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How Star Trek Artists Imagined the iPad... 23 Years Later
MorderVonAllem submitted an incredibly cool article about the computers and set design of Star Trek. If you are into that sort of thing, you're going to really like this one. It says "There are a lot of similarities between Apple's iPad and the mobile computing devices—known as PADDs—used in the Star Trek universe. Ars spoke to designers Michael Okuda, Denise Okuda, and Doug Drexler to find out the thinking and inspiration behind the PADD and how closely the iPad represents a real-life incarnation of that dream."
I thought this was Slashdot: Source for technology related news with a heavy slant towards Linux and Open Source issues
Not Apple HQ.
The PADDs similar tablets in general, not just Apples iPad.
I agree with you.
Think of all those e-readers out there, they too look like the smaller PADD's you see in TNG - albeit with black & white screens.
The only things an iPad (or iPhone/iPod touch) has more in common with PADD's are colour and touch sensitive screens, although some e-readers also have the latter.
I think there's too many iPad centric articles around at the moment, much to Apple's delight I think
Java gaming nut - http://www.retep.org/ or for the rail http://uktra.in/
When I can casually toss it onto my desk like Picard without worrying about the thing shattering, it will have officially replaced books.
The iPad is EXACTLY what the PADD would have been had the Ferengi designed it instead of someone in the Federation.
You rarely saw data uploaded to a PADD and you never saw it running complex applications or interacting with the world; that's what Tricorders were for.
All it really took was reading the article for several examples of how that's not true.
Perhaps it depends on the level at which you judge things. For me, for something to "resemble an iPad," it needs to have a third party inserted between the developer and the user.
Geordi: "Hey, what if we reroute The Borg's root command through the subspace neutrino beam? Their ship will collapse like a house of balloons!"
Riker: "Checkmate!"
Picard: "Mr. Data, make it so."
Data: "Aye aye, captain." [fingers blur on PADD, then stop. Data just sits there.]
Picard: "Mr. Data?"
Data: "Yes, captain?"
Picard: "Are you ready?!"
Data: "Waiting for software approval by the Ferengi, sir."
Picard: *sigh* "Initiate auto-destruct sequence."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Maybe Al wouldn't have needed to beat on Ziggy all the time on Quantum Leap if he wouldn't cover up the antenna with his cigar hand.
I'm not even convinced they originated the idea on Star Trek. I don't have a copy to hand to check, but I vaguely recall Arthur C. Clark writing something about Heywood Floyd reading a newspaper on an electronic tablet like device while en route to the moon in "2001: A Space Odyssey", which was published in 1968.
It's been awhile since I read the book, but in the film, it seems to be a reading device, not a general-purpose tablet computer. IE its interaction appears limited to the equivalent of flipping through a newspaper, as opposed to running applications.
On the topic of the PADD, I've been making my way through the various Star Trek series, and one of the things that's really struck me is how even though the Federation has access to advanced computing power and networking technology, crew members still physically hand each other PADDs to transfer information. In some cases, they'll end up with piles of PADDs on their desks if they're studying a particular topic in depth.
At first I thought that this was something along the lines of how William Gibson didn't think to include cellphones in Neuromancer, because essentially everyone was still using payphones back then. But after more reflection, maybe the Star Trek staff were just more forward-thinking and assumed some sort of draconian DRM scheme that locks data to a particular physical device :).
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I think the really interesting thing here is that some big and well funded companies have been trying to sell tablet computers for over a decade, yet never made the same decision concerning the form factor that was obvious to a art director for a TV show twenty years ago. Basically that a computing device accessed via a touchscreen should have an interface specifically designed to be operated via a touchscreen. That is the big difference between the iPad and the tablets that came before it. And also one of the big differences between the PADD and most of the tablets we've seen in the real world.
And I'd argue that it's not necessarily the job of computer scientists to make computing more friendly. They should be working on making software more efficient and powerful. Interface designers should be the ones worrying about making it more friendly. There is of course overlap and cross-communication between the two disciplines, but interface design is important enough that people should dedicate their work specifically to it.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Another possibility is that, like iPads, Star Trek PADDs could not multitask well or have multiple windows showing at the same time. The piles of PADDs may be an easier way to have a whole bunch of reference materials open and available at the same time.
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
...Data: "Aye aye, captain." [fingers blur on PADD, then stop. Data just sits there.]
Picard: "Mr. Data?"
Data: "Yes, captain?"
Picard: "Are you ready?!"
Data: "Custom software deployed sir. Enemy ship collapsing"
How is this possible?
Because of course they are members of the iPhone Enterprise development program and can thus enjoy in-ship distribution... :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley