popular culture?

[Greg Cox]

Nerys Myk wrote:

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She could go on the the Real Housewives of ShiKahr.

Hah!

Forget T'Pring. Lwaxana Troi certainly acted like a celebrity--and would be reality-show gold!

[Gary7]

I distinctly remember the bridge of the Enterprise NCC-1701B in Generations, when Captain Kirk entered. Captain Harriman said "I just want you to know how excited we all are to have a group of living legends with us on our maiden voyage." And the video journalists certainly behaved in kind, sticking the cameras in the face of Kirk at pivotal moments. Kirk certainly seemed like a celebrity there.

[King Daniel]

According to Peter David's New Frontier novels, both Kirk and Spock puplished their memoirs after leaving Starfleet. I'd love to read those! (hint, hint, Pocket Books)

The Enterprise-B's Captain Harriman read about Kirk's missions in grade school. And the NX-01 Enterprise crew were doing lots of silly PR work in early episodes (photos of Archer in the captain's chair, making recordings for school kids, Archer writing a foreward for someone's book etc), so these people are somewhat in the public eye.

[WillsBabe]

JirinPanthosa wrote:

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Maybe Data forgot to mention, after 2040 people got their entertainment solely from the internet.

I think in 1987 television was considered strictly light entertainment, there was nothing like Sopranos or Breaking Bad, there were mostly network sitcoms and procedurals. So saying we got tired of that is just an extension of saying we stopped caring about frivolous distractions.

Are you saying that Breaking Bad and The Sopronos aren't frivolous distractions? TV these days is no less "frivilous" than it was back then, don't kid yourself.

[T'Girl]

King Daniel wrote:

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According to Peter David's New Frontier novels, both Kirk and Spock puplished their memoirs after leaving Starfleet. I'd love to read those! (hint, hint, Pocket Books)

Foster's adaptations of the animated series were supposedly excerpts from Admiral Kirk's memoirs.

[Arpy]

I wonder if there aren't psychiatric disorders for holosuite...not addiction...psychosis? Where one creates so many more interesting worlds in the holosuites, ones very close to the real one but skewed every so slightly wherein their life is happier, that they lose touch with what's the real world and what's their own concoction. I imagine it might be something like living in a Philip K. Dick novel. What if Deckard was a human in a holosuite thinking he was an android fooling himself that he was a human? Come to think of it...TNG's "Frame of Mind"'s not that far off.

[TheGoodNews]

"The question of the use of technological means, in everyday life and elsewhere, is a political question. Out of all the potential technical means, those that actually get implemented are selected in accordance with the goal of maintaining the rule of a particular class. When one imagines a future such as that presented in science-fiction, in which interstellar adventures coexist with a terrestrial everyday life kept in the same old material poverty and archaic morality, this implies precisely that there is still a class of specialized rulers maintaining the proletarian masses of the factories and offices in their service; and that the interstellar adventures are nothing but the particular enterprise chosen by those rulers, the way they have found to develop their irrational economy, the pinnacle of specialized activity.

.....

For classical capitalism, wasted time was time that was not devoted to production, accumulation, saving. The secular morality taught in bourgeois schools has instilled this rule of life. But it so happens that by an unexpected turn of events modern capitalism needs to increase consumption and "raise the standard of living" (bearing in mind that that expression is completely meaningless). Since at the same time production conditions, compartmentalized and clocked to the extreme, have become indefensible, the new morality already being conveyed in advertising, propaganda and all the forms of the dominant spectacle now frankly admits that wasted time is the time spent at work, the only purpose of which is earn enough to enable one to buy rest, consumption and entertainments -- a daily passivity manufactured and controlled by capitalism.

If we now consider the artificiality of the consumer needs prefabricated and ceaselessly stimulated by modern industry -- if we recognize the emptiness of leisure activities and the impossibility of rest -- we can pose the question more realistically: What would not be wasted time? Or to put it another way, the development of a society of abundance should lead to an abundance of what?"

