You might remember the offhand reference in an early TNG episode where one of the characters stated that television died out as an entertainment medium sometime around the 2040's. (It might have been in "The Neutral Zone," but I'm not positive.)
There was a recent article on Ars Technica that made me think about possible reasons for the demise of television. (One of the problems that I've had to wrestle with, personally, is that we've been recently introducing television-like programming into our Renaissance stories, especially with the introduction of Lewis Carter, the resident news reporter. But television in the Trek universe seems at odds with what we've seen before.)
Anyway... what if they were referring primarily to television as a separate entity from the Internet? I can easily foresee normal broadcast television and even the cable networks dying out within the next several decades, as everything gets integrated into one massive medium that we currently call the Internet. Heck, there was something called the "Net" in DS9's "Past Tense" two-parter, which seemed to incorporate some kind of television-type medium as well.
It seems to me that we're already on a major trend towards some kind of conglomeration that incorporates computers, data transmission and storage, information browsing, and mass communication in multimedia formats.
Does this make sense to anyone else? That television doesn't really "die", but is just rolled into something bigger?
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I think we have to assume that's what Data meant when he said televison didn't last past whatever date he mentioned. As you said, we saw "The Net" still in use in "Past Tense" which definitely include and television-like componant. We also saw Janeway watching a news broadcast in "Endgame".
Archer watches water polo games that have evidently been broadcast or at least recorded.
Personally, I think the line in Neutral Zone about television disappearing was moronic. It was a first season attempt to show how much the world had changed and grown. They've obviously though better of it since then.
Perhaps we can assume that Data meant "entertainment" television such as sitcoms and fictional dramas. Educational and news services probably became more popular, perhaps with the advent of interactive forms of holographic entertainment.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
why can't I hit the right button? i think i need to eat.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
whoops.
Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
That's an interesting take on it....one I hadn't considered. I had always assumed Data was inferring either World War III or some other war (aftermath of the Eugenics) cut television off and that once society began to rebuild, TV wasn't the priority in everyone's lives anymore and then never really caught on again (maybe a few generations went by without television) and just news services and such were all that TV became.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aban Rune: Perhaps we can assume that Data meant "entertainment" television such as sitcoms and fictional dramas. Educational and news services probably became more popular, perhaps with the advent of interactive forms of holographic entertainment.
That always struck me as stupid too. Doesn't Kim say "you just watch it, you don't interact" in one episode of Voyager? As if these people had never read a book. Or are all novels in the future only available in "Choose Your Own Adventure" format?
"If you want Romeo to take the poison, turn to page 12. If you want him to get over Juliet, and start up a bakery, turn to page 45"
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
Kim kind of represented the extreme of a kid who was raised by protective parents on Earth and probably didn't ever leave the planet until his first training cruise. He didn't know what automobiles were. He didn't know what non-interactive storytelling was. He probably led a very sheltered life -- sort of a 24th-century computer nerd.
Which reminds me of one of my irks of the DS9 relaunch. Quark laments the prospect of Bajor joining the Federation because the Federation has a moneyless economy. Wrong. EARTH (and probably other Terran colonies, dependent or in-) doesn't use money any more, but we have ample evidence that the Federation does.
Too many potentially cool elements get misinterpreted by later writers, and everything becomes a hopeless mess that we have to sort out. Due to things like TiVo, DVD-R, and other non-live entertainment options being introduced, and the development of open-air (not holographic) image projection technology, television, movies, and the internet as immersive/interactive media become almost inevitable, and would almost certainly replace sitting there watching a flat image after a few decades.
--Jonah
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"That always struck me as stupid too. Doesn't Kim say 'you just watch it, you don't interact' in one episode of Voyager? As if these people had never read a book."
Unless it was like the same arguements one hears against television today: how it doesn't stimulate the imagination the way a book does. You just sit there and let the images and dialogue soak into your brain without thinking. With a book, you have to picture the action for yourself. And then, with something like a holodeck, you can see and hear everything like you would on TV, but there's still the mental stimulation of having to react and respond to what's going on.
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
It was in "Future's End". Kes and Neelix were monitoring TV signals, and Kim expressed bafflement at just watching a story that you couldn't interact with.
