Predictions that Star Trek has made

As a perpetual sci-fi geek, I have to talk about the technology that has come from one of the longest-running sci-fi series in television and movie history. Before the Whovians revolt on my for that statement, I’m going to be talking about stuff from Star Trek as a whole, which includes movies and the multiple series’ that have happened since the original series in 1966. For the Doctor Who fans out there, if you can come up with a sonic screwdriver that does everything the Doctor’s does, I’m HAPPY to review it here😉. Interestingly, while many sci-fi shows have put up loads of technology that does lots of cool things (Like the aforementioned Sonic Screwdriver), Society doesn’t seem to take up that technology and put it into the real world. The one exception is the technology from Star Trek. It’s astounding to me that Star Trek has a high hit rate for predicting technological advancement.

1) The flip Phone – Ok, I assume that everyone who watched James T. Kirk flip his Communicator open to be beamed up by Scotty wished at one point or another that we could do stuff like that. It seems like an old hat now, but it was a big deal back then. While I’m sure that when Gene Roddenberry was writing Start Trek and came up with the Communicator, he didn’t think it would turn into the flip phone, I’d like to think that there is some part of him that thought it would be cool if that actually happened.

2) Tablets – I remember watching Next Generation and seeing the characters read over thier reports on relatively flat reading devices called “P.A.D.D.” or Personal Access Digital Device. The first time I saw this (Back in the early 1990s), I thought it would be super cool to have a device that you could write and store your documents on, and it was so easy to carry around. Frankly, I was right. Now, tablets allow us to do everything promised to us on Star Trek. Funnily enough, I was watching an episode of Star Trek a couple of months ago (yes, I still watch it), and one of the characters was describing a detailed plan to another, and they had to hand over three or four different PADDs in order to give the second character all the options. I was thinking, “God, why didn’t they have everything all on one PADD??” but then I started thinking about this post and put down my reMarkable tablet that I was working on and picked up my iPad to start the post…..so they may have had a point, is all I’m saying.

3) The Holodeck – I was completely sold when we first got a glimpse of the Holodeck in Next Generation when they walked from the hall to an entirely different world. It would be amazing to walk into a room and create different worlds, which was the coolest thing we could do. While proper holodecks haven’t exactly come to fruition yet, you can definitely see the first steps. With things like the Meta Quest and the Apple Vision Pro leading the way, virtual reality is one of the steps needed to get to Holodecks. I know we’ll get there someday; it’s just a matter of time.

4) Smart systems like “Siri/Alexa/Etc” – I was having a conversation with a friend of mine a while back and we were talking about this subject, and he mentioned how he didn’t seem to think that we would ever get to where our computers are as responsive like the computer in Star Trek. He specifically saw things like how quickly they could ask the computer for some kind of information and how quickly it would be able to recall information from the entire federation database and figure out what is needed. I pointed out that we would have some level of advancement over the next few years/decades/etc, which would make these types of searches more comprehensive. Think about what we have now; you can ask Alexa to order something from Amazon, and it shows up at your door a day later. I’m full of the belief that while we may not be able to solve the world’s greatest mysteries through Google search right now, we’ll be able to get much better searches in the future and be able to refine the data so that the results are much better. Also, we will (with the help of AI) have a much more personable interaction with our technology in the future so that it will understand us better and bring better results for us.

Star Trek’s influence on our Society is undeniable. So much innovation has come into our Society because of Star Trek’s influence, and I’m sure there will be more to come. Like I said last week about science fiction in general, there is a correlation between what whacky ideas science fiction writers come up with and what direction technology takes. Star Trek has taken the lead in this regard simply because more of its innovations have come to fruition. I’m very interested in seeing what comes out next. In the meantime, I’ll keep an eye out for a proper holodeck, and if one does come out, I’ll do what I can to get a review in here.

What technology do you want to see made real?

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