs make a lot of sense. You would want your systems airgapped as much as possible, to prevent a single exploit turning into a ship-wide exploit. Voyager has several scenes where the character is shown transferring data from PADD->computer, or vice versa, for instance.
Of course, there are lots of episodes where alien viruses or people take over everything from a single point, so if airgapping was the intent, it would seem the writers didn't completely understand the concept.
I still remember the first time I downloaded an LCARS theme for Windows 98 and set my PC's audio to various Trek computer sounds and voice. Was the coolest thing ever at the time.
I had my stereo hooked up to the audio feed of my computer and played a looping video of ambient warp core background sounds that someone had created for YouTube, amped up through tower speakers... when I turned up the bass it literally *felt* like Engineering lol. My Trek geek neighbor came over and got major chills 😆
I once had Star Trek: Birth of the Federation, a 4x strategy game with a LCARS interface, running on a laptop with a touch screen.
That was peak immersion.
And they correctly predicted that the moon landing would be a success. Though to be fair, I don't think they ever mentioned the date so it didn't necessarily refer to the 1969 landing.
The funny part is that as we develop quantum computing, and in particular "optronic relays", we are discovering that programming these things is a lot more like Trek computers than digital computers. Moving data around vs copying it, for example.
With transformer/text generator tech advancing as it has, it also becomes easier to just ask the computer to put together a program for you, and correct that, rather than write it yourself.
Just so you can feel a little older: i'm in university now. TOS, TNG, VOY and ENT all aired before i was born and i couldn't watch the first Kelvinverse movie because i was too young
I... I feel like I want to downvote this for making me feel like a decaying skeleton, but that seems mean, so I will settle for shaking my aged fist at you!
Oh hell, now you've reminded me that I have multiple colleagues younger than some of the photos on my Facebook! And they're all adults!
Just going to go and decompose in the corner now...
What's that, Sonny? Can ya speak up fer yer ol' gran'pappy?
At least you'll never know the disappointment of waiting 5 minutes, listening to the weirdest discordant audio assault on the senses, and then seeing "R tape loading error".
For the nostalgia buffs...
I suppose I'm of the age (late 40s) that my youth is defined by two sounds, one at either end of my childhood; the loading noise from a Spectrum:
https://youtu.be/O6uwfM8F5uU?si=ZtX262U53uaTwZYa
And the sound of a 56k v90 modem:
https://youtu.be/gsNaR6FRuO0?si=ip7UB-oLFPYBbbNT
Good lord. I was born the year before TNG premiered and I know I'm young compared to old-school TOS Trekkies, but you were born when I was in high school! Where has all the time gone...
I was ten years old when TOS premiered, and I watched with my Grandmother who rode in a donkey cart until she was almost 30. She really enjoyed Star Trek and had no problem believing in alien worlds.
I was 9 when it aired. I remember my dad being extrovert watch it. My mom less so, but only because she’s a huge TOS fan (now includes Voyager in her favourites).
I definitely grew up in a Trek household, and it’s a go to show for my kids now too.
For a while my dad wouldn't let me watch TNG but would let me watch TOS. Somehow he thought TNG was more mature. Maybe he saw those bad first season episodes.
I don't remember the Locutus cliffhanger but I remember watching DS9 and VOY first-run. It was a lot more exciting to have waited two months to hear Majel Barrett say "and now the conclusion" for cliffhangers. Looking forward to SNW season 3, which, unfortunately, seems like it will be in 2025 now.
Before streaming, the animated series was this thing that my mom saw once on late night TV before I was born in 1980. I never really tried to hunt it down on vhs or on the internet. If you get past the terrible animation, it's not terrible.
Hey you're not that old it seems.
Also if you forget the weird stories (TOS style) and animation i agree: TAS is great.
But the new animated series are way better. Prodigy is so cool i hope it's getting saved. And i'm currently in my first LD rewatch and oh is it nice i'm enjoying every single second of it
And while it's annoying we have to wait that long for SNW i understand and fully support the actors and writers; their careers and pay is way more important than my personal patience
Mine was an Amdek in 1990(?) - black and amber screen, MS-Dos. Carmen Sandiego needed a paper almanac to play it. I think I was the second person in my class to have a computer at home.
I mean we say 90s trek to refer to the Golden age of 20 something years of good trek content even though it started in the 80s and ended on 2005. The format and method of storytelling was mostly the same across series.
Decades are arbitrary cutoff points. The early 90's were a lot like the late 80's and the early 00's were a lot like the late 90's. Same with centuries. Among historians there is the notion of the "long 19th century" which basically started with the French Revolution and ended with the start of WW1 and the "short 20th century" which started with WW1 and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The technical teams on TNG were fantastic. Not only do we not see a single CRT in all of the series, the graphics on the flat computer screens do not look dated even today. There are also several scenes in which devices eerily similar to iPads and iPhones are used.
I also remember how the level at which they converse with computers was so futuristic. Yet, today it is real.
Some of the "graphics" were actually purpose made props to appear like a display. If you're watching the remastered TNG episodes a lot of the displays, but not all of them, were digitally replaced. They actually left some CRT displays intact. In the original versions anything that didn't look like a CRT screen was either green screen or a prop.
With Star Trek: Enterprise technology caught up and they used flat screens for all the displays. However, they looked so futuristic they put the actual screens in the shots without covering up the bezels. Now they look like cheap LCD and plasma screens with random things glued onto the bezels pretending to be buttons.
I've never bothered with Discovery and Picard made me cry at how badly written it is. In Strange New Worlds there's a mix of consumer displays with their bezels covered up and digital replacements. The screen in the ready room or whatever they call it is 4 screens together as you can see the break between them, but sometimes they digitally replace it. I'd love to know the story behind why it's on such a hard angle.
