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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,
I wish they'd work on some of the innovations in Woody Allen's scifi movie Sleeper. I want my own Orgasmatron!
Da Blog
When are those panels of randomly blinking lights going to make it on the market? I have been waiting some time.
To live in a house without a bathroom.
Palm probably has an easter egg which is a pre recorded message that says "Beam me up Scotty", a feature that capt kirk could have used in his days!! :-)
Lord of the Binges.
The needle-less shots McCoy would give for every little thing are not that far off either, DMSO is a popular one that's used for horses, but you wouldnt want that one used on yourself unless you love the taste/smell of dead fish...
drunk chemists
The UI of star trek (at least TNG and onwards) has been horrible. A bunch of numbered buttons with lines going in virtually random directions to displays of other grouped buttons that don't seem to make any sense as to why they are grouped... They look pretty, but there is no way someone would lay out an interface like that and use it daily...
Don't take my word for it, do some googling for actual set shots of the UI... it's upsettingly poorly designed.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
The Holodeck.
Star Trek? Screw that! Where's my flying car?
no one gets inspired by the clothing though. I'm not quite ready to jump into tights yet.
I always liked it when the Star Trek crew just brushed the emblem on their uniform and started talking.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
How telling is THAT? :)
You are not the customer.
I wish that in real life that whenever you met a minor character, an unimportant and insignificant person, probably annoying and/or ignorant, you could be sure that they were going to die within the next 60 minutes. That would make life much more enjoyable!
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.
I am just waiting for the lawsuits.
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!!
Blame me for not knowing about if it existed before the Star Trek TOS, but looks like Spock's favorite game is quite popular
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I love how one start trek guy will hand his pda to another guy and say 'here's that report you asked for.'
So not only do they not have email, there's like one crewmember who's really bad at reading reports he's given... so his inbox is full of other peoples' pdas.
The impact of Star Trek has been great. Star Trek is the best pseudo-science fiction TV and movie series ever. Of course, it can not be compared to true science fiction literature, which contains 100s of future inventions and gadgets. But for TV, it is the first.
Is anybody here old enough to share his/her impressions of the first Star Trek shown, back in '66 ? it would be like magic, back then. Today we consider cell phones, digital recording devices and palmtop computers as everyday reality, but back then, it must have been very jaw-dropping, to say the least.
Still in theoretically impossible stage.
Remote controlled orgasms to cost 9,500
:)
Ahem...
How's develpment on the transporter coming?
Quantum teleportation is progressing slowly. Teleporting electrons using quantum entanglment has been done. Scaling it up to macroscopic sizes and massively superposed states is not trivial.
Da Blog
Yes, but.........the long pauses..........are not.......included.
Mr. Spock..........moderate this post...........to TROLL.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
The ST:TNG computer interfaces are a great jumping-off point for a lot of designers. They were a good blend of rectangles and curved areas and they were funky without being over the top. In fact, one of the products I'm working on now has a slight similarity to it. The engineers all notice but for some reason none of the markeing people do.
It had a speakerphone mode so you could stand there and talk into it like Capt. Kirk.
You...
mean you...
could... speak...
into... it like...
this?
And call green...
women to...
see if they... would beam...
up... for a...
date?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Fantastic! The only pacing item seems to be the Heisenberg Compensators... and some minor metaphysical issues, but other than that, good to go!
Yep, my dad has one. Well, its a phone with a "walkie-talkie" mode.
I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
I remember a "Technical Manual" book that tried to explain the science behind Star Trek:TNG-era devices. A footnote in the section of the book about transporters revealed that the answer that the writers gave whenever asked "How do the Heisenberg Compensators work?" was always "Very well, thank you."
Back during my days before the internet was in wide use I was on GEnie. A lot of the staff on trek hung out there. Mike Okuda who did the graphic art of the show and helped write the tech manuals and technical writing guides told me in an oline clat that the computer was constantly ease dropping on everyone in order to tell if you were about to request a comm link.
