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Star Trek's Design Influence On Palm, New Tech
kevcol writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has a fun article describing how many of the inventions of Star Trek have made early appearances, 2 centuries ahead of Captain Kirk's time. They talk with one of Palm's UI designers, who admits that '...my first sketches were influenced by the UI of the Enterprise bridge panels', and also notes: 'When we designed the first Treo... it had a form factor similar to the communicators in the original series. It had a speakerphone mode so you could stand there and talk into it like Capt. Kirk'."
What about the medical monitoring equipment McCoy had in his sick bay?
It could track heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, etc. I don't think those devices existed before Star Trek hit the air. Granted we don't have the "no-contact" versions yet (and I stress "yet") but we still have a few hundred years to perfect it.
Trolling is a art,
and found examples of the ``Okudagrams'' since popularized on Star Trek: The Next Generation and later shows.
a rs-terminal.net/: //www.lcars-am.org/
There're a fair number of programs using such an interface (even a couple of products licensed by Paramount such as ``Captain's Bridge'' a virtual tour of all the star ships), and even a project on Sourceforge to create a programming system and UI guide (look for LCARS, Library Computer Access and Retrieval System).
I've found such programs fairly useful on my pen slate and amenable to use w/o a keyboard....
Links:
http://www.lcarscom.net/
http://www.lc
http://www.bennisoft.com/
http
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
A lot of items that have been created owe their innitial conception to some far sighted sci-fi writer, I remember with fondness a lot of the early analog's (My dad has been getting them for years) and reading some of the things they thought of, that to them were impossibilities. Yet we are starting to realise some of their dreams and make them realities. How long before our dreams become realities also? It's not something we can really place a time limitation on, but as we progress in general we get through technilogical barriers, and then make huge leaps forward. The joys of innovation.
And as a side note, lots of UI's appear difficult to use and understand, but if you understand them then it becomes easy. Take a look at the QWERTY keyboard for example. To a complete novice the keys are laid out in a random formation that does nothing to help them type. They want 'A' to be at the top and 'Z' to be at the bottom. But as they progress and learn about 'Home Keys' typing becomes a lot quicker and easier, just because a UI looks different, doesn't mean that with practice it wouldn't be a lot simpler and easier to use
If at first you DON'T succeed, Skydiving is NOT for YOU!!
That brings up an interesting thought. Perhaps if interfaces were designed to be intelligible on TV, they'd be more usable in reality, too.
Think about it. People watching the show may not know anything about computers, but they still had to understand the occasional piece of information that was important to the plot. (One good example would be when Dr. Crusher was caught in her son's experimental warp bubble. She didn't know where she really was until she saw (and the viewer) saw a picture of the "nature of the universe" and recognized it as something she (and the viewer) saw on one of Wesley's screens in Engineering.
That kind of driving force behind usability would probably be benificial to general use of computers.
Personally, though, I prefer {NeXT|OPEN}Step, GTK, or QT.
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Definitely religious issues. For instance, does my soul automatically go to the new copy of my body?
Of course, the "new me" will be immediately certain its safe. Everything will seem exactly the same. Except now that I've thought about it. How will I know that I am who I was? How do I know that now?
I suppose that if you arbitrarily come up with a rule saying there can be only one person with a given set of recollections at a given religious destination for souls, then you can declare as a consequence that the soul is moved, not destroyed, or you'll have two John Does in heaven (or hell) (or purgatory) (or whatever you believe in), arguing over which one is the real one.
Wasn't there a series of episodes in one of the current sci-fi shows about that? A human who was cloned, including memories, and nobody knew who was the original? "Stick a lobster on my head" comes to mind.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Here in Australia, our new combat "Collins" class subs had a user interfce designed by committee. It took 13 button presses to designate a target and launch a torpedo. The generals, when assessing this new sub, complained that the UI in a Playstation game to at most three clicks to designate a target and launce; why can't a multi-billion dollar sub work like that.
The contractor then employed some game UI designers to rewrite the combat system.
It's a true story! I don't have tome to search for the reports now, but it should be available on www.smh.com.au or www.theaustralian.com.au.