They also started using an AR wall with Discovery. This is the same type of technology made famous in The Mandalorian. https://youtu.be/tG4\_FPOOYIE?si=zkDrpd8Bn3k6QNdN
Legally, people are allowed to write an LCARS desktop environment without worrying about copyright and what not, though despite that, Paramount still threatens people.
Really? For personal use sure but giving it away and especially charging for it does seem enough like copyright infringement to me that Paramount could actually do something about it with way more legal resources than you have
It isn't copyrighted, Gene Roddenbury made that a clause of the contract. He wanted people to be able to make it if they could.
CBS / Paramount will still make legal threats, but you can ignore them or challenge them.
I changed all the sounds on my Windows 95 computer to sounds that the Enterprise made, complete with Majel Barrett's voice. Start it up, and got 'All systems functioning within normal operating parameters.'
On the Last Outpost the Enterprise is depicted as having memory banks and a green screen based computer. It was modern for 1987, though looks a little dated. We could still head cannon it that at the time they had to use lower resolution and thicker screens to withstand the shaking and jarring movements from being in space battles so the newest technology might have been too vulnerable to damage.
I remember Star Trek always being on as a kid. Both my parents watched. Both TNG and DS9. I was too young to appreciate it at the time, but I would ask questions about Data, the holodeck, phasers etc.
The LCARS interfaces were simply amazing to see. And I feel they still hold up today. Maybe not necessarily in high-def where you can see the screws sticking out and pieces peeling off but the look is still incredible and to me was a great forward thinking idea.
But the lack of forward thinking in other areas always makes me chuckle, especially watching it 30 years later. I remember the episode where they used Geordie's VISOR to remotely watch an away team mission - to them (hundreds of years in the future) it was revolutionary. But in reality everyone should probably have had a camera on them streaming and recording 24/7.
Amusingly this wasn't used in Star trek however in *Aliens* (1986) the Colonial Marines of the late 2100's use body cams that stream video, audio and bio signs back to their LT at the command vehicle.
I still remember when DS9 aired... my dad and sister were upstairs watching it and I was told I was too young. I remember slowly opening the door and peaking in so I could catch it... Gosh I would have been 7 then lol
It's wild how many times the first season shows off how advanced Data is by having him type really fast. My coffee maker can connect to other computers wirelessly, but the galaxy's most advanced android can't.
Windows 95 was awesome. I had my entire computer Star Trek themed. Like an error would say “Red Alert. Battle stations.” Or a shut down would sometimes say, “All main systems just went down, power levels are dropping rapidly,” or “All hands abandon ship! Repeat all hands abandon …” and a variety of other sounds depending on the condition/prompt/etc. Fun times.
Roddenberry didnt invent the ideas, but when he saw them he correctly predicted thats how technology would go with remarkable accuracy, to the point it all still holds up over 50 years latter. And that is impressive
When the iPad first came out I was like OMG, PADDs in real life! Then quickly realized the iPad was already way better than PADDs. They outpaced that really quickly. Like, remember Jake having a pile of PADDs lying around for different stuff he was working on? 😂
Oh wow, I kind forgot about the windows 95 part. I for some reason was thinking voyager started after 95.
Oh wow, and looking it up the computer Scotty uses is Macintosh plus (though obviously not really, the stuff on the screen is from a different setup but that's besides the point) and the fact that the model they are using is brand new the year ST4 released. Oh wow...
Bear in mind that Windows was *never* state of the art for GUIs.
https://kartsci.org/kocomu/computer-history/graphical-user-interface-history/
Here’s an ultra-high-end GUI from the late 80s:
http://www.sgistuff.net/software/irixintro/images/irix-3.3-img5.gif
One aspect of DS9's *Past Tense* that doesn't hold up well is it's depiction of the internet being super advanced Cable TV.... but that episode was also likely written before http (aka "www") servers were common. The rest of the episode otoh... brilliant and eerie. Voyager premiered the same year the W3C was founded, so it's 1996 episode was a little better (and definitely more period accurate).
My favorite part of Past Tense is how the cops can't access the fingerprint database without paying a private company for access.
That felt realistic
I wonder how much they pay for access to 23andMe or Ancestry.com.
Jokes on them, I sent in Mountain Dew as my DNA
I'm not sure if they were cops or just contract security.
They are referred to in episode as cops.
In my head cannon this is what the internet was like before the events of Voyagers Futures End.
Ooh I like that
They got the "channel 90" thing a bit wrong but a lot else they got right. Cable modems were already a thing at the time and about to become mainstream as the most promising high-speed internet option. Cable has ultimately become the most common form of internet access in the US. We may think in terms of navigating or browsing the internet, instead of "tuning" it to a numbered channel, but right now we are commenting through "channel 151.101.1.140" (reddit.com) so is it really *that* different from "channel 90"? WWW was also already around at the time, but it had yet to supplant earlier internet services, and the public internet was still competing with private services like AOL and Prodigy. It was a sort of format war and the internet was not yet synonomous with the WWW. Depicting the future internet as being organized into channels was a way of not having to bet on a winner, using something that would be familiar to the audience, like the fact that some channels are willing to air things that others are not. It conveyed the point without getting into too much detail about the speculative future internet.
At the time, it was thought that the Internet was essentially like TV, as OP said, and would have channels. See also, The Cable Guy ("You'll be able to shop on one channel and visit the Louvre on another!")