Thus you had Picard saying to the ceiling "Picard to Bridge" and get an instant comm link with out having to touch anything. The only issue I had was there was never a pause. He would instantly say that and Riker or Data would instantly answer. Obviously in real life the computer would have had to record that request and play that on the bridge for whoever to hear an answer. A delay of a second or two should have always happened while the computer repeated the request and got an answer back.
Picard: "Picard to Bridge"
Computer on bridge: "Picard to Bridge"
Riker: "Riker here, sir."
Computer in Picard's quarters: "Riker here, sir."
Only at that point would the two way link be established.
Obviously from a TV point of view that realistic a use of comm links would have slowed down the show.
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Seriously. I think I'd buy a new wireless phone in a heartbeat, if it was modeled after the classic trek communicator. I fail to understand why Paramount hasn't licensed this to Motorola yet.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
You have an excellent point. To all those people who talk about how "intuitive" Windows is, I beg to differ. You learned how it works, so it makes sense to you. And don't get me started on Macs! It's never made sense to me that you eject your CD by throwing it away.... that is NOT intuitive!
That's why I love seeing someone trying Linux for the first time using something like twm instead of KDE or Gnome! It's hilarious!
I don't think so, but I am convinced that watching Star Trek is 90% of the reason I got my latest cell phone, which is a flip phone. If I could only find some Star Trek ring tones. . .
Seriously, Paramount is sitting on a goldmine here. Someone ought to license that. There are enough of us Geeks floating around that whoever came out with at ST:TOS style cell phone would probably make decent money on it.
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)
Presumably they mean the UI of Picard's Enterprise. Kirk's crew seemed to be able to accomplish their tasks with approx 6 toggle switches (unlit), 4 push buttons (lit or unlit) and a couple of flashing lights each. Either that's a very powerful context sensitive UI that's had a lot of work put in to it and which requires a lot of skill to learn how to use or.... they were actually doing chuff all. The exception is Spock's scope type thing. Lot's of swirly patterns that tell him all sorts of things. Only seems to have one knob though. I can't help making observations like these when watching the original series and they almost stop be enjoying it. I also start imagining trying to live my life with this kind of UI and break out in a cold sweat.
"This is crazy, you realise we could all go to jail for this?" - my manager, somewhere I used to work.
".... are not that far off either...."
They've been "here" for quite a while now. I guess they're just not widely used. Case in point: when I went throught basic training back in '97 almost all of the shots were given with needleless injectors. I don't think they called them hyposprays, but they were effectively the same device. IIRC it was basically just a regular shot with a high PSI load behind it. There is a drawback though--you had be really still when they gave it to you or would cut the skin like a little razor (due to the insanely high pressure).
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
"In episode 14.3, "Voyage to Gomor's star" the small, rectilinear object that Ohura uses on the salt monster looks EXACTLY like a Palm"
Ohura ye say? Sure, and she must have been one o' them black Irish.
Tanx for clearin' that up for me, boyo.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
...that I recall, is shown in Forbidden Planet (1956), used by a spaceship crew member looking for information on Dr. Morbius. Gene Roddenberry said he was inspired by this film, as this trivia page says.
You can also see Robby, which is a robot that behaves like a tool without developing his own will and running out of control. Many newer sci-fi adventures are way less mature than this movie.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Great... and with bluetooth technology, how long before we see some geek walking around tapping his "federation logo pin" on his "Picard's Capt. Jacket" to activate his "speaker phone". Yet another thing to annoy me at the local electronics store check-out line.
Sigh. What ever happened to just wearing a tee-shirt to demonstration ones devotion to a "show"?
-jhon
The would have been out a lot sooner but companies are still having problems with the panels randomly blowing up and injuring people using them.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
And how many Isaac Asimov ideas have been turned into everyday reality? Humanity writes it's own future in Science Fiction.
How many science fiction books dealt with the grim future of a corperate controlled government?
