In The Original Series in the 60s, people had no idea what the future would look like or what technology would look like. In one of the early episodes, they had a paper print out machine on the bridge that looked like a fax machine, which was considered futuristic in the 1960s.

Like the example of the Enterprise fax machine, what technology or system do you think are we displaying in the current Star Trek shows that will show how dated we will become in the future?

  • @[email protected]
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    382 months ago

    At first I thought PADDS were dumb as fuck.

    Now though, I switch between phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, all the time.

    I sometimes hand a device to someone else to show what I’m talking about, then grab a different device to continue what I was doing.

    Coming from the mainframe era (which TNG did, PCs were just starting to become known to the average person when production started), it made sense. And today we have virtually the same thing if we choose - keep the data elsewhere, portable device is just an access point.

    Sometimes it’s just easier to hand someone a screen, and if they’re simple to produce, why not?

    • Flying SquidM
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      182 months ago

      Yeah, but they do go overboard at times. There’s more than one instance where someone has a box full of PADDs with different info on each.

      • @cm0002
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        162 months ago

        Yea, but that probably has more to do with replicator technology. Why interrupt your work on one PADD to check something or work on a related document “in another window” when you can replicate another one easily

        • Flying SquidM
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          92 months ago

          I suppose, but they don’t look organized or anything in the scenes I’m talking about. I wish I could remember the episodes or even series where this has happened, but it’s happened more than once. Someone says they have to study something and they have a big, disorganized crate full of PADDs.

          • HobbitFoot
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            72 months ago

            When I’m dealing with sets of documents, my desk doesn’t look organized. I can easily see that happening if I replaced books with PADDs.

          • @cm0002
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            52 months ago

            Ah yea, but this is a post-paper world, that box of PADDs would be what would today be a box of papers and books.