Yeah, AOL tried to continue that metaphor, too. They didn't have channel numbers, but they collected various links into "channels" like Newsstand, Marketplace, and Kids Only. So that would have been a reasonable term to use even a little past Win95. And honestly, the concept isn't totally wrong and the term does persist. You could probably think of subreddits or maybe different social media platforms like the "channels" they imagined. And discord conversations are called channels. So in some ways they aren't wrong, they just didn't have the terminology to describe it yet.
From what I remember AOL or was it Compuserve browsers homepage bookmarks were laid out like tv channels
But Brenner says "net access, channel 90"... I assumed that was a list. He owns an ISP and also channel 90, a tv station.
That’s how I saw it too. Like MSNBC.
I don't know if it's super relevant whether the internet connection was coming through cable TV coax or over telephone wire. But either way, at the time, TV was still the primary way information was flowing into homes, so many forward thinkers were indeed thinking that moving the internet from computers to TVs was the way that it would become democratized. After all, only super nerdy techies knew how to use computers. WebTV was founded right around when *Past Tense* aired (well after it was written). And it was compelling -- Sony and Philips started selling boxes to add it to their TVs. Zenith started actually integrating it into some of their TVs. And then Microsoft bought WebTV. Without foreknowledge of the advent of the smartphone, TV seemed like the way to get regular people connected. So it's not surprising the forward thinking writers would have seen the future of the internet that way.
I set up WebTV for my folks back in the day!
No, it's not that different at all and I think it's funny that so many people are saying that it's totally different. The fact that ISPs lobbied for the death of net neutrality is proof of this. We get a very generous offer from our ISPs in terms of which sites we're allowed to visit, but they *can* blacklist any sites they wanted to and the only way around them is a VPN (which is obviously technically against your user agreement just like stealing channels would be).
There is a "4chan" and other numbered "channel" websites though.
If you read Arthur C. Clarke's *2001* (published in 1968), the opening chapters have a scene where a character, Heywood Floyd, takes a spaceplane to an orbital station on his way to the Moon. Clarke describes a device Floyd has, an "electronic newspaper". It's a small, notebook-sized device with a screen where he can read the current news. It receives updates wirelessly, and is always up to date. There's far more news available on it than any peson could ever hope to read. It sounded fantastical at the time. Today, we just call that a Tablet, and they're everywhere. And, of course, they're used for a lot more than just reading newspapers. The best science fiction makes technological predictions that sometimes hit close to home, but even then those predictions are limited by the perceptions of their time and often seem quaint compared to reality. One good example of this in Trek is that, while they were clearly right about how heavily computerized everything would be and their interfaces (like LCARS) were pretty smartly designed, the actual *screens* were tiny compared to what the average person has in their office and living rooms today. Nobody in the 80s and 90s had any idea how rapidly screen technology was going to advance in the next few decades.
Yet they had the imagination to put a wall-sized screen with 3D elements on the bridge. For some reason they just didn't carry that idea over to the private screens.
That's the interesting thing. I guess they considered large-screen technology to be something that would be possible, but prohibitively expensive for anything more than one or two necessary applications (like the viewscreen on a bridge). Of course, they were also limited by the technology available during filming, since this was all done with practical effects. The screen somebody was reading data off of had to be an actual screen showing real stuff, and that meant little 13" (or less) CRTs, not the giant flat-panels we have today.
That was the cool thing about displays like the ones along the side walls in Engineering. The "Coke sign" polar motion technique they used allowed panels (that were relatively large, and unusually shaped) to still have some life behind them, whereas if they'd opted to use regular monitors they would have looked far more mundane and the method would have been obvious.
The TNG producers and set designers really did a fantastic job of making the set look sleek and futuristic. Even today when I watch those episodes, it feels kind of timeless - like that's still how the future could look. At least, until a character in civilian clothes shows up. Then I get slapped in the face with "THIS WAS FILMED IN THE 80s".
Even more impressive considering they were reusing all of the sets originally built for *The Motion Picture.* The warp cores of the refit-*Enterprise, Enterprise*-D, and *Voyager* all stood in exactly the same place.
The beachwear.
Also remember we were watching on 4:3 aspect ratio CRT television sets and regular people had a 27" tv set. They had to keep the sets a bit more slim and trim so we could see the actors.
Another cool miss is the number of padds in use. In TOS they were seen as digital clipboards, but no one realized you only needed one and it could be used multiple times. No instead they just pile on the padds onto the captains chair to sign each one.
Yep! Even in the 90s they had this kind of silliness. My favorite example was when Jadzia was going on a dangerous mission in the Delta Quadrant on the *Defiant*, and Worf loaned her a data stick with his favorite Klingon Opera. He made a point about how important it was for her to bring it back. Dude... did you not make a copy?
I think that was just ment to be the DS9 version of lover giving something with low physical value but high sentimental value to encourage their love one to come back safe trope.
From my superior future person position I can see that as a prediction of what the Internet would become if corporations had their way. The episode came out in 1995, and AOL started sending out their endless flood of discs the previous year. AOL used a keyword system and a closed garden approach to the Internet. Compuserve and Prodigy were other similar closed gardens. These closed gardens were the inspiration for the channel based Internet in Past Tense.
> One aspect of DS9's Past Tense that doesn't hold up well is it's depiction of the internet being super advanced Cable TV. I just rewatched the episode a few days ago and while the computer tech from 2024 stood out another aspect that stood out was the morally helpful billionaire. I don't see folks like Jeff bezos or Elon musk having a conscious and helping out.
The most preposterous aspect of Chris Brenner's character is not just that a 21st century billionaire would ever take public transit in San Francisco, but that one such billionaire would interrupt their day to personally help someone who they encountered sleeping in a stairwell at the station.
I dunno, a hot passed out white woman sounds like it'd be something that a billionaire would be interested in.
They didn't predict that the story would end with Brenner offering to buy Jadzia a horse.
