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

missed this one?

[grub]

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.

Re:missed this one?

[djh101010]

Temperature and heart rate should be easy - infrared pyrometers are used in industry to measure, with accuracy, the temperature of a surface, no reason it shouldn't work to point it at a person & get a number. Heart rate - several optical ways, no problem, or a directional microphone and appropraite sound processing - again, nothing too complicated.

Blood pressure, though...since BP is measured by finding the two points where (1) the pressure in the cuff blocks all flow, and (2) the pressure in the cuff blocks no flow, I can't see an easy way to get that without actually blocking and unblocking said flow.

Non-inavsive blood pressure systems work by "listening" to the pulse with a pressure transducer & working some fairly mundane math to get the numbers, but I just can't see a way to find out how much pressure it takes to occlude a blood vessel without...occluding that blood vessel.

Re:missed this one?

[grub]

Space:1999 was too far fetched. I mean.. a space station on the moon a FULL YEAR before we were able to buy flying cars here on Earth? That's crazy talk!

Orgasmatron

[meehawl]

I wish they'd work on some of the innovations in Woody Allen's scifi movie Sleeper. I want my own Orgasmatron!

Re:Orgasmatron

[shystershep]

It's attached to your wrist.

Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

When are those panels of randomly blinking lights going to make it on the market? I have been waiting some time.

Re:Hmmmm

[Mateito]

| When are those panels of randomly blinking
| lights going to make it on the market?

You've never tried to diagnose a 3COM Switch network, have you?

I'm just not ready

[Anonymous Coward]

To live in a house without a bathroom.

Re:I'm just not ready

[October_30th]

To live in a house without a bathroom

Don't worry.

Where do you think all those Captain's "logs" go?

Re:I'm just not ready

[Gzip Christ]

Where do you think all those Captain's "logs" go?

Generally speaking, the same place as his Number One.

Speaking of medical tech

[detritus`]

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...

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[grub]

They already have units that blast the medicine/vaccine through the skin at high pressure. They're mainly used when they have to process a lot of people in a short time.

Re:Speaking of medical tech

[sillydragon]

When I inprocessed into the US Army in 1989, the immunizations they gave to everyone were administered by medics using what looked and sounded like an airgun.

And yeah, if you flinched, it hurt...I think it had to do with the airstream being angled instead of straight down. The good medics would walk by, tap you on the arm with the tip of the gun to make you flinch, then do it again right after you'd flinched, and fire.

I'm not sure if the air was used to carry the medicine, or just accelerate it. It'd guess just accelerate it, since blowing air under someone's skin strikes me as being unsafe for some reason. }:)

horrible

[Quasar1999]

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.

Re:horrible

[DR SoB]

That's what they said when calculators, telephones, type-writers, etc. were invented. Maybe once you learn to use them they make sense?! i.e. the big red button on the top of the TV remote looks like it is random, but when you know it's the POWER button it seems to make more sense..

Re:horrible

[jhoger]

On the contrary it seems a heck of a lot more functional than typical desktop GUIs...

Every window opened full screen, important messages in large readable text, it has a very interactive feel. It gives the impression of an adaptable, efficient two dimensional interface for communicating with an embedded system. The Lines clearly delineate portions of the display of interest, the text is large enough to be seen and pressed with fingers, etc... they did put thought into the general look and feel and I think Okuda did a great job.

But generally you should just think of them as props, they in general aren't meant to be looked at up close so don't be too "upset."

Re:horrible

[ciroknight]

Think of modern keyboard layouts: qwerty doesnt make a damned bit of sense to someone who's never used a keyboard, and often causes people to "Peck type". But once you learn the system, you can type tens-hundreds of words per minute. It's all about learning and repetition. In fact, I actually see how some of the Enterprise-D's panels work, they actually make a lot of sense of the buttons you can read, and of what you can't read, most of the time it's voice control anyways, unless you're an android or acceptionally good at entering in long keyboard commands.

Think of Palm Pilots language, then compare it to QWERTY.. you'll find that "a bunch of squigly lines not even laid out in the same direction" can be most useful...

Re:horrible

[Short Circuit]

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.

Re:horrible

[hellfire]

So exactly what function did you serve on the Enterprise D when you experienced this horrible UI? Helm? Security? Engineer? Perhaps you were even the captain having trouble working the ship?

