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Star Trek Tech That Exists Today
Esther Schindler writes "When Star Trek hit the air waves, talking computers were just a pipe dream. While teleportation remains elusive, several once-fictional technologies are changing the way people live and work. Here are some ways in which we're approaching the gizmos that Star Trek demonstrated. Speech recognition? Check. Holodeck? Sort of. Replicator? Workin' on it."
This article made me think of all the technology that came before Star Trek. I'm not an old timer, but you had sliding doors and turbolifts (A.K.A. elevators) back before the sixties didn't you?
I think you're looking for "How William Shatner Changed the World", hosted by William Shatner.
No, really, I think that's it.
If by "pipe dream" you mean computers were synthesizing speech five years before Star Trek came out, then sure.
Look, until we can whip matter up to our exact specifications, we can't rightly say anything we're doing is remotely similar to a "holodeck".
Sorry but fancy images on a 2D or pseudo-3D screen aren't what they're hopping about in TNG/DS9.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
But they leave off the ones that have actually been realized. Communicators the size of a lapel pin were wild conjecture at the time of the original series. Automatic doors were a new idea. I'm sure there are other examples of 'Star Trek Tech' that we completely and utterly take for granted today.
The Star Trek trek that I thought was the most futuristic was the Personal Waste Transporters that would automatically beam out solid, liquid, and gaseous human waste, plus dirt, oil, etc.; which eliminated the need for toilets, showers, etc. from Star Ships and Away Missions.
Strange that in Star Trek, they could beam away all of the bad stuff from their bodies, but would still need to eat and drink in traditional fashion.
Prior to the Waste Transporters, I don't want to even think about how rough Klingon toilet paper would have been, Vulcan deodorant which requires mental discipline to ignore orders, or the poor quality of a Ferengi tampons that fall apart.
More important:
Tribbles
Romulan Ale and synthehol
Green skinned orion womens
Space Hippies
Hand held Hypo sprays full of tranquilizers (There are non-hand held ones available since the 70s)
Pesky GD "son of a chief medical officer" ensigns
Skin tight leotards as a women's businesswear. Microskirts as traditional women's businesswear.
Holodecks full of amorous versions of your female coworkers "I am the goddess of love" or whatever that line was.
Now that I think of it, you keep all that dilithium stuff and just provide the leotards and mini skirts.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
2001 A Space Odyssey: The "Newspad", in 1968. Heywood Floyd used one to download from major news media over the "ether" while on his way to the space station. In the movie, there are two of them on the Discovery and they look very similar to iPads.
:wq
But they leave off the ones that have actually been realized. Communicators the size of a lapel pin were wild conjecture at the time of the original series.
And these actually exist in real life. One of the hospitals in my home city uses a Voceracommunication system. You press your lapel button, say the name of the person you want to talk to, and it opens a fucking communication channel between the two of you.
People overlook the simple things. I thought the most impressive part of Iron Man was the AI. "Holy fuck, his computer is telling a joke when it's not helping him design a suborbital flight suit." "Now it's bringing up the files on everyone he's flying past?"
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Teleportation remains elusive
That's really neither here nor there
Communicators: DUH! Motorola even named the first Flip-phone the "Star Tac" -- how did the author miss this OBVIOUS one?
Bluetooth headsets: See those chrome things coming out of everyone's ears on TOS?
3.5" Floppies: Pretty much the EXACT same form factor, and painted as brightly as the "rainbow assortment" of disks I used to buy a Staples. They were called Tapes in TOS, but they fed into a slot and appeared to work exactly the same way.
A Space Vehicle named Enterprise : ok, this one is reaching a bit since that Shuttle never went into space, and this is a case of life imitating art, but still.... it's worth noting.
iPads -- tablets: TNG had the PADD, which tied into the LCARS system. Even before then Kirk in TOS was seen holding some kind of electronic clipboard, although it was never really shown on camera as the tech didn't exist back then to even fake a tablet, but the idea was clearly getting there.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Sounds more like they are ebook readers in the book.
And anyway, you shouldn't assume all tablets are iPads. They could very well have been Samsung tablets.
Hey, I played Tomb Raider, and I can definitely tell you the ancient Egyptians had automatic waist-height axes. Slap some doors on them, and you have automatic doors!
Indeed.
When I was a kid I used to fantasize about a future where the would be teleportation booths on every street corner.
You'd walk in, pop some coins in the slot, dial your destination then whoooooooo.....
I live in the UK so the teleportation booths would be run by BT, Vodafone, O2 or possibly Virgin. I imagine that you could get an off-peak tariff to be able to teleport anywhere in the world after 6pm.
Trouble is, your head would arrive at the intended destination but your limbless and bloody torso would arrive somewhere in Cairo and your assorted arms and legs would be buffered indefinitely, only to ve lost for all time once they reboot their server.
Outside of computing, not much Star Trek technology works. Antigravity? We have no clue. Fusion or better power sources? Still struggling. Transporter? No clue.
In the 1960s, the previous 50 years had led to enormous gains at the high-power end of engineering. Aviation had gone from the Wright Brothers to the Saturn V. Power generation had gone from local steam plants to mammoth dams and nuclear reactors. Ships had gone from coal to nuclear power. The 1964 World's Fair had a General Electric nuclear fusion exhibit with actual brief bursts of fusion. It was generally expected that such progress would continue in the next 50 years.
It didn't.