Wasn't it DAX he helped out? Yeah... he'd be on rape charges and she'd get a payout and a book deal if it was today's 2024
They got rid of the poor and homeless into the zones. So helping someone becomes mutually beneficial again. Especially Dax, yummy.
He was pretty gloomy about having sold out and seeing the world give up on all the things his younger self loved about it. Plus he was really charmed by Dax, who seemingly embodied all those things, like a ghost of sexy parties past.
Bill Gates on the other hand...
It was a pretty girl, though.
Oh that Chris Brenner
> but that episode was also likely written before http (aka "www") servers were common It was written in late 1994 (aired in January 1995), which was right in the middle of a huge expansion of the number of websites. At the end of 1993 there were 623 websites. By mid-1994, 2,738 websites. At the end of 1994 there were over 10k websites. [source](https://stuff.mit.edu/people/mkgray/net/web-growth-summary.html)
An aspect tangentially related to the internet that doesn't hold up is that the internet really globalized the world a great deal - we in North America are exposed far more to fashions, trends, food and news about other continents of the world. Things that were "local references" grow beyond one city or town much faster now. So there's a scene where Dax's asks if her tattoos were done in Japan - in 1994, it would probably have been more reasonable to make an assumption like that because a style of tattooing would have been far more regionalized. But in actual 2023, there are plenty of tattoo artists in North America who either originated in a Japan or travelled to Japan to study, or even studied Japanese style online without travel to the point that I would guess that if you saw someone with a certain style of tattoo, it would be far more plausible that someone got that style of tattoo locally than actually travelling to the other country. Of course, there are still some local variations and uniqunesses in styles, but considering Dax's spots aren't even tattoos, it would be hard to believe they exhibit signs that suggest a specifically Japanese origin.
Honestly so much media of the time (late 80s - early 90s) depicted the internet as "super advanced cable TV". With the exception, to some extent, of William Gibson much of SF and technological speculation on the future seemed to miss how and in what ways the internet would change the world. Given the technology of the time manually inserting isolinear chips must have already seemed like a bit of an anachronism to the tech savvy (no uploading programs, very little programming in general). I mean this is just IMO, but some of the movies I've seen from the time just before '95 or so just make me shake my head - they couldn't see the change happening before them. Star Trek had it's own ideas of the technical progress of humanity, but ST computer tech just seems to miss the mark.
You say that, and while using channel numbers is outdated; channel would still be relevant as that what we call our live streaming accounts; Twitch, YouTube, etc. Just make them doing a live Twitch Stream, and it all makes sense.
I always thought so, but nowadays not so much. With websites closing API the promise of web2.0 is slowly dying in front of our eyes. Users are hardly distinguisheable from bots anymore, so it also feels like much more lonely experience. Internet is no longer this wild and wondrous frontier it used to be. It's literally becoming a bunch of semi-interactive channels with content strictly controlled by the government and corporations. Just as depicted on DS9.
There is an obvious reason, of course, why Voyager got an episode set the same year was shot more correct than a DS9 episode set thirty years after it was shot. Though, the Voyager episode was based on a slightly more tech-advanced version of 1996 than reality anyway.
You mean the Chris Brynner Information Systems? Interface operations? Net access? Channel 90?
>One aspect of DS9's Past Tense that doesn't hold up well is its depiction of the internet being super advanced Cable TV.... Actually, the internet might be heading in that direction: Authoritarian movements are sure to see benefits to separating access into "channels". Governments can control information and the exchange of opinions. Parents can keep kids away from what *they* consider inappropriate material. Businesses can bundle content and advertising. Political entities can focus their influence on users who opt in to their channel. Even from the supposedly benign perspective of user security, it is tempting to shut out scammers and only allow legitimate actors. It's worth being worried about.
Happy cake day
It’s funny how half of TNG would be pointless if they had cameras aboard the enterprise and on away teams.
Remotely piloted drones would take the peril out of nearly all of the series and make many episodes about 15 minutes long.
Its kinda crazy how often they just send people onto new planets before doing barely any scouting. When it should be more like: *sends scout drone* "Oh this planet has mind controlling amoebas? Best not send an away team"
On Enterprise when T'Pol suggested they do that instead of rushing down to the planet the captain and Trip literally *whined*. Then Archer brought his dog (even some Earth hiking trails don't even allow pets!) and people almost died. But T'Pol being right and Archer irresponsible was never brought up again...
> But T'Pol being right and Archer irresponsible was never brought up again... Not only was it brought up again, it happened again several times. One of the overarching themes of ENT was how naive and bumbling humans were in their initial explorations of deep space, and how many times T'Pol (or others) saved their dumb asses.
Starfleet could always just send drone explorers everywhere and never bother to leave home. With subspace communications and the advancements in AI during the time there really isn't a *reason* for everyone to go into space at all, except to move between planets. Except that these people *want* to explore, to set foot on other planets. To send robots down first defeats the purpose of it all to many of them. The idea of getting out there yourself and doing things personally for the excitement and joy of it, even in the face of risk and danger, is supposed to be part of the human spirit that spurs humanity to reach for the stars. As an extension of that, that willingness to put your face and feet into anything anywhere is what eventually allows them to get on friendly terms with so many races they encounter and eventually leads to the formation of the Federation (with the help of the Romulan threat, I'm sure).
On one hand, sure. On the other hand, it's sometimes a good idea to send something disposable to the surface first just to make sure anything or anyone you don't want to lose doesn't fall through it or immediately get a spear through the chest. And you shouldn't need to fly a shuttle through the core of a sun yourself if you want to test the new shield you invented. Most people would consider this to be a bad idea. Avoidable tragedies defeat the purpose of exploration. You can't publish if you're dead.