Or maybe you were just some shmuck trapped in a cargo hold who couldn't work the UI to get out so you were forced to just go along for this Crack-induced joy ride of a hallicination because after all it is only a friggin TV show!

Re:horrible

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

It is.

I took apart a keyboard to turn it into a "Star Trek" keyboard - no buttons, you just touched spots on plastic - which is basically what a keyboard is underneath the buttons.

I didn't even get all the way and it was annoying as hell - it was quite responsive when you touched the right spot on the plastic, but when not staring at the keyboard there was no feedback - no feel of the buttons to tell you where your hands were located, since it was all a smooth plastic film, and you lost the tactile feedback from pushing the button and knowing it was pushed.

Tim

Re:horrible

[thanasakis]

There is one button on it

Yeah, and it says: "I feel lucky"

Re:horrible

[neil.orourke]

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.

Re:horrible

[MagicDude]

From the Star Trek Technical Manual - Page 34

We incorporated the concept of software-definable, task specific panel layout into our controls because Mike (Okuda) thought it a logical way of simplifying designs that would otherwise have been nightmarishly complex. The basic idea is that the panels automatically reconfigure themselves to suit the specific task at hand. A side benefit we discovered is this gave our actors much more freedom in hitting controls to accomplish various tasks. Even though out case tries to get things right, there are numerous occasions when a particular shot will require an actor to hit a button on a specific area of a panel, which may not reflect out original design for that panel. Variable layout control panels mean that the button that fires phasers this week is not necessarily the same button that fires them next week.

i hope

[Anonymous Coward]

no one gets inspired by the clothing though. I'm not quite ready to jump into tights yet.

Lapel phone?

[Gunfighter]

I always liked it when the Star Trek crew just brushed the emblem on their uniform and started talking.

That's a great name

[Limburgher]

I love that the last name of an astrophysicist mentioned in an article on Star Trek in Batchelor.

How telling is THAT? :)

Re:Beam me up scotty!

[HexRei]

Actually, IIRC Kirk never said that in ST:TOS. He almost always said something like "Two to beam up".

The most important Star Trek innovation

[Aerion]

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!

Re:The most important Star Trek innovation

[eln]

Incorrect. Wesley Crusher lasted far longer than 60 minutes.

Missed LCARS phenomenom

[WillAdams]

and found examples of the ``Okudagrams'' since popularized on Star Trek: The Next Generation and later shows.

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.lca rs-terminal.net/
http://www.bennisoft.com/
http: //www.lcars-am.org/

William

Science or Fiction

[Un0r1g1nal]

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

Re:Science or Fiction

[Dun Malg]

Informative? Try incorrect. From the linked text:

For years, popular writers have accused Sholes of deliberately arranging his keyboard to slow down fast typists who would otherwise jam up his sluggish machine. In fact, his motives were just the opposite.

When Sholes built his first model in 1868, the keys were arranged alphabetically in two rows. At the time, Milwaukee was a backwoods town. The crude machine shop tools available there could hardly produce a finely-honed instrument that worked with precision. Yes, the first typewriter was sluggish. Yes, it did clash and jam when someone tried to type with it. But Sholes was able to figure out a way around the problem simply by rearranging the letters. Looking inside his early machine, we can see how he did it.

The first typewriter had its letters on the end of rods called "typebars." The typebars hung in a circle. The roller which held the paper sat over this circle, and when a key was pressed, a typebar would swing up to hit the paper from underneath. If two typebars were near each other in the circle, they would tend to clash into each other when typed in succession. So, Sholes figured he had to take the most common letter pairs such as "TH" and make sure their typebars hung at safe distances.

He did this using a study of letter-pair frequency prepared by educator Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, who was Sholes' chief financial backer. The QWERTY keyboard itself was determined by the existing mechanical linkages of the typebars inside the machine to the keys on the outside. Sholes' solution did not eliminate the problem completely, but it was greatly reduced.

The keyboard arrangement was considered important enough to be included on Sholes' patent granted in 1878 (see drawing), some years after the machine was into production. QWERTY's effect, by reducing those annoying clashes, was to speed up typing rather than slow it down. I csn't believe people still think Sholes crippled his layout to slow people down.

handing out pdas

[bmidgley]

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

[master_p]

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.

Re:The impact of Star Trek

[ktakki]

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.

I was six years old in '66, and I recall eagerly looking forward to ST's debut, to the point that I conned my parents into letting me stay up past my bedtime ("Mom, Dad said it was okay...", "Dad, Mom said it was okay...").

