Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?"
---
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
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.