In the entire Star Trek universe, how many things are already obsolete?
Isolinear data chips seem rather unnecessary since it’s easy to just beam everything around via wireless networks. Even without a base station one can form ad-hoc networks with portable devices.
The big, boxy video screens in the original series.
The ships computer was based on mainframes that were used from the 1950’s into the 1980’s. I started my programming career on a Honeywell mainframe and terminal. That was standard in offices everywhere.
To use the Enterprise computer you had to sit down at a terminal just like offices in the 60’s & 70’s. Enterprise had no laptops, tablet, pads, or phones to access the computer. No text messaging, email etc. Even TNG and Voyager had those limits.
Yet we still use flash drives. I wouldn’t be surprised if we always have some form of physical media for security purposes. It can’t be intercepted the way a wireless signal can.
I do note with some amusement that we’re moving past the flip-phone era. The design is still in use for most basic phones, but leading edge phones tend to be rectangular blocks. Kirk’s communicator has come and gone.
Oh; and we’ve invented pockets!
It was pretty lame that Data had to push buttons (although he could push them very fast) to operate a starship. a 24th-century android doesn’t even come with Bluetooth?
The novelization of The Wrath of Khan expands on the film’s story and adds a few subplots. Some of the Genesis staff wrote a computer game. The file had to be permanently deleted because it was taking up too much space on the computer storage. It was 50 Megabytes in size.
He also read text from the screens, though he did so while scrolling extremely fast, as I recall. My rationalization of his use of human-oriented interfaces was that it was part of his attempt to be more human-like.
It’s a security feature! :mad:
Heh, I remember a memorable scene in an old Star Trek adventure game (I think it was Judgment Rites), where you were in some alternate dimension/dreamland/something place where the normal laws of physics didn’t apply, and as usual, had to collect things for your inventory and manipulate them in order to solve puzzles. However, one of those things turned out to be a blackboard; when you ordered Kirk to collect it, he would walk up to it, lift the thing, and put it apparently in his shirt pocket, the whole thing distorting and shrinking in the process. Afterwards, he’d just bemusedly shrug his shoulders at his away team colleagues…
It probably is, actually; those consoles have built in DNA scanners that detect unauthorized users (a plot point in one of the episodes, the one with the kid survivor who started following Data around and imitating him). They probably have visions of the Romulans hacking into their controls or something with a wireless interface.
In fact, the prevalence of really good, really long ranged sensors and such helps explain why they use isolinear chips so much too; it’s much more secure.
I thought they used some fictional unit of data size in the ST universe. GigaQuads or something?
Programming and record-keeping tapes were used in the original series. Those are all pretty much out of use now. Pretty much anything now can be digitally downloaded and stored.
And seatbelts!
Then there was the episode where Data had nightmares. To diagnose him, they hooked his brain up to the Holodeck so they could watch his dreams.
I guess Data doesn’t see any need to patch himself directly into the computer for day-to-day operations.
Yes, in the later series, to avoid just that kind of problem. Just as they started using terms like “isoton”.
I’m sure Data could have one of those R2D2 wangs installed so he could talk directly to the computer, but that might freak people out. **Mangetout **you are correct, they use quads as a unit of measure for computer data.
Indeed, TNG started out with “kiloquads,” and Voyager (probably DS9, too) started up using “Gigaquads” and better…with their usual consistency and logic. Voyager in particular apparently measuring things in terms of tens of thousands of gigaquads, and/or millions of teraquads, by name. Apparently, in terms of storage capacity at least, Federation computers went from stone knives and bearskins to supercomputers in about ten years. And the bearskins alone were capable of storing people.
In TOS they often referred to tapes: I made a tape of it sir, pull the micro-tapes from the sensor memory banks, etc. Were those little square “tapes” really just cassettes with spinning tape inside?
Spock in one episode refers to flypaper. Kirk in another refers to someone (The Squire of Gothos?) as the type who dipped girls’s pigtails into ink bottles. I suppose both items still exist and we do use obsolete terms that we don’t quite know what they mean (“hoist with your own petard”).