A little background: I was pretty well aware of tech back then, having been to the '64-'65 Worlds' Fair two or three times over the previous years. And in '64, my father's company bought an IBM System 360, a roomful of machines that was administered by men in starched white lab coats, so I had a good idea what a computer looked like.

As for Trek tech, some things were impressive, some were underwhelming, even for a starry-eyed six-year-old. Transporters, phasers, and tricorders fell into the former category, while the viewscreen, the computer, and the various consoles on the bridge fell into the latter. I think they were underwhelming to me because I had the impression that running a starship would involve more in the way of dials, gauges, buttons, switches, etc. One of the things that fascinated me back then (and really still does) are pre-glass cockpit aircraft flight decks. I guess I expected something more like that. Instead, the bridge consoles looked like an orderly collection of gumdrops.

The computer wasn't impressive to me because it was, in essence, a disembodied voice. I knew that somewhere in the ship was a room full of hulking grey or black boxes with rows of toggle switches and blinkenlights (the contemporary show Time Tunnel was more impressive in this respect), and I damn well wanted to see it. Maybe they did show it, but I don't recall any specifics or particular episodes. Seeing 2001 a few years later, I recall that one of my favorite parts was when Dave enters Hal's "core" and starts to pull out memory modules, little rectangular lights that I suppose were meant to be reminiscent of the Monolith. Symbolism aside, that scene was like a money shot for a tech-obsessed pre-teen like I was at the time.

Same with the viewscreen: I'd seen a videophone demo at the World's Fair, and it just seemed like something we'd all have in our living rooms in a few years. One thing that bothered me even then were the displays that were arrayed around the bridge, above the stations and near the ceiling. They always seemed to show some random nebula or Spirograph-like pattern. It looked cheesy, even to a six-year-old kid.

All in all, I had no doubt that I'd see some of these things in my lifetime. And why not? There were more jet planes flying overhead than propeller-driven craft (I lived near an airport back then). Televisions came in color now, skyscrapers were built with glass and steel instead of granite and stone, and it seemed like every other month there was another Gemini spacecraft being launched. They promised us flying cars and jet packs by the year 2000, and I had no doubt that they'd deliver.

I hope this hasn't been too much of a Grampa Simpson-like ramble. Oh, did I mention how I used to tie an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time...?

k.

Re:Orgasmatron -- Nope, SFC just missed it.

[mynameis (mother ...]

Remote controlled orgasms to cost 9,500

Ahem... :)

Teleportation - Electrons No Problem

[meehawl]

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.

Trek Trio

[g0bshiTe]

Yes, but.........the long pauses..........are not.......included.
Mr. Spock..........moderate this post...........to TROLL.

Just like Capt. Kirk talked?

[orthogonal]

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?

Re:But what about...

[jhoger]

Fantastic! The only pacing item seems to be the Heisenberg Compensators... and some minor metaphysical issues, but other than that, good to go!

Re:i am still anxiously awaiting

[Anonymous Coward]

"Lets build an entertainment facility that tries to destroy/take over the ship on an almost weekly basis."

A big company in Redmond is already on this project.

Re:But what about...

[LostCluster]

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."

I want my Star Trek phone, dammit

[DavidBrown]

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.

Re:Then why?

[josh_freeman]

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.

Re:But what about...

[Short Circuit]

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.

UI of Kirk's Enterprise

[iamanatom]

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.

Liability concerns

[scheme]

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.

Who was it that said . . .

[StefanJ]

. . . 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

looking for the captain's log

[CleverNickName]

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.

Re:looking for the captain's log

[CleverNickName]

Of course Wesley would know. Saving the day again, are we?

Hey, you gotta know where your strengths are, and use them.

By the way, your matter / anti-matter influx is slightly off. You need to reverse the flow for .004 seconds, but don't forget to compensate for the inertial dampeners.

That one's free. The next one you have to pay for. These orange sweaters ain't cheap, you know.

Here's something they' ll never invent

[Tired and Emotional]

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.

user interface is king in Star Trek

[peter303]

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.

Needle-less shots PREDATED Star Trek

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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".)

Re:I've asked that question online.

[G-funk]

Ah slashdot. Where in the face of time travel, FTL travel, aliens, antigravity, intertial dampners, teleportation and Q, people are worried about how realistic the cell phones are.

Spock and PowerPoint?

[Tablizer]

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.