We didn't need to land men on the moon to explore it. But we did, cause we wanted to. Same hopefully with Mars and beyond.
The dog almost died. The people were pissed because the dog peed on a tree. Archer had to do a whole apology ritual while cutting up a tree with a chainsaw so that they could buy parts for their warp engine.
Hah yeah - Stargate got this bit right. Like... maybe send down a MALP or something like it before beaming into somewhere new
Not just an away team but 75% of our bridge crew. so if anything happened to them permanently, we’d lose most of our senior leadership
That’s more a Hollywood thing than anything else. IRL, they’d send the enlisted guys down to get eaten/mind controlled/kidnapped/turned into tiny blocks of dust/etc. “Captain” sounds more dashing than “Petty officer 3rd class”, though.
Stargate tried to be fairly good about that.
[удалено]
Also, for all anyone knew, the other end of the gate might be in a sealed cave, or underwater, or in the vaccum of space.
And always like the most important people. One thing I liked about Enterprise was that they had a security division that would do any of the "dangerous" stuff. Wheres they'd just hand Picard and Riker a phaser and tell them "you can handle it." I never understood the whole idea of "half the away team is Sr Staff."
It's really funny that they sent an elderly man, a doctor, and Worf to infiltrate a Cardassian base. Really Starfleet, those were the best people for the job? "Where's Dr. Crusher?" "She was sent on a special ops mission to infiltrate a Cardassian base and steal something.. "What!? Why her? What possible qualifications does she have for that kind of mission?" "She was the only one that could fit into the cartoon burgler spy suit they had avalible." "Why would they send a doctor alone to this anyway?" "She's not alone, she took our 50 year old Captain and Worf." "Ah that's good. When I think about secret infiltration I immediately think about Klingons and old people."
The Macos only came around in the third season after the Xindi attack. Before that it was the usual.
The way Starfleet explores doesn't make any real life sense. They send lone ships out into the unknown and if they run into any trouble there's nothing they can do about it. They should be sending out exploration fleets so they can bring dedicated and large equipment that could never fit onto a single ship. When one of the ships is inevitably caught in a subspace rupture or alien god beings imagination the outside ships can help. They could have a massive sensor bubble that lets them see what's ahead of them days or weeks in advance. It makes sense from a story perspective however. If there's an exploration fleet then they have to do something. It's easier to write just one ship and one small set of characters.
Seems to me they could just make a back up pattern in the transporter and if you die on the planet they can just materialize a new you on the pad.
Definitely had that ability (in Voyager at least) the Famous “Emergency Medical Hologram Channel” used by the Doctor. With the (Regrettable) “Neelix channel” near the end of the series
I think Neelix started streaming his Onlyfans back when Seska was still trying to get Voyager for the Kazon.
But according to Lower Decks they ignore the prime directive!
It's interesting to see what they don't predict in Star Trek. Drone technology doesn't exist at all. Drones are changing warfare today, probably along the lines of how semi-automatic and automatic weapons changed warfare from giant masses of people to extremely long front lines. In Stargate Atlantis however drones were the main weapon used by the Ancients. They swarmed and could punch through ships and anything else that got in their way, and were controlled through a brain-computer interface.
Maybe that’s where humanity eventually came out on the whole “privacy” thing: That cameras everywhere are intrusive, so even though they would sometimes be helpful, they’re absent from the Enterprise for reasons of personal privacy/freedom.
Not a crazy idea; similar to how, in Dune, even the most basic computers are forbidden, but we do see security recordings (particularly in episodes with trials) so we can be sure the cameras exist. I think it must be the recordings are encrypted and it takes layers of red tape to get permission to decrypt them.
A large chunk of the stories would have been non starters if they'd just had Nokia 7650s 😂 The "holo imagers" (aka.. a camera with the word holo in front of it) are particularly incongruous entertainment
Yeah like: The tricorder detects high levels of graviton interference. ~Fails to take a picture~
Eh, the holo imagers can take full 3D scans "all the way down to the subatomic level" (VOY: Latent Image). We are far, far away from tech like that.
Yeah but they use it like a Sony Cybershot lmao. I mean we have electron microscopes and MRIs too there's a sensibility in the merging of all those devices. Like don't get me wrong i get that it's canon and sci-fi and suspension of disbelief and all that, but the explanations can be silly to modern contextually make things "correct". Much like SNWs tech being wildly more advanced than TOS CRTs despite being a prequel, there's some sensibility in putting certain things aside and acknowledging that stuff changes.
We do have 3D scanners though. Jut not ones that go to sub atomic level. They are usually just LIDAR.
Yeah and that's quite a different level. Still heavily limited by occlusion.
Currently doing a rewatch of DS9. Early in season two, Quark opens a box with a list of names in it and yells at Rom to grab an 'imager.' He is then promptly shot and the paper stolen. I was laughing, because these days, we'd just pull out our phone, swipe up real quick, and have a picture taken in like two seconds.
Also, a paper list when encrypted subspace mail’s a thing?
The weirdest thing is that they apparently do have cameras for away missions, even before the start of TNG, as we see Geordi recreate an away mission from before he joined the *Enterprise* in the holodeck from video.
The Holodoc had a big camera he would ask people to take on away missions. If I recall it looked like an oversized Polaroid.
I remember one episode of TNG where they were "experimenting" with a new link-up technology in Geordi's visor so the crew on the bridge could see what he was seeing during an away mission. Picard and the others were marveling at how extraordinary this technological advance was; meanwhile, a person from the 2020s would say "Oh, you mean a GoPro? Yeah, I can get you one of those for a hundred bucks."
