During my senior year in college, I followed a regular daily schedule: Wake up, walk to classes on campus, walk back to the house, and turn on the TV at 6:00 to watch a re-run of Star Trek. It was good period in my life, a time of deep learning, philosophical thinking, and occasional heavy drinking. The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play, for example. Freedom? That is a worship word. (This must be said in a very deep voice.) And of course, He's dead, Jim.
Eventually I began to look at Star Trek and its spin-offs with a more critical eye, however. As a computer scientist, I even began to wonder whether it was entirely well thought out. Here are a few of my reflections on Star Trek: The Next Generation, thoughts that perhaps have troubled you as well.
Captain Picard is reading a volume of Shakespeare in his ready room. Long experience has taught him that quoting random bits of Shakespeare is more effective than saying, "Maman didn't raise no dummies." He's interrupted by a remote voice on his communicator. "Riker to Picard." "Come in, Number One." Here's the thing: apparently no one else hears this message except for him. How does the computer do that? It doesn't seem to be recording Riker's message and replaying it once it figures out who should receive it---it just happens immediately and automatically. Do I want a computer that can read my mind and do something even before I'm finish saying it? Maybe. I don't think so. But I might change my mind.
Lieutenant Barclay walks up to the food dispenser in his room. "Water." The computer answers, "Please specify temperature." Barclay is understandably annoyed (though because he's no longer a member of the A-Team, he has no opportunity to blow things up in response). Picard, in contrast, has figured it out. He always says, "Tea. Earl Gray. Hot." Because apparently the mind-reading computer can't remember that when people ask for water, they generally want it cool to cold, and tea is usually served up hot. At least that's been the case the last several hundred times people have ordered water or tea. But a computer can never be too sure.
Commander Riker is glaring at the main view screen on the bridge, his shoulders set. He can see a blotchy region of space in front of the ship, and it concerns him. "Computer," he says, "magnify sector 42 mark 6," or some such. Riker can do this because of long hours spent at Star Fleet Academy studying for his View Screen Cartography class. Pointing is a no-no.
I could go on. And on. And on. But you get the idea. As much as I might think I want a Star Trek computer, I'd probably spend most of my time complaining that, as smart as it is, it's a total pain to use.
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Comments
As for your points...I'd love to have a computer with an AUTODESRUCT SEQUENCE....mwahahahah!
Also, perhaps the replicators are pre-set with a given temperature at which certain food and drink is dispensed. So if, for example, Picard says "Tea, Earl Gray, Hot", the computer knows that "hot" refers to a a given predetermined temperature, whereas when Barclay simply says "water", the temperature is not given, opposed to if he said "cold water", which would give him near 32 degree cold water
Personally I would love a Star Trek computer because I wouldn't be as constrained as I am now. I could, in theory, create my own speech driven user interface instead of being dependent on people with hands to poorly implement what I want to do.
not quite trekkie enough myself to have lasted beyond the third season or so of ST:TNG, never was an awful lot of science with that fiction, but I've seen every movie and at least dipped into each of the spin-offs, ST:Enterprise my favorite
but the JJ Abrams reboot was awesome!
love the piece, rob.
Andy, I always like the way that computers blow up when they self-destruct. As if high explosives are an integral part of computer technology.
Thanks for the clarification on voice versus speech recognition, lampliter. How awful for you, with broken hands! I'm impressed you can do any computing at all right now.
Roy, I liked the reboot a lot, except that due to circumstances beyond my control, I have not yet seen the last half-hour of the movie. One of these days...
Thanks, femme forte. I actually considered adding a Mac-related line, but couldn't think of how to phrase it... :-)
Peter, anna1liese, and Placebostudman, I seem not to have explained the situation well enough. When the scene includes Riker and he calls Picard, Picard responds without a delay. When the camera is on Picard being called, he hears the line "Riker to Picard." In current technology, the analogous situation is for the person you're calling on your phone to hear you dialing their number. Of course, they don't, because the system doesn't place the call before you've finished dialing. In Star Trek, that bit of delay is elided, and Picard hears "Riker to..." before Riker has even finished his sentence.
cute piece Rob!
Me too. Of course, it wouldn't be anywhere near as much of a pain as a computer that's gone sentient and insane like HAL in "2001."
Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do.
I'm half crazy all for the love of yooouuuu..~~~------------------___
Oh, I forgot to mention another issue that Peter raised above: Picard specifies "hot" because there is also such a thing as iced tea. Sure, but Picard doesn't seem the type to drink iced tea very often, does he? He's an Earl Grey (I misspelled this in the post) kind of guy, maybe Darjeeling if he's in a serious mood. A 24th century computer ought to know what the captain usually wants and just serve it up. A general rule for building an interactive computer system is this: Make the most common things easiest to do. In this case, it's saying, "Tea," and only saying, "Iced tea," if that's a less usual order. Of course, a computer that just does the right thing most of the time isn't very flashy. It's more impressive to suggest, "This system could serve any kind of tea I might want."
But since we're stuck here in this time and all of the ST folks are way up ahead of us, we can only think in terms of what we know of today's tech - and speculate with that knowledge on what 'tomorrow's' *might* be like.
We're handicapped in any kind of speculation by the knowledge the ST era has that we don't. For all we can actually know everything that we've seen sci-fi-wise could indeed be possible, despite it's flying in the face of what we believe to be truth today.
If we can dream it.. ;).
Rated 'cause I love ST (the original bunch)
(I have a soft spot in my heart for the old Star Trek, too. I just saw a Priceline commercial yesterday on TV in which a "bad" William Shatner was wearing a dark goatee. How many millions of people flashed on Evil Spock, like me?)
Personally, I think his best post-2001 work was A Clockwork Orange, the Anthony Burgess book I was certain after reading could never be done justice in a movie. Kubrick did do it justice, as did Malcolm McDowell, who never did much after that film either.
It must be utterly demoralizing to do something monumental in your twenties, and spend the rest of your life trying and failing to best yourself. It's said that's the fate of most physicists.
Rw005g, I like the idea of brain-computer interfaces, in principle--but I don't think I'd want it done to me. There has been good progress made, though, in non-invasive interfaces, in which you wear a cap that's sensitive enough to pick up some brain patterns, sufficient at least for a few simple commands. And eye-tracking has gotten much cheaper and more accurate within the past decade or so. (The problem there is that we're not used to using our eyes to give commands, in most situations. Our eyes move around a lot, not under our conscious control.)
OEsheepdog: How did the Federation eliminate SPAM and POP Ups?
:-)
I would say something clever, but nothing comes to mind.
As to Kubrick, I thought both Lyndon and Orange were better than 2001. I'd have to go with Barry Lyndon as the best.
Also, I would love to have a holodeck. The idea of simulations based on the creation of real matter, to the point of intelligent beings--that slides toward a kind of omnipotence.