It's the 21st century -- do you know what your next computer will look like?
One thing's for certain: It will be a lot smarter, stronger and more streamlined than those clunky old things they're using in the 24th century over on the Starship Enterprise.
At least, that's the best guess of Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg, authors of The Computers of Star Trek (Basic Books, $22).
The Computers of Star Trek By Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg Basic Books List price: $22
With Star Trek a part of America's collective vision of the future, it's no wonder that our predictions have been colored by the technology of the fictional Federation.
Although the original TV series made some amazingly prescient guesses about the future -- predicting personal computers, voice-recognition software, artificial intelligence, even floppy disks -- at times the state of Federation computer technology is light-years behind what we're likely to see in our own lifetimes, or even what we have in our back pockets today. First, says Weinberg, a science-fiction author, the 23rd and 24th centuries are still mired in mainframe technology, with every terminal on the ship tied to a central computer. It was prescient in 1966, when the original series first aired, but even by the early '80s it was clear that small, personal computers were the wave of the future. Today, computers have shrunk to the point that they can fit on a dime, and just about anything that can be wired can think for itself.
"We already have wearable computers," says Gresh, a computer consultant. Tiny computers in our cars calibrate the air/gasoline mixture, and chips in our toasters take the width of our bagel into account when determining how done is done. Given the research under way in nanotechnology -- microscopic machines -- even the Personal Access Display Devices (PADDs) of the current series, Star Trek: Voyager, which pack the power of a desktop into something the size of a Palm, are likely to become pass� quickly. "We're going to have computers in 10 years that you'll be able to swallow or that can be injected into your bloodstream," Weinberg says. "Three hundred years from now you won't see computers; they'll be in the walls, in your body, in your fingertips."
In some ways, the Captain Picards of the future will look more like magicians than starship commanders. There won't be any need for a navigator to punch things in on a screen, or a helmsman to steer. Researchers at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center already are working on "smart machines" with tiny sensors built into the fabric of a device so it can constantly monitor and respond to the world around it.
The physics of faster-than-light travel will be much too complex for a human to calculate in real time anyway, so the notion of a pilot will be redundant -- the ship will pilot itself. "When Captain Picard says, 'Let's go to Cygnus 5,' the computer's going to hear him and go to Cygnus 5," says Weinberg. And he'll probably say it from a conference room in the middle of the ship, not the bridge. That's "the most vulnerable spot -- they're always getting hit by alien fire."
Of course, that wouldn't make for good dramatic tension, something both Gresh and Weinberg acknowledge. So they don't come down too hard on the most obvious technological faux pas in Star Trek: all those computer keyboards.
Nanotechnology -- microscopic computers -- will make machines like these in 'Star Trek: Voyager,' look like dinosaurs. (Paramount)
"Keyboards are going to be gone in 20 or 30 years, maybe much sooner," Weinberg says. With voice-recognition software cheap, fast and getting faster, "300 years from now the thought of somebody typing into a keyboard is pretty ridiculous."
None of which is to say that the two think Star Trek is bad science. In fact, Weinberg believes the original series went a long way toward changing popular attitudes about the approaching computer revolution.
In the "do not fold, spindle or mutilate" era of 1966, many feared that computers would take people's jobs and create a soulless future. Instead, the computers of Star Trek were useful and non-threatening. (Well, except for those rare occasions when they tried to take control of the ship and kill all those aboard.)
"Star Trek really made it clear that machines weren't going to replace people, they were going to be tools -- very, very useful tools," Weinberg says.
"They had portable computers, they had small desktop terminals all throughout the ship that anyone could access. In the '90s that's really clear. But back in 1966, nobody imagined that computing machines were going to become so much a part of our daily lives."
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
You can't make Voyager's computer look like dinosaurs. I mean, the thing's got almost infinite storage capacity!
Posted by Ace (Member # 389) on :
So basically, this guy says we'll be Borg in the future...computers you swallow...controlling things with your mind...hmm...
Strangely enough, I've read this article before a few years ago.
[ April 28, 2002, 18:22: Message edited by: Ace ]
Posted by Malnurtured Snayer (Member # 411) on :
Dude, jesus christ, this isn't your personal newspaper. We all appreciate the effort you make, but knock it off with the f***in photos. Post a link, why don't you put down what YOU think about it? You do have personal opinion, don't you?
Posted by Boris (Member # 713) on :
I'd rather have a researched opinion on something than a personal opinion. Koy'peled has been doing a nice job posting some real world connections to Star Trek (and let's face it, given the same amount of familiarity with the show, who's more likely to be right about Star Trek's computers -- a computer expert or any fan?).
Naturally, that statement assumes that the computer expert and the fan have the same knowledge of the canon facts. Krauss' book has been said to be lacking in that regard, despite his status as a physicist.
That's why it's absolutely necessary that we keep posting real-world info that may be relevant to Star Trek. I found a huge and detailed *paper* on how crew complements are determined for current ships, and there is almost nothing in there that is irrelevant to Starfleet ships. I may post it here these days, although you may find it in Google quite easily. There's also a detailed analysis of rotating space stations that reads 90% like a B5 tech manual.
Keep it coming.
Boris
Posted by TheF0rce (Member # 533) on :
The humans in Star Trek would have most likely evolved to the "Borg like" state as stated in the artical above if it wasn't for that "blasted" WWIII that knocked everyone back into the stone ages.
Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
I once tried to figure out how powerful a computer would be if their power doubled every 18 months. I started at 1996 and stopped at 2196 and it came out to be in the trillions of trillions of terrabytes of memory, ram, speed, and other computer stuff. Now Trek will be slightly less than that because of World War 3, andother wars that haven't occured yet in real life.
Of course it fits, because only 20 years ago, computers had less power than my 25 cent calculator.
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
They went to the moon with about as much power as a wristwatch.
[ April 29, 2002, 14:03: Message edited by: Grokca ]
Posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
And now we have cell phones the size of communicators, memory sticks that will act like the isolinear chips in two years, and devices that talked to each other thanks to Bluetooth... so where's the holodeck?
Posted by Nim Pim (Member # 205) on :
Second thought, I hope they'll make androids that piss Jack Daniels.
[ April 30, 2002, 07:08: Message edited by: Nim Pim ]
Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
Holodecks will ruin society. Dilbert's creator once explained that people who have crap lives will boviously be addicted to the happeir life of having 600 wives, a trillion dollar estate, and own a million planets, vs. their two dollar TV and owing over 40,000 dollars to credit card companies.
Posted by Boris (Member # 713) on :
But it cannot happen. After a while, the holodeck runs out of power because you haven't paid your bills, and you either compose yourself or die.
Posted by koy'peled Oy'tio (Member # 796) on :
it sounds like matrix has some financial problem...
Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
Not yet
Wait until I have a family, then we'l start talking about holodeck adventures.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
"I once tried to figure out how powerful a computer would be if their power doubled every 18 months. I started at 1996 and stopped at 2196 and it came out to be in the trillions of trillions of terrabytes of memory, ram, speed, and other computer stuff. Now Trek will be slightly less than that because of World War 3, andother wars that haven't occured yet in real life."
It also doesn't work for the simple reason that Moore's Law will not hold that long. Thanks to the competition between Intel and AMD, it's already gotten to a 12 month period for speed doubling, but apart from that the very nature of computers is going to have to switch soon from their current form (to quantumn, DNA, monkey-faeces, whatever), and so predicting computer power at that point becomes a lot trickier.
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