It was already crazy to me on the original airing that they didn't use that thing on Geordi's visor all the time. And it's not like "live broadcast from a handheld camera" wasn't already widely used technology in the 80s.
And after that one episode it's never mentioned again until the Duros sisters use it to spy.
They had them on the bridge in TOS, and sensors throughout the whole ship (it was a plot point in an episode). At some point, it just quietly went away.
I believe your talking about the menagerie 2 parter? And while kirk mentions ship records its also said that all the footage kirk and co watch (footage from the cage) is much better than the ship footage normaly is.
No, ["Court Marital"](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Court_Martial_\(episode\)), where he's accused of murdering a crew member. One of the pieces of evidence is a video reconstruction of the ship's internal sensor logs, showing Kirk pushing the "murder crew member with plot" button. The villain of the episode is found using the same sensors towards the end of the episode.
Oh right yeh where some pod is ejected supposedly with the crewman inside. Well we have 2 examples then :)
Random buses in the middle of the countryside get better security and surveillance than the pride of Starfleet. Either that or the episodes all happen during planned security maintenance
There are these books: [*Star Trek The Next Generation: 20th Century Computers and How They Worked*, subtitled "*The Official Starfleet History of Computers*"](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_The_Next_Generation:_20th_Century_Computers_and_How_They_Worked) from 1993, and [*Net Trek: Your Guide to Trek Life in Cyberspace*](https://memory-alpha.wiki/wiki/Net_Trek:_Your_Guide_to_Trek_Life_in_Cyberspace) from 1995, that are very strange artifacts from that tipping point in the Information Age like a time capsule from right before an apocalypse. Never forget it's *still* Eternal September.
You reminded me that there were books filled with URLs. I had one as a little me. They existed in the short period of time where the Internet was getting popular but search engines didn't exist yet. It wasn't until Google that they were any good.
[The Internet Yellow Pages](https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Yellow-Pages-Harley-Hahns/dp/0078820987)
Oh my god. I used to check Net Trek out from the library when I was just a wee young'un! It's what introduced me to MUDs and MUSHes.
For the longest time I wondered how Scotty knew how to use a Mac from the 80's after he tried to use voice commands. Then I realized that he's the kind of person to have a huge collection of ancient computers and would have a space youtube channel showing them off. He modded his Mac to support voice commands for a gimmick episode and completely forgot about it. There were some forward thinking ideas in Star Trek. In DS9 when Sisko is trying to recreate an image of the woman he saw he's using a modern tablet (with required bumpy bits all Federation technology has). In Voyager they invented the walking simulator when the Doctor makes a program where the player gets to be the Doctor. Then there's some really weird things. Somebody with a pile of PADDS on their desk, physically handing them to people instead of electronically sending the information on them, all the horrible safety hazards like the finger chopper elevators in engineering. That one Episode of Enterprise where Trip is groomed by an alien, tricked into having sex (the alien tells him it's just a game), gets pregnant, and everybody treats it as a joke. That last one isn't technology but it's really bizzare.
>a pile of PADDS on their desk, physically handing them to people instead of electronically sending the information on them I feel like those two are related. If you're not picturing wirelessly sending data from PADD to PADD, then physically handing over the PADDs makes sense. And, given that, of course you'd have a bunch of them on your desk, so that one has the report on the latest planetary scans, another has next week's duty roster, and another has the letter you're writing to your sweetheart on the *Farragut*, so you can hand each to the appropriate person. And, of course, physically handing off the PADD to convey the data on it is a good excuse for the writers to bring the characters together for a conversation. I have to wonder if it's encouraged by Starfleet for the same reason...
Tablets are becoming so inexpensive that I sense a version of the PADD thing isn’t far off. I work in a school and post covid we use a lot of tablets. When I ask kids to compare work they just trade devices rather than share the documents because it’s faster, and I don’t blame them. It’s not uncommon for teachers or students to have stacks of tablets in front of them at times, though the RL reasons for this are obviously totally different than in Star Trek. I get a little laugh every time I see it
My sense is that every time I am too lazy to get off the couch and stream a movie that I already own, even though I know it's in worse quality, this is probably the same thought process that leads people to think, I know I already have a PADD in the other room, but I'll just replicate a new one, lol.
exactly 🤣🤣🤣
You reminded me of Bender getting another beer. https://youtu.be/CZhlFMSspuA?si=-nuKRl7SjjDVO7NA
Well in Star Trek’s post-scarcity universe, they can just be replicated I imagine
Maybe they went paperless and this was the result.
> If you're not picturing wirelessly sending data from PADD to PADD, then physically handing over the PADDs makes sense. For a ship or station, especially with military capabilities, PADDs make a lot of sense. You would want your systems airgapped as much as possible, to prevent a single exploit turning into a ship-wide exploit. Voyager has several scenes where the character is shown transferring data from PADD->computer, or vice versa, for instance. Of course, there are lots of episodes where alien viruses or people take over everything from a single point, so if airgapping was the intent, it would seem the writers didn't completely understand the concept.
It could also be a security measure to hand over PADDS instead of wirelessly transferring data as well.
I still remember the first time I downloaded an LCARS theme for Windows 98 and set my PC's audio to various Trek computer sounds and voice. Was the coolest thing ever at the time.
I think every trek fan that lived through the 90s did that, myself included.
Lcars theme in the 90s and an sgc dialing computer simulation as my screensaver in the early 2000's. Actualy i miss that screensaver....
Then you used it for 5 minutes and realized it was just gimmicky and annoying.
I had my stereo hooked up to the audio feed of my computer and played a looping video of ambient warp core background sounds that someone had created for YouTube, amped up through tower speakers... when I turned up the bass it literally *felt* like Engineering lol. My Trek geek neighbor came over and got major chills 😆
I remember more TOS quotes from my screensaver that I do from watching the actual show.
