What technology did Star Trek Actually Inspire?

[Prax]

Did Kirk's communicator really inspire the flip phone?

Does Siri exist all because of Majel Barrett's voice?

Would the IPad be a thing without the P.A.D.D?

Let's separate fact from fiction, and history from legend. Answer these and many other questions right here, on TrekBBS!

 

[Paul Weaver]

Trek inspired many to get into tech. The way trek tech works will have been in their subconscious at least when designing products.

There will be few examples of people going out and saying "let's design that thing from trek", but there will have been a big influence over the last 20-30 years. That influence will fade now as Trek hasn't been on air for so long, a whole generation will have missed it.

 

[Tenacity]

Orange flavored Tang.

 

[Kor]

None.

Everything in Trek either already existed in literary science fiction, or was an extrapolation of ideas that had already been postulated in different scientific industries, or was a combination thereof.

Kor

 

[Butters]

Necessity is the mother of invention, not Star Trek.

 

[Mojochi]

Star Trek sound FX ring tones. Before Star Trek, no one had ever thought of having Star Trek sound FX ring tones

 

[Tosk]

None.

Everything in Trek either already existed in literary science fiction, or was an extrapolation of ideas that had already been postulated in different scientific industries, or was a combination thereof.

Being the inspiration for something doesn't require you to be first.

 

[Prax]

So is there any example of technology that we use today that could convincingly be argued to have been inspired by Star Trek? I was thinking TOS and maybe TNG, as the claim is often made that Star Trek inspired many of these modern marvels we use today. I believe there's even a history channel documentary about this. I looked this up on google, and the first link had a top twelve. Number twelve was "Replicators inspired the 3d printer."

They also listed the usual claimants that I posted in the UP.

 

[Tosk]

So is there any example of technology that we use today that could convincingly be argued to have been inspired by Star Trek?

Well, the flip-phone thing is a definite no. It's the "first interracial kiss" of Trek tech, keeps getting said despite not being true.

 

[Push The Button]

So is there any example of technology that we use today that could convincingly be argued to have been inspired by Star Trek?

TrekBBS

 

[Prax]

Forgive my ignorance, but what does BBS stand for?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Bulletin Board...something.

 

[ChasFink]

I think people are missing a nuance here. EVERYTHING is influenced by all that went before, but the real question is what happened because Trek was a catalyst or influence?

The flip phone may not have been directly inspired by the communicator, but I'm sure plenty of people got one because it LOOKED like a communicator, and designers knew it. I deliberately avoided a flip phone when I first got cell service, and only later realized the phone I picked was almost certainly designed to look like a type 1 phaser.

 

[Tenacity]

but the real question is what happened because Trek was a catalyst or influence?

The real question is what tech wouldn't have been developed at all, without Star Trek's influance or catalist. Answer is none, the cell phone still would have come into existence, the same with the ipad, (although it might have been given a different name).

The flip phone may not have been directly inspired by the communicator, but I'm sure plenty of people got one because it LOOKED like a communicator

Except it didn't "look like a communicator."

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Necessity is the mother of invention, not Star Trek.

I would have said profit.

Star Trek was not the first thing to come up with a lot of these technologies, but they certainly created demand for them.

 

[FormerLurker]

None.

Everything in Trek either already existed in literary science fiction, or was an extrapolation of ideas that had already been postulated in different scientific industries, or was a combination thereof.

Kor

So? See here:

Being the inspiration for something doesn't require you to be first.

It doesn't matter if such things were in literary science fiction for years, even decades before. The presence of these fictional technologies on a TELEVISION SHOW brought them to the attention of the powers that be, and they asked that all important question, "Can we have this?"

The developers of nearly every type of medical monitoring system in hospitals today have said more than once that they were inspired to come up with them because they wanted the ones on Star Trek, and decided to develop something that would do what the Star Trek ones did, using the then modern technology. The ones we have in hospitals today only fail in comparison to the remote utility of the Star Trek monitors, meaning the modern BP cuff still has to be wrapped around the patient's arm, and the thermometer still has to come in contact, either in the mouth or other orifice, or somewhere on the skin, while the bed monitors in Sickbay could read these things at a distance. Beyond that, in many ways they surpass the monitors Dr. McCoy used by quite a bit. But they wouldn't exist at all without Star Trek inspiring the developers to come up with them.

 

[Paul Weaver]

I think people are missing a nuance here. EVERYTHING is influenced by all that went before, but the real question is what happened because Trek was a catalyst or influence?

The flip phone may not have been directly inspired by the communicator, but I'm sure plenty of people got one because it LOOKED like a communicator, and designers knew it. I deliberately avoided a flip phone when I first got cell service, and only later realized the phone I picked was almost certainly designed to look like a type 1 phaser.

nokia 3210? (3310)?

I certainly got my 7110 because of it's similarity to the phone in the matrix, and about 2002 I got a clamshell phone mainly because of the similarity to Kirk's phone.

 

[Six of Twelve]

Trek totally missed as an inspiration for the Kindle. Picard and later Janeway were always shown doing their recreational reading with print books, rather than on a pad. It's kind of like someone today doing all their writing on parchment using a quill pen, instead of using ordinary pen and paper. It's especially eye-rolling with Janeway in the later seasons, less than ten years from the invention of the Kindle.

Even with the data pads, Seven of Nine is shown on two separate occasions giving Naomi, then Icheb several pads; one for each subject, instead of it all being on one pad. Again, not all that many years before the inventions of the Kindle and Ipads.

 

[Prax]

And there's that funny scene where Bashir and his genetically modified superfriends wrote up a bunch of scientific studies, and Bashir starts handing them all to Sisko. One study per padd, until Sisko is holding like ten Padds in his hands.

 

[Tenacity]

In some ways Trek's medical science is behind us, and certainly behind where we'll be in fifty years or two and a half centuries.