Conscious Changes in Every Day Life by GuyDebord May 1961.

Roddenberry must've taken notes. But a lot of writers have infrequently contradicted what Roddenberry presented in the series. Probably through their own discretion due to time constraints and fear of alienating the viewers by making things too unfamiliar or complicated. At least he got William Shatner to kiss Nichelle Nichols on prime time.

"We've eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We've grown out of our infancy." Capt. Picard.

[T'Girl]

TheGoodNews wrote:

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"The question of the use of technological means, in everyday life and elsewhere, is a political question.

More likely a question of personal desire, market forces and consumer safety.

"We've eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We've grown out of our infancy." Capt. Picard.

This is the most foolish and arrogant thing that ever came out of Picard's mouth. They still have personal possessions. They still exhibit wants.

[robau]

They still have possessions but they aren't treated as a need. There is no Black Friday in the Utopia where a mass of humanity shove each other for cheap cellphones.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Picard was probably just bullshitting Lily for her own "good".

[TheGoodNews]

T'Girl wrote:

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More likely a question of personal desire, market forces and consumer safety.

I think what Mr. Debord was getting at is that more often than not technology that makes it to the producers and consumers via the market or other means doesn't upset the social and economic order much. Otherwise it would either be suppressed or not even developed to begin with. Planned obsolescence & artificial scarcity are methods used to keep things in place. The exception and "contradiction" in the system is when a development promises enormous surplus value or strategic advantage despite possible paradigmatic shifts to society. Sort of a cost-benefit analysis which put us in the post-industrial age. Think of the internet, a/c current or even super-injection moulding which greatly reduced costs for both the producers and the consumers.

This is the most foolish and arrogant thing that ever came out of Picard's mouth. They still have personal possessions. They still exhibit wants.

Again, think in terms of Economic Theory. "Possessions" doesn't refer to small, petty personal items but capital: stocks, bonds, real estate, factories, warehouses, natural & human resources, companies, money and the competitive drive to acquire them. Same applies to "want." "Want" on the sociological/economic scale not simply that somebody wants candy or to go to the movies or the beach.

[mos6507]

One of the most cringe-worthy aspects of The Phantom Menace was the two-heded announcer doing the play by play of the pod races. There is something about mass-media in futuristic stories that seems too, I dunno, self-reflexive? I mean, you're already watching a movie or a TV show. If your futuristic characters watch movies or TV shows, it can't help but seem too modern-day. It works sometimes, like in THX-1138 or Idiocracy, but I don't think it would work for Star Trek. I'm sure there is "news" in the Trek universe, as well as some degree of high-art (like the traveling theater companies) but not the equivalent of a 24th century COPS or American Idol.

[Greg Cox]

You know, in retrospect, it seems odd that we never saw any reporters on TOS. We had lawyers, con men, even mail-order brides . . . but no irreverent, muckraking reporters?

[Gov Kodos]

One would think the trial of a highly decorated ship's captain would bring one. Or the next Miracle Computer from the Federation's Technology Wunderkind would raise a bit of news interest.

[Deckerd]

mos6507 wrote:

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One of the most cringe-worthy aspects of The Phantom Menace was the two-heded announcer doing the play by play of the pod races. There is something about mass-media in futuristic stories that seems too, I dunno, self-reflexive? I mean, you're already watching a movie or a TV show. If your futuristic characters watch movies or TV shows, it can't help but seem too modern-day. It works sometimes, like in THX-1138 or Idiocracy, but I don't think it would work for Star Trek. I'm sure there is "news" in the Trek universe, as well as some degree of high-art (like the traveling theater companies) but not the equivalent of a 24th century COPS or American Idol.

The Fifth Element got it right. Both high and lowbrow celebrity.

ST didn't even attempt to allude to popular culture aside from some 60s music played by people dressed in tinfoil suits in the original series.