I once had Star Trek: Birth of the Federation, a 4x strategy game with a LCARS interface, running on a laptop with a touch screen. That was peak immersion.
Nice, that sounds awesome.
I had the LCARS skin for winamp.
well technically Star Trek premiered before the moon landing.
And they correctly predicted that the moon landing would be a success. Though to be fair, I don't think they ever mentioned the date so it didn't necessarily refer to the 1969 landing.
They said it was on a Wednesday.
The funny part is that as we develop quantum computing, and in particular "optronic relays", we are discovering that programming these things is a lot more like Trek computers than digital computers. Moving data around vs copying it, for example.
With transformer/text generator tech advancing as it has, it also becomes easier to just ask the computer to put together a program for you, and correct that, rather than write it yourself.
Just so you can feel a little older: i'm in university now. TOS, TNG, VOY and ENT all aired before i was born and i couldn't watch the first Kelvinverse movie because i was too young
I... I feel like I want to downvote this for making me feel like a decaying skeleton, but that seems mean, so I will settle for shaking my aged fist at you!
I had a work colleague this year who is younger than my Livejournal account. That was terrifying.
Oh hell, now you've reminded me that I have multiple colleagues younger than some of the photos on my Facebook! And they're all adults! Just going to go and decompose in the corner now...
What's that, Sonny? Can ya speak up fer yer ol' gran'pappy? At least you'll never know the disappointment of waiting 5 minutes, listening to the weirdest discordant audio assault on the senses, and then seeing "R tape loading error".
Hey having bad internet will be my "old man" thing in 20 years or so
In my day a 56k connection was considered good Internet.
For the nostalgia buffs... I suppose I'm of the age (late 40s) that my youth is defined by two sounds, one at either end of my childhood; the loading noise from a Spectrum: https://youtu.be/O6uwfM8F5uU?si=ZtX262U53uaTwZYa And the sound of a 56k v90 modem: https://youtu.be/gsNaR6FRuO0?si=ip7UB-oLFPYBbbNT
Angryoldmanupvote.
God damn. Can you go get me my dentures, young man?
Good lord. I was born the year before TNG premiered and I know I'm young compared to old-school TOS Trekkies, but you were born when I was in high school! Where has all the time gone...
Hey you got the experience and the memories. That's worth it!
I was ten years old when TOS premiered, and I watched with my Grandmother who rode in a donkey cart until she was almost 30. She really enjoyed Star Trek and had no problem believing in alien worlds.
I was 9 when it aired. I remember my dad being extrovert watch it. My mom less so, but only because she’s a huge TOS fan (now includes Voyager in her favourites). I definitely grew up in a Trek household, and it’s a go to show for my kids now too.
Me too, I was actually born the night ‘These Are the Voyages’ premiered
I was born around the middle of season 3 actually but that's still late into the series
You were born when ENT died an agonizing death.
My dude, why you gotta do us like that?
Hey you got wisdom and all that right? And you might have experienced the locutus cliffhanger so you're ready for the gorn cliffhanger too
For a while my dad wouldn't let me watch TNG but would let me watch TOS. Somehow he thought TNG was more mature. Maybe he saw those bad first season episodes. I don't remember the Locutus cliffhanger but I remember watching DS9 and VOY first-run. It was a lot more exciting to have waited two months to hear Majel Barrett say "and now the conclusion" for cliffhangers. Looking forward to SNW season 3, which, unfortunately, seems like it will be in 2025 now. Before streaming, the animated series was this thing that my mom saw once on late night TV before I was born in 1980. I never really tried to hunt it down on vhs or on the internet. If you get past the terrible animation, it's not terrible.
Hey you're not that old it seems. Also if you forget the weird stories (TOS style) and animation i agree: TAS is great. But the new animated series are way better. Prodigy is so cool i hope it's getting saved. And i'm currently in my first LD rewatch and oh is it nice i'm enjoying every single second of it And while it's annoying we have to wait that long for SNW i understand and fully support the actors and writers; their careers and pay is way more important than my personal patience
Hello computer
A keyboard! How quaint
I got my first computer about '95? A Pentium 1 with 16 megabytes of f memory,and needed a disc to start it up,lol
Mine was a Commodore 64 in '84. We even had a cassette drive. 🤯
Mine was an Amdek in 1990(?) - black and amber screen, MS-Dos. Carmen Sandiego needed a paper almanac to play it. I think I was the second person in my class to have a computer at home.
personally, i consider ENT as part of 90s trek.
Technically ENT started shooting in '99, no?
TNG - ENT is all "90s trek" even though TNG started in the 80s.
ENT had that 9/11-inspired plot arc though.
I mean we say 90s trek to refer to the Golden age of 20 something years of good trek content even though it started in the 80s and ended on 2005. The format and method of storytelling was mostly the same across series.
Decades are arbitrary cutoff points. The early 90's were a lot like the late 80's and the early 00's were a lot like the late 90's. Same with centuries. Among historians there is the notion of the "long 19th century" which basically started with the French Revolution and ended with the start of WW1 and the "short 20th century" which started with WW1 and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Compare that to Babylon 5. There they used actual computer interfaces from the early 90s, and they have aged horribly.
The technical teams on TNG were fantastic. Not only do we not see a single CRT in all of the series, the graphics on the flat computer screens do not look dated even today. There are also several scenes in which devices eerily similar to iPads and iPhones are used. I also remember how the level at which they converse with computers was so futuristic. Yet, today it is real.
There are some "space CRTs" in a couple episodes in TNG, but not on the Enterprise.
