Well, you pushed a button, I am a trekker from day one
so am a bit appalled at your comments..<g>..they
apparently don't HAVE free energy, but they do have
gravity control and electronic health.
First of all, AT THE TIME, the technology being
presented was far beyond anything ever shown on any
series....the transporter, medical scanners, warp
drive, the personal communicators, scads of cool
stuff...coolest of all being the replicator, where a
pattern could be input and matter actually mainfested
from energy....geez, I could live with that...<g>..
The characters in their early days are very hard to get
used to until they come into the part and you
assimilate to who they are, what they do (and can do)
and how they react....but the key thing that
introduces novel technology is in the plot line of each
episode....
We have the basic technology references which are now
ubiquitous...that are often upset by the introduction
of new or destructive technology.
For instance, first generation is here identified as
FG, the next generation is TNG, deep space nine is DSN
and Voyager is VOY - consider;
1) FG - the Tantalus Field - a device that allowed you
to tune into any person and electrically kill
them....this is an extrapolation of Morays claim of a
device that let him produce an 'electronic ear' which
could move through space without any physical
parts...it was basically a moving wave that reported
back to the receiver...they monitored people walking
and talking even to a train station up to 5 miles from
his home where the test was being conducted.
2) TNG - episode where they landed on a planet where
all the people had disappeared, principal export of
those people had been armaments...they developed a
computer which could materialize whatever pattern was
introduced into it....it would send out a probe, test
the intruder defensive and offensive capacities, try to
destroy the intruder and relay all this info back to
the mainframe...once the probe was destroyed, a second
generation unit was developed and sent out to test the
intruder...this went on and on until the intruder was
eventually destroyed....the term used for this
technology was 'adaptive optimization' which I thought
was simply brilliant, a machine that can sense, test
and learn...there was a kid at the science fair who had
a machine that did just that...very simple but it was a
beginning
3) TNG - a ship that was essentially alive, a
combination of organic and electronic and mechanical
components
4) DSN - a totally cool episode where an alien was in
the brig and playing with a random number
generator...when it would win, everything would go
right for him, when he would lose, bad luck would
ensue....a fellow inmate saw this and was willed the
device when the alien died....the guy scales up this
'toy' to much larger units and replicates them, then
sets them up as gambling devices....the entire ship
begins to notice strange things...a person would be
walking across the floor and for no reason trip and
break an ankle....machines would fail for no reason,
people would experience all kinds of bad luck....on the
opposite side and apparently without cause, all kinds
of good things would just start happening...they
noticed these anomalies and began looking for
causes...finally they noticed a collimated beam of
neutrinos (or tachyons) I forget....which appeared when
the good luck happened and a highly chaotic field when
the bad luck appeared....they were able to track the
cause of this to the new gambling machines using the
alien technology....it was quite a fascinating topic
for a show...
4) TNG - people became addicted to playing a video
game which beamed images directly into the eyes....much
like the 'Private Eye' video device which uses a Mattel
inspired toy that was a single line of LEDs which were
swept with a dot matrix text pattern..as you wave it in
the air, up and down, at the right speed, the words of
the text appear magically in the air....the Private Eye
sells for about $600 and uses precisely this
technology, a lighted LCD or tiny leds mounted in a
piezo panel which vibrates when exposed to an
alternating current...looks like an ink pen that hangs
horizontally across the eyes...when you look past it,
you see nothing, when you look into the slit, you see a
full blown screen...CGA resolution though they were
working on a VGA version...anyway, this alien video
device would send modulated beam into each eye and
produce an overlay of the game onto what you normally
see....as you concentrate, you cause these wobbling
discs to fall into a hole...each time you get a disc to
fall in, you are rewarded with a light sexual buzz...as
you become more proficient at it, the buzz intensity
and duration increases until people are stopped in
their tracks everywhere, moaning and groaning from this
stimulation..<g>..works for me..the point being
biofeedback training and stimulation of specific
sensations all through a modulated beam...quite
intriguing.
and on and on...but that's enough to show, at least in
my opinion that the shows routinely introduce new or
novel ideas or technology...
--- James Bland wrote:
> Stak Trek...mmmm...seems like a perfect
> technocracy/NWO place to me. In the Federation
> everybodys happy, don't question autority,
> materialistic, do what their told, go off in little
> ships when their told usually by old navy types and
> did you ever notice how Sisko and crew go off into
> the future ( say 80 years ), technology has
> progressed almost nothing? Should an interesting
> piece of technology appear that would obsoleet the
> warp drive it will be used once or not used at all (
> like in Voyager .) Its almost like they are afraid
of
> breaking the status quo. The problem is that this
> creates a dictomony for me. Obiously it must
continue
> stemming from the Rodenberry
> original, and relate to some common reference
> points......I'll stop now. I was just saying that
all
> sci-fi programmes seem to be unimaginative. Some of
> their devices look out of date today.
> James Bland, chateaux@tinet.ie
===
=================================
Please respond to jdecker@keelynet.com
as I am writing from my work email of
jwdatwork@yahoo.com.........thanks!
=================================
_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com