Unless a series/film is a direct sequel, its place in the timeline is ultimately arbitrary from a creative standpoint.
Star Trek Discovery in trouble, and a de facto reboot?
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Yes, but apart from warp drives the Trek universe assumes a very slow technological development of the human race.
It does?
Because technological development is slow.
As a collective abstract, the technological difference between 1917 and 2017 isn't very significant.
*ETA that is to say in comparison to the difference between Kirk's time and Picard's time.
As a collective abstract, the technological difference between 1917 and 2017 isn't very significant.
*ETA that is to say in comparison to the difference between Kirk's time and Picard's time.
Hell, nothing changes much between Archer's time and Picard's.
A very odd statement, to say the least. Perhaps I exist in an alternate universe, but my life is more different now from 2000 than 2000 was from 1917. We have instant access to the entirety of human knowledge, the very nature of our interaction is undergoing dramatic changes even in relation to a few years ago. Yes, it's mostly within the information technology field, but all major industries and sciences are merging with it. As I'm sure you know, the processing power has been doubling (growing exponentially) every 14 months or so for decades now. It's hard to believe that it's been almost 7 years since a synthetic life form has been programmed and integrated with living biology. Artificial organs are maturing as a field(s) with measurable progress being reported on almost monthly basis, entire blood vessel networks are being 3D printed. Progress in AI has been incredible with self navigation by robots on Mars, with an AI beating humans in Jeopardy (recognizing human language) years ago. Manufacturing and now farming transitioning to mostly relying on robots. Mind blowing advancements in bionics of the last decade include robotic limbs that are integrated with the nervous system, interfacing with computers through direct neurological integrations, artificial vision systems have been doubling in resolution since 2002 and will, in the coming years, become far superior to our natural eyes, as, basically, every other synthetic organ will. Just a few years ago (2015? if I'm not mistaken) an artificial heart came out with a completely self regulating system. Virtual reality has become mainstream, it's not holodeck yet (although the holodeck simulation in 360 is pretty cool) it was unthinkable just a few years ago at how seamless it'll seem, opening up entire new forms for art, communication, travel, business. Not to mention the progress made in scientific techniques, especially in the area of astronomy, we knew of no planets outside of the solar system 20 years ago and are now studying atmospheres of exoplanets located hundreds of light years away. Some surgeries in the next few years are going to be performed independently by robots. Headsets reading electrical brain waves are also maturing in lab environments and will become commercially available in less than five years, allowing to brain to computer texting, for instance. Computational integration with human nervous systems is inevitable in the coming years/decades - one can speculate what the maturing of this tech will provide (think Data-like capabilities, but in every human) by the end of the century. There's no doubt that we'll have indefinite lifespans sometime this century, with life becoming completely unrecognizable in just the coming decades. I can go on and I, obviously, it's easy to present counter arguments, we're still eating with spoons and driving cars, but one should look beyond the obvious. None of the (or almost none) techs shown in Star Trek are hundreds of years away. Even if Star Trek wants to take the slowest possible approach, technology still advances at an increasing (if not always exponential) rate, the changes between the 22nd and 24th centuries should exceed the changes experienced by humanity in the last thousand years, life should become virtually unrecognizable in that time.
My apologies for the long post, didn't realize it got this big, haha
My apologies for the long post, didn't realize it got this big, haha
Very true. And placing it 100 years after Picard probably wouldn't see much change either. The people who ran Trek never seem to stray too far from TOS. Not to make some statement about human technological development but because they seem to fear change.
Which is why I'm hoping DSC re-imagines the future as much as possible.
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The same could be said for Jules Verne. But at some point technology catches up with past futurism.
Star Trek, reboot or no reboot, has some quaint notions of human progress baked into the cake. Replacing gumdrop buttons with LCARS won't change that.
If you want a more realistic portrayal of where we're headed it's either something out of William Gibson (for techno-singularity) or Cormac McCarthy (for dystopia).
As for the why, there's the question how far away from the basic setting can you go? For example, take Star Wars' Old Republic stuff. It has it's fans, but it's so removed from the movies that for some of us, there's no real connecting point.
I think you're focusing too much on individual technologies and not on the existential whole. And most of the things you listed didn't just poof into existence. They are all the [inevitable] evolutionary culmination of decades--or even centuries--worth of creation, development, convergence (Smart phones!), and progress.
Does social media really change the nature of communication all that significantly?
Because, when you get right down to it, there was undoubtedly some blowhard tribal chieftain circa 2400BC who stayed up all night chiseling out bullshit on a wall where everyone could read it.
More to the point, if someone wanted to correspond with a friend, he would write some words on a piece of paper, mailed it, and waited for a response. Now that same person writes the same words on in a text field on a phone and presses send. Is it more convenient? Absolutely. Faster? Duh. But has the nature changed much? Not really.
Now let's examine the VR example. PSVR is pretty cool. I have one. But, ignoring "virtual reality" is kind of a misnomer, the fact is it really isn't THAT much different from a standalone PS4. And the concept of VR has been a industry hurtle/windmill going on 25+ years, with several poor attempts. And, in the grand scheme of things, the difference between a modern VR game and Pong really aren't that significant. Or rather, the difference between PSVR and Pong is a lot smaller (by a factor of several billion) than PSVR is to a holodeck.*
*Playing Pong with a VR set on a holodeck with Socrates might be kinda fun!
And things like organ transplants have been a very long road. They were already a working theory by 1917. It took 50 years to get them right. And 50 years after that they're still AWIP and have a long way to go--and certainly not as ubiquitous as they could be.