*DrugCheese rants*
. . . that a full-featured Holodeck would be the *last* thing that Man ever invents?
As someone else in the thread has noted, the Holodeck was a really problematical thing to add to the series.
The fact that it figured in so many episodes is evidence of either a), that the producers don't find the idea of exploring new worlds all that interesting, or b) that they're unimaginative hacks who can't make space exploration interesting.
The ultimate irony: The VERY FIRST Star Trek story, "The Cage" AKA "The Managerie," was about a decadent civilization whose people spent their time living out their fantasies via telepathic thought records.
Stefan
Picard didn't do Holmes. Data did Holmes.
Picard did Dixon Hill, a much more unsavory character.
You know, perhapse getting all the seasons on DVD wasn't a healthy choice...
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Transporter, Warp Drive & Universal Translator.
:)
The 3 most important Star Trek technologies are still unavailable. Sure there are people working on these things but they are not yet workable. Except for the Translator which has a barely working prototype available now.
BTW: Artificial gravity should be invented 1st since it appears to be by far the most reliable of all the technologies as It never once failed in all the episodes of TOS, TNG, DS9 or Voyager.
AG even survived, life support shutdown.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Wonderful... now Paramount will have an opportunity to cash in on the ubiquity of Star Trek once again - "time for some litigation boys!"
and there was a schematic for the communicator.
It was a standard ch14 walkie-talkie schematic. I don't know how many people they had intended on being able to interpret the schematic but it was there back in the 1960's blueprints package I had.
They weren't too far off from reality back 30+ years ago..
Fortunately for us, Star Trek didn't influence Peter Jackson's take on Lord of the Rings!
I mean... wtf is this? (quicktime required)
----- -----
I always felt that this Motorola i90c was strikingly similar to the Star Trek communicator. It is very similar both in appearance and functionality.
Don't take my word for it, do some googling for actual set shots of the UI... it's upsettingly poorly designed.
It's upsettingly poor if you want to have friendly, discoverable user interface.
I suspect rather it's a learned interface. Some 22nd century researcher computed the fastest, most error-proof interface and it has to be learned how to use.
Think about it. "Mr. Worf, target the leftmost and rightmost ships' engines. Fire."
Mr. Worf has about 2 seconds to input this into the computer. He can't grab a mouse and go:
Menubar...Weapons...Select Ship... Ship 1...
Modify target type... Engines...Modify weapon type...phasers....
OK...OK...OK...
[repeat for ship 2]
Menubar...Weapons...Fire
At best he has time to go "bleepity bleep bleep bleep". As a tradeoff he had to go to 3 semesters of targeting computer class at Starfleet Academy. But it's worth it because he nails the other ships before they can return fire.
UI books are filled with real-world analogues - in the 90's they replaced lots of VT terminals with Windows GUI apps on Citrix terminals for travel agents, telesales folk, hospital registrations, etc., and usually their productivity was cut in half on their data entry tasks. They had memorized the keypresses 5 screens in advance on the terminal apps, but now had to wait between each step and use a mouse to navigate. It's largely a latency problem.
GUI's are a great solution to many UI problems, but not all of them.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Ha! You just admitted that you've seen Star Trek 5! Oh wait...
To live in a house without a bathroom.
Hey, there was ONE bathroom on the Enterprise D. It's near Engineering, behind the hamster wheel.
By mind reading?
..." that is snuffed out when the finally says the destination.
How can the computer play, ON THE BRIDGE, the words "Picard to..." when he hasn't even uttered the words yet?
Sure the computer is wrapped up in an FTL field. That just means that, from the POV of the computer, it is having to wait an enormously long time while it waits on Picard to utter Bridge, Sickbay, Barbershop, or whatever he might be wanting to call. Unless shipwide there is this utterance of "Picard to
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Remember how Kirk would flip open his communicator one handed, say "one to beam up" and be transported back to the ship. Well there's something they will never invent - a folding cell phone with a reliable hinge.
Squirrel!
