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'."

Comments

Re:I've asked that question online.

[bill_mcgonigle]

Obviously from a TV point of view that realistic a use of comm links would have slowed down the show.

Just think of it as how they squeeze a multi-day plot line into 42 minutes. They cut out the boring parts. :)