The concept of prosthetic limbs dates back almost three millennia.
Corporate farms may have gone the way of robots. But most family-run farms in the US (Yes. They still exist.) still do it the old fashioned way. And, in terms of functionality, the modern super teched-up combine with all its gizmos, isn't much different from a good old John Deere.
Don't get me wrong, I think modern life is pretty great. There's a lot of cool shit. But to the average human being, on a day-to-day basis, when looked at through and hour-long, once-a-week lens isn't much different in 2017 than it was in 1917. Because, from this perspective the cars and the spoons are the important thing. As such, people's lives are sort of-kinda the same. (I mean this solely in terms of technological progress and not social.) And no perceived difference is any greater or less than that of going from blinking lights and beeping switches to an flat-top LCARS readout.
But all that's really not the point. Because it's impossible to predict future progress from time frame to time frame. As I said in a previous post, it's all arbitrary in the end. Which is why those beeping switches and blinking lights seem so out of place and dated in a sort of backwards anachronistic way.
So I don't even think they should try. And do what they did with the Kelvin films. Take the popular bits a pieces and place them in an environment consisting of various elements of pop culture post-modern futurea and not worry about trying to insert it into any specific time-frame or worry about what does and does not represent technological progress.
Actually to be fair the ratings for the spin-off Treks peaked during the 5th season of TNG and began to wane from the fall of 1992 onwards.
Ratings history from 1987 to 1999: https://www.trektoday.com/articles/ratings_history.shtml
As much as humans are a culmination of billions of years of evolution. Irrelevant observation.
In 2400 BC than than 0.0001% of the global population could read and write. They weren't chiseling, but using reeds to impress wedge shaped inscriptions into clay tablets. Today, we communicate at the speed of light, connecting billions of people together. The continuity between electronic communication and cuneiform is an interesting study in history, but does nothing to diminish the fact that there is a revolution in how we communicate that completely and irreversibly changes our modes of communication every few years. Failure to see it is ignorance.
Yes, it does change the nature of communication. Sending a hand written letter 20 years ago that was then delivered to a local post office, then to the central post office, then shipped off either on a ship or sent off on a plane, etc. is entirely different from light-speed communication available instantaneously to almost anyone on Earth today. Does it change the nature of communication? It changes the very nature of our existence.
You should attempt to see the big picture and not a specific application of a technology. Your use of the PSVR is irrelevant to the nature of virtual reality. Make an effort to extrapolate into how it's already changing the way news is consumed, art is appreciated and communication achieved. Just recently I was watching a documentary on Syrian refugees where I was sitting with the interviewees on the floor, through VR, turning around to listen to their experiences as I would have had I was physically there. Is there still news? Sure, your argument would be "oh but there were runners in the Bronze Age" but these arguments bring nothing of value.
The reality is that entire medias are experiencing paradigmatic shifts. Experiencing art in 360 degree immersion alone will change the way we live in the coming years, let alone decades or centuries.
Technology takes decades to mature, pointing out that preliminary studies and experimentation took place decades ago doesn't devalue the achievements nor does it remove their impact.
I assure you, that you'll be accomplishing this in this century, and not the 24th.
The concept of prosthetic limbs dates back almost three millennia.[/QUOTE]
Again, you need to attempt to see the big picture of what synthetic limbs integrating with a neurology of a biological entity means. The fact that people have been attaching wooden sculptures of legs and hands is devoid of any relevancy in this discussion.
Think what synthetic-to-neurological integrations will lead to. The merging of man and machine is coming (and already taking place, on a small case) much sooner than you might imagine. That entirety of all human knowledge and astronomic computational capacity you have in your pocket is going to be part of you. Something like Data and Voyager VI's integration with Decker combined, but for all human beings, this century.
Wow, okay.
False. Even life from 1990's is completely different to today. The way we work, study, research, travel, analyze, communicate - is all drastically different. 1990's was closer to 1917 then it was to 2005 from an everyday perspective.
It is possible, it's a field called Futurism which was pioneered by Jules Verne. He studied the latest hypothetical and conceptual developments of his time and predicted a highly accurate future. His "Paris in the 20th century" written in the middle of the 19th century featured the internet, skyscrapers, decline of poetry, subways, automated manufacturing and more. People like Ray Kurzwiel predicted the ubiquitous nature of the internet that we experience now, way back in the early 1980s. Predicting the future is not an exact science, although in terms of computational power it actually is, the exponential increase in this case is perfectly measurable, but it is not a guesswork either.
I recommend conducting some research on this field, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
That's Star Wars.
In other words, TOS Star Trek. Works for me.
Except they pretty much missed on the miniaturization of computer technology. When I watch "City...", it is fun to watch Spock attempt to build a computer, but now... it is always a nagging issue for me that his tricorder can't playback recorded images.
One of the reasons that Discovery needs to be a reboot. Star Trek needs to catch up to the modern world, by not doing that it will contradict in a major way a show that it is supposed to take place a few years after it.
The cyberpunk writers of the 1980s nailed more about the world we actually live in now than did the "hard sf" and space-opera writers of the 1950s and 60s.
I doubt you're going to see an injection of that kind of observant projection into Star Trek at this late date, but one can hope.
I doubt you're going to see an injection of that kind of observant projection into Star Trek at this late date, but one can hope.
it is the usual rumour mill that always pops up during production of big name shows or movies. Though to be fair, the push back dates and other hiccups have stoked the fire so to speak, giving rumors more weight, but in the end it is all rumour, without factual substance until it is actually confirmed as fact.
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