Instead of trying to wrap he human being around the technology, the imagineers of Star Trek just guessed what the optimal machine-human interface would be: talking computers, palm size commnication and medical devices, etc. Where a device name did not exist, they just turned the verb-action into the name; scanner, transporter, etc. Hopefully the details of our technologies will disappear into the optimal machine-human interfaces also.
IIRC the UI for TNG devices was at least part 'anticipatory'. If you were walking down the corridor saying to some chick that you'd like to see a play, but you forgot what was on tonight, you could basically walk up to the nearest console and hit the "I'm feeling lucky"[sic] button and it'd be right there. The computer was the benevolent 'big brother'.
As for the actual UI, it really DIDN'T make sense, because if it did it would just feed the nitpickers, and Gene R. really wanted the focus of the show to be on the plot. It did seem that the UI was very 'flow' oriented, with very little available at a given time, but very easy to get from one task to another, sort of like my WindowMaker setup. Also, there wer no 'files' or 'applications' as we know them, the experience seemed to be very task-oriented and realtime.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Spray hypodermics predated the Star Trek series. McCoy's injector was based on them - though of course vastly improved. (Dial-a-drug, hand-held rather than big gun with compressor sidekick, etc.)
The original discovery was made when a worker handled a high-pressure hydraulic hose with a pinhole leak, and reported to medical with a sore spot in his hand. The medic found a teaspoon or so of hydraulic fluid under the skin - but the worker hadn't felt it going in. Investigation quickly identified the leak and thus resulted in the discovery that a very small, very high-speed, jet of fluid will go subcutaneous or even intramusclular with minimal sensation.
Somehow this info didn't get lost, but resulted in the bright idea of doing it deliberately to reduce the discomfort and increase the speed and convenience of injections - especially mass injections. The military funded development of the first devices (primarily because they have to innoculate thousands of troops in batches efficiently, and also so they could innoculate a civilian population rapidly in case of a biowar attack - this being during the "cold war".)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Have a look at this
In the first pilot, Mr. Spock used a viewer in a meeting room to display what resembled a primitive PowerPoint presentation to the ship's executive officers.
That is illogical. A Volcan would never invent such an emotion-tied and fact-poor presentation technique.
Table-ized A.I.
Naah. *All* of these are eclipsed by the non-invention of the holodeck.
It'd revolutionise the porn industry!
This was a big hit. People would stand outside the glass computer room wall to watch. It was self-explanatory enough that people could follow it effectively.
The technology to make Star Trek:TOS and even ST:TNG a reality has existed for years (except for maybe antigravity).
The only thing holding us back from going "where no man has gone before" is a lack of energy sources powerful enough and available enough to power all the cool gadgets indefinitely. And of course the engines, but that technology isn't even practical to start considering without the energy source.
When you're 1 million miles from Earth, refueling would likely be a bit of a bitch.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
This gadget needs the Exploding Panel (c) technology to make it complete.
Just think, somebody jostles you in the subway and POOF ! lights, sparks and burning wires.
Great way to promote replacements too.
And soon the world will change faster than you can think... clearly the delta V for changes in tech is picking up serious speed. The prediction of each generation of forward thinkers and futurists, demonstrates that the curve towards advancement is dramatically steeper than anybody can imagine. In fact people are becoming the bottleneck in advancing technological growth. New tech is backing up in the labs, new discoveries are falling out of research centers like a monsoon rain. The limiting factor between discovery and product is the manufactruing cycle, the rate at which human beings can apply, engineer, construct and market a new technology. By the time that tech is ready to use, it's obsolete... the cycle takes to long, and the human beings involved suffer from crushing pressure to go faster and faster.
We are only a hop skip and jump from fully automated manufacturing from discovery to home delivery. Once that happens... human beings are going to experience a world of liquid change, a flashing blur that can barely be grasped... that is until we begin to engineer ourselves.
Then the real fun begins...
Genda
OTOH, Jabra seems to have done it right.
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