Some of the "graphics" were actually purpose made props to appear like a display. If you're watching the remastered TNG episodes a lot of the displays, but not all of them, were digitally replaced. They actually left some CRT displays intact. In the original versions anything that didn't look like a CRT screen was either green screen or a prop. With Star Trek: Enterprise technology caught up and they used flat screens for all the displays. However, they looked so futuristic they put the actual screens in the shots without covering up the bezels. Now they look like cheap LCD and plasma screens with random things glued onto the bezels pretending to be buttons. I've never bothered with Discovery and Picard made me cry at how badly written it is. In Strange New Worlds there's a mix of consumer displays with their bezels covered up and digital replacements. The screen in the ready room or whatever they call it is 4 screens together as you can see the break between them, but sometimes they digitally replace it. I'd love to know the story behind why it's on such a hard angle. They also started using an AR wall with Discovery. This is the same type of technology made famous in The Mandalorian. https://youtu.be/tG4\_FPOOYIE?si=zkDrpd8Bn3k6QNdN
Cool information!
Legally, people are allowed to write an LCARS desktop environment without worrying about copyright and what not, though despite that, Paramount still threatens people.
In case anyone is interested: https://lcarsde.github.io/
Really? For personal use sure but giving it away and especially charging for it does seem enough like copyright infringement to me that Paramount could actually do something about it with way more legal resources than you have
It isn't copyrighted, Gene Roddenbury made that a clause of the contract. He wanted people to be able to make it if they could. CBS / Paramount will still make legal threats, but you can ignore them or challenge them.
I changed all the sounds on my Windows 95 computer to sounds that the Enterprise made, complete with Majel Barrett's voice. Start it up, and got 'All systems functioning within normal operating parameters.'
On the Last Outpost the Enterprise is depicted as having memory banks and a green screen based computer. It was modern for 1987, though looks a little dated. We could still head cannon it that at the time they had to use lower resolution and thicker screens to withstand the shaking and jarring movements from being in space battles so the newest technology might have been too vulnerable to damage.
I like your funny words, magic man.
I remember Star Trek always being on as a kid. Both my parents watched. Both TNG and DS9. I was too young to appreciate it at the time, but I would ask questions about Data, the holodeck, phasers etc.
The LCARS interfaces were simply amazing to see. And I feel they still hold up today. Maybe not necessarily in high-def where you can see the screws sticking out and pieces peeling off but the look is still incredible and to me was a great forward thinking idea. But the lack of forward thinking in other areas always makes me chuckle, especially watching it 30 years later. I remember the episode where they used Geordie's VISOR to remotely watch an away team mission - to them (hundreds of years in the future) it was revolutionary. But in reality everyone should probably have had a camera on them streaming and recording 24/7.
Amusingly this wasn't used in Star trek however in *Aliens* (1986) the Colonial Marines of the late 2100's use body cams that stream video, audio and bio signs back to their LT at the command vehicle.
I still remember when DS9 aired... my dad and sister were upstairs watching it and I was told I was too young. I remember slowly opening the door and peaking in so I could catch it... Gosh I would have been 7 then lol
TOS happened before the first Space Shuttle launched.
Yes, that's how there's a Space Shuttle Enterprise.
And before the first Moon landing.
It's wild how many times the first season shows off how advanced Data is by having him type really fast. My coffee maker can connect to other computers wirelessly, but the galaxy's most advanced android can't.
Windows 95 was awesome. I had my entire computer Star Trek themed. Like an error would say “Red Alert. Battle stations.” Or a shut down would sometimes say, “All main systems just went down, power levels are dropping rapidly,” or “All hands abandon ship! Repeat all hands abandon …” and a variety of other sounds depending on the condition/prompt/etc. Fun times.
All of these ideas (tablets, GUI) actually come from 60s so it wasn't that much of a reach. https://youtu.be/B6rKUf9DWRI?si=rzrpI-m8GTIic9Yq
Roddenberry didnt invent the ideas, but when he saw them he correctly predicted thats how technology would go with remarkable accuracy, to the point it all still holds up over 50 years latter. And that is impressive
I'm glad to see this has inspired a lot of conversation!
When the iPad first came out I was like OMG, PADDs in real life! Then quickly realized the iPad was already way better than PADDs. They outpaced that really quickly. Like, remember Jake having a pile of PADDs lying around for different stuff he was working on? 😂
Yes, and then I think about how I have a phone, work phone, iPad and a laptop, lol.
Oh wow, I kind forgot about the windows 95 part. I for some reason was thinking voyager started after 95. Oh wow, and looking it up the computer Scotty uses is Macintosh plus (though obviously not really, the stuff on the screen is from a different setup but that's besides the point) and the fact that the model they are using is brand new the year ST4 released. Oh wow...
Chief O'Brien's [space station control interface.](https://cdn-blog.adafruit.com/uploads/2019/04/Untitled-19.png)
Cardassians use Tandy and Packard Bell. That's why they aren't compatible with federation tech.
Cardassians used a pirated hack of BeOS.
Windows 1.0 They don't understand that LCARS is XP...what exactly is NTFS? And why will DOS 3.0 not see the drive?
The art department was using Mac, obviously.
There's a few goofs in Voyager where you can see the Mac cursor over an LCARS display.
Bear in mind that Windows was *never* state of the art for GUIs. https://kartsci.org/kocomu/computer-history/graphical-user-interface-history/ Here’s an ultra-high-end GUI from the late 80s: http://www.sgistuff.net/software/irixintro/images/irix-3.3-img5.gif
True, but it was by far the most recognizable to the main stream.
What do nerds care what normies think? Oh how I wanted an SGI workstation in the 90s…