# Obsolete Star Trek technology **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 17, 2011, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709 "2011-04-17T07:50:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709/121 "2011-04-21T02:38:02Z")
By the way, a few other sites (and the script) say it was actually “Retlax 5.” I’m not sure which was actually used, but I wouldn’t want to lose my nerd cred. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709/122 "2011-04-21T03:42:10Z")
> [@](#): > > Of course why LASIK or it’s future equivalent would take more than fifteen minutes including recovery, I don’t know. The surgery itself takes about fifteen seconds, but it takes about a month to cut through the red tape to get it approved by the insurance company. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709/123 "2011-04-21T03:46:11Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Quoth **Don Draper** :And except that Fermat himself never actually solved it. He did find and publish solutions for the special cases of n=3 and n=4, and it’s probable that when he wrote his infamous margin note, he mistakenly thought that the method he used for those would generalize to arbitrary n. He surely later realized his mistake, but there’s no point releasing an erratum for a note scribbled in a book margin that you don’t ever expect anyone to read. > > Quoth **Der Trihs** :I like the way that _Babylon 5_ addressed this problem: The Minbari traditional weapon, the denn’bok, looks just like, and is used in the same way as, an Earthly quarterstaff. But their high tech enables them to make it in such a way that it collapses down to something that fits in a small pocket. Whereas a Narn will just hit you with whatever’s closest at hand. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709/124 "2011-04-21T04:40:07Z")
> [@The\_Tooth](#): > > Whereas a Narn will just hit you with whatever’s closest at hand. And rest assured, you will make a satisfying **thump** when you hit the ground!😃 **Balance** : It occurs to me that the wireless consoles, which sound like a horrible idea, might actually just be Starfleet’s engineers being savvy about the kind of damage their ships suffer. When anything on the ship can explode, or for that matter, be directly blown up by an enemy weapon or ripped apart or turned 90 degrees to the universe by a negative space wedgie or what not, relying on direct hardline connections could be a weakness in itself. So, wireless consoles, that can communicate to other parts of the ship despite widespread damage to the ship itself. And specific command codes to keep ships from messing with each other. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709/125 "2011-04-21T04:44:40Z")
> [@The\_Tooth](#): > > Whereas a Narn will just hit you with whatever’s closest at hand. Oh, and the Centauri have swords and long knives, which look pretty much like swords and long knives, which we see them use for ceremonial fights (and pest control, and counter-intelligence operations) from time to time. In fact, one of the major villains of the show basically is killed by being stabbed with an assassin’s poisoned blade. And, as you mentioned, another villain basically just got beat to death. With Gospel music playing in the background. It was epic.😃 ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709/126 "2011-04-21T05:53:28Z")
> [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](#): > > The real answer to a lot of these sort of questions is, “because it’s a work of fiction where the narrative has to be discoverable to the audience, and entertaining to them.” That’s a bigger priority than building a fully-realized fictional world logically, from the ground up, step by step from first principles. Are you honestly under the impression that this is news to anyone posting in this thread? ---
**Author:** ![vislor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vislor/32/5933_2.png) [@vislor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vislor)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709/127 "2011-04-21T12:08:02Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > We don’t know the architecture of their network.it seeming like a central computer doesn’t mean it is one. I am typing this on a diskless workstation, with storage on one server and compute power on another. I can fairly seamlessly submit jobs to a server ranch of over 1,000 processors, and if that gets full it can go to two others around the country. By TOS time no one is going to care about local storage unless you are on an away team. There is pretty much no latency in looking at files in our current configuration, unless there is some sort of network problem, which presumably would happen even less often then than now. > > BTW, Spock and Uhura’s wireless ear pieces show they at least had Bluetooth. Hmm. I get what you are saying. I would make the point that, at least in TOS, there were several episodes that indicated, to me at least, that there were different computers for different functions. Main computer, library computer, transporter computer, etc. The way these terms were used, to me I admit, seems to imply that they were stand alone computers working on that one function. And that fits when you consider that computers of the 60s did exactly that. In contrast, by TNG, the computers are linked, I agree as Data is able to lock everyone out of all computers by being on the bridge, which when you think about it, doesn’t make sense even then, much less now! So, I’m not arguing we can explain things with a future twist on it but I would argue that that isn’t what we saw in the shows. Thanks for the reply! ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709/128 "2011-04-21T15:07:43Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > The same applies to Shakespeare and Hemingway and just about everyone else worth reading, but that’s never stopped a single over-analytic paper or debate. > > (You can make the argument that Shakespeare is better than Star Trek, and you’d be right, but I doubt that’s the grave you want to shove the entirety of English Lit into.) How is Shakespeare better than Star Trek? Define “better.” I prefer Valerie Martin to Tolkien, and Tolkien to Lewis, and Lewis to Donaldson, and Donaldson to Anthony, but it’s meaningless to say that any of those are “better” except in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709/129 "2011-04-21T17:17:51Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Didn’t the very first episode of Star Trek use what looked like 3 1/2 inch floppy drives in the court martial proceedings of Captain Kirk? In the original series, the data tape cassettes were painted wooden blocks. Freaked me out when I saw them in the Smithsonian exhibit. > [@AnalogSignal](#): > > Yes, TOS predicted [pen tablets](http://www.cepro.com/images/uploads/star_trek_ipad_300.jpg) which never really caught on because touch interfaces have become the norm. I use a stylus almost exclusively with my iPad. Gives me much finer control than big, clumsy, fingers.\* > [@pancakes3](#): > > if i had an imaginary playground to play around with, it most definitely would be used for porn. unabashedly. Reg Barclay used the Enterprise holodeck for that purpose, and we presume that Quark’s holosuites were pretty much the same thing. > [@Don\_Draper](#): > > Except that Fermat’s Last Theorem was solved in the real world in 1995. Only by a brute-forced computer solution. An algebraic proof has still not been found. - “Dingos Ate My Baby played like they had Polish sausages taped to their fingers.” “Sorry, man.” “No, it’s fair.” – _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_, Earshot ---
**Author:** ![Waenara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/50afbb/32.png) [@Waenara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waenara)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709/130 "2011-04-21T18:20:08Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > I use a stylus almost exclusively with my iPad. Gives me much finer control than big, clumsy, fingers.\* This made me remember an old but good Simpsons episde where Homer gained a lot of weight: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DtbPOXFk00](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DtbPOXFk00) “The fingers you have used to dial… are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your hand… now.” ---
**Author:** ![Scuba\_Ben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@Scuba\_Ben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scuba_Ben)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2011, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709/131 "2011-04-21T18:31:19Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > For that matter, LASIK or a future equivalent might be a specialized skill that would be low-priority (and thus not learned) if you’re a doctor on starship duty – it’s the sort of thing that wouldn’t normally be needed, and even then wouldn’t be needed **right now** (as opposed to “next time you get back to a starbase or major Federation planet”). OTTOMH, McCoy’s specialty is xenobiology – he can perform life-saving surgery and treat common ailments for a zillion different intelligent species, _including Hortas_ for whom mortar and concrete work just like a Star Wars bacta kit. He’s unlikely to have opthamology training, the fancy word that means “I do needlepoint on eyeballs.” Or eyestalks. Or NVIR ampules. McCoy’s conversation probably went like this: McCoy: “Nurse Chapel, schedule Jim for an eval with the eyeball guy down the hall.” Chapel: “Dammit Doctor, I’m a DOCTOR now! I went back to Starfleet Medical to get my DN degree, you recommended me, you signed off on the tuition reimbursement approval, _you do your own damn scheduling!_” _storms out, applies to the next outbound scout ship_ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-star-trek-technology/578709.md?page=6)