--Jonah
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
I can see television replaced with holovision as the coice for entertainment, with higher definitions and all.
I also don't think they ment earth, but starfleet, that doesn't use money.... We have seen some jobs that are bad, the 'new' use for the EMH1's, doing that kind of work cause it makes me feel good about myself just doesn't sit right.
Then, if a person from earth decides to travel to another planet, Risa, he/she can't, for they are broke.....
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
I don't think the Federation does at all. Many a time on TOS and TNG and DS9 they may have mentioned credits - and to other non-members that they don't have a monetary system. Jean-Luc in Insurrection had a sneering contempt for "Gold-pressed Latinum".
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
And yet Tuvok bought his meditation lamp off of a Vulcan master who was entrepreneur enough to hike the price when he saw a Starfleet uniform. Also Jake clearly says that he doesn't have money because he's human.
As for high definition holovision, I think it was pretty clearly stated in "Flashback" that 23rd century holographics were of a pretty low resolution (remember the biplane game in ST III?) so much so that Janeway failed to recognise Sulu from his holo-portrait.
Personally I think the demise of television has more to do with it's fusion with the internet and global communications than the devise it was viewed on. If you think about it with a net based broadcast system the idea of set program schedules would be a thing of the past, in it's place you'd have a huge archive of back programming and downloadable movies to watch on demand (just like we have today ) while new programs will be released as the studio chooses to release them, for people to watch whenever they like...probably on a pay-per-view basis, or a network subscription fee. I'm not sure what's available in the states or the rest of the world but here in the UK there's this service available called Sky+ which can automatically record your favourite programs onto a set-top box's hard drive for playback whenever you like and it can even pause live TV. So you see that this 'demise' of 20th century style television is closer to reality than some might think.
Of course by the 24th century people throughout the Federation get all this for free since news still happens and there are obviously still journalists around recording events to be broadcast and stored in Memory Alpha, or something similar for everyone to view at their leisure. I agree that Harry Kim is a particular case in that he was raised on Earth which in the 24th Century is about the most sheltered place in the Galaxy. However this is somewhat contradicted in "Year of Hell" where Kim is familiar with the film version of "To Catch a thief". Perhaps when the holodecks went down the crew resorted to watching the old movie archive on PADDs to pass the time. The fact that Torres had seen a holographic version can be accounted for by her stay on the Federation's frontier. Actually I forget, was she raised on Earth too or on a colony?
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
I think we can safely chalk this one up to the unprecedented onslaught of technology since 1987.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Rev: Sky+ sounds like the UK's version of TiVo. Basically the same thing, as far as I know. You can record programs, pause live tv, and store up to so many shows for later viewing.
TiVo joins the long list of services I don't buy, such as cable, satellite, netflicks, etc.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
If I want to watch a movie later, I use the back age thing called a VCR.... Which I can actually set the time on....
Also, I guess I was screwing up my time frames a bit, picturing the TNG holodeck..... I was a couple hundred years off it seems...
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Yes. My VCR still works and I still use it.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
It's completely different though. Well, not completely, but like VCR to the ultimate extreme. The fact that you can pause live broadcasts, start watching programes from the beginning when they are half way through, record different things on different channels. It is a whole lot more convenient than scrambling for a video. And better quality too.
It's not for permenant storage, but for making sure that you can watch anything you want out of the hundreds of channels at any time. And this ends my advertising schpeil for Sky+.
As to the whole "TV is less stimulating than a book/interactive entertainment", that's true, but that's not necessarily a negative against it. Lots of people get in from work and just collapse in front of the TV. They want to be entertained without putting any effort it. I can't see that changing significantly over time. It's not like Video games have destroyed TV.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Actually funny thing is - some of the advance in technology since 1997 has probably been a result of Star Trek: The Next Generation!
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
I fail to think of any new technologies whose existence I can attribute solely to TNG.
Posted by RoboCaptainMike47 (Member # 709) on :
i never would have grown a beard had Riker not blazed that giant new step for all of Trek kind
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
) while new programs will be released as the studio chooses to release them, for people to watch whenever they like...probably on a pay-per-view basis, or a network subscription fee.