

Star Trek and the shiny, boring future  - jnazario
https://medium.com/geek-empire-1/7e7dc993b4fd

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anigbrowl
Oh, so you have a teleportation device? Antigravity machines that let you fly
and hover without aerofoils or rockets? FTL communications? Disease-adaptive
medicines? A volume-based universal positioning system?

It seems to me that the author a) took a highly selective reading of the
technology on display in the film, and simply omitted anything that didn't
suit his argument and b) ignored the fact that the _Star Trek_ franchise has
about 40 years of 'world data' that it needs to maintain a fair degree of
continuity with if it is not to piss off the large fan base.

People carry tablet computers in Star Trek not because we have iPads now, but
because characters in Star Trek were using tablet computers (albeit large
wedge-shaped ones with stylii) from the very early episodes.

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true_religion
I have to agree, the author simply ignores all the technology that doesn't yet
exist.

I don't think anyone could have predicted before how quickly computers, and
radio technology would minaturize giving us cellphones and ipads.

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redact207
Just another formulated Hollywood movie, not an eyeglass into the future.

I don't want to nerd out on this, but realistically if we were however many
hundreds of years down the line where we had the technology to do interstellar
travel, it's unlikely it would resemble what's on Star Trek.

As far as devices go, they're getting smaller and more integrated so at some
point they'll jump the bio-tech gap and just be integrated with your
physiology. But who wants to watch a bunch of spandex laden crew walking
around like schizophrenics? Gotta give a general audience something they can
understand and relate to.

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repsilat
Exactly right.

At the beginning of the new film Spock is lowered on a rope into a volcano
hanging from a little shuttle. Everyone knows this situation exists for the
immediate drama and for the ramifications further on in the story, not because
it's in the least bit plausible (let alone necessary). In the future they
couldn't have had a robot deliver the package? Maybe just drop it in with a
timer on board? The trouble is that it wouldn't have served the story, and it
wouldn't have been Star Trek.

Today Star Trek is a brand, a flavour. Maybe once upon a time it was meant to
have something to say about our future, but now any reasonable extrapolation
would lose the essential character of the property. Hell, maybe Star Trek has
never been about the future anyway. I'm sure everyone caught the bit about the
morality and legality of extrajudicial killing in the new flick... I'm sure
plenty of people would say the series has always been about the present as
much as any other time.

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intrazoo
Said this before, but Denno Coil is a recent post-cyberpunk sci-fi animated
series from japan that explored AR tech in interesting new ways. It is not the
"hardest" of sci-fi, and it is about kids, but it is touching, does not pull
punches, and I like the art direction. I would suggest checking it out for
anyone who wants some fresh sci-fi.

I think saying main stream movies are supposed to be imaginative is a bit of a
straw man argument.

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j2kun
I hate to think that what's driving innovation is fantasized _movie_ tech. I
always thought it was science fiction literature, and, you know, trying to
understand how the universe works in reality.

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krapp
Science fiction literature isn't actually all that often _about_ the science.
The number of science fiction authors writing about fields in which they're
technically experts is likely vanishingly small, as being a successful
storyteller is an expertise in and of itself. The trope of science fiction
writers not having a sense of scale in regards to interstellar distance or
geologic time is one good example. Or Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, which
weren't even really an extrapolation on the potential encoding of machine
morality so much as a plot device, the entire point of which was the clever
ways in which it could be broken by antagonists.

Of course the counterpoint... when it works (Peter Watts and Neal Stephenson
and maybe the near-future stuff by William Gibson... Cory Doctorow maybe) the
technology serves the story and illustrates the future in brilliant and almost
plausible ways. More often than not though, the science in science fiction is
window dressing or magic with "science" spray painted on it, because really
how many stories about how bloody hard it is to get into space and not die
from something besides aliens can people be expected to read?

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repsilat
Yeah, this essentially comes down to the "hardness scale" of science fiction
writing. If you're making a big budget film then it's all for mass
consumption, and realistic extrapolation only really makes the cut if the
novelty or plausibility of it impresses the audience. Special effects and
space battles are a better bet most of the time.

As you've said, exceptions exist, but they're even less present in the film
market for obvious reasons. I'd actually say there's no dearth of good hard
written scifi, though. Charles Stross (sometimes seen around here and on
Reddit) has introduced a bunch of incredible new things in "Accelerando" that
appear obvious in retrospect, things in Hannu Rajaniemi's "The Quantum Thief"
like the privacy settings on Mars were insightful as hell. Just about
everything written by Greg Egan is grounded in some jaw-dropping speculative
physics or steeped in new thought on the philosophical or social ramifications
of foreseeable technologies.

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jdmitch
_It’s a terrible shame and a real disservice for the years to come when the
people we count on to dream are content with IKEA and iPads._

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danso
I do agree that Star Trek tech has been boring, but its tech predictions have
always been boring, mostly just extensions and upgrades to what we have now,
or invented as plot contrivances (i.e. the Holodeck)

It's too bad we have to hope that Hollywood invests more in thoughtful edgy
fiction rather than marquee fan service vehicles mainly intended to make
millions for the industry. If only there was some other form other that movies
and TV that fiction could be communicated in...perhaps someone in the future
will invent such a format that is ubiquitously consumable and intellectually
stimulating.

