I struggle to press the right buttons on my phone when on a bus, can't imagine trying to key in complex strings of commands on a touch-screen in the middle of a Star Trek space battle. No wonder the kid from "Hero Worship" thought he blew up his ship
Yeah, as much as I wanted more Trekkian technology as a kid, I admit that I prefer traditional buttons over modern touch screens 99% of the time. Perhaps it's a degree of inexperience, but I've often found that trying to do complex sets of commands can be irritating.
My theory is that grease is repelled to the outer edge of the LCARS screen, than any useful oils are beamed to matter storage for replicator usage. Same for the amount of skin cells a human loses every day, the floor repels them to the edges, than any usable matter is sent to replicator usage. Over a thousand people on the ship means a LOT of excess matter from hair loss, skin loss, human oils, etc.
S5, Power Play when Data, O'Brien and Troi take over the ship. I certainly recall rewinding the VHS tape numerous times to squint and see... it certainly looks like something was left behind on the conn panel but hard to make out. Brent really gives 'er in that scene.
There definitely was someone left on OPS but I'd think it was his gold/white Data makeup and not oil from his skin.
OMG, this, a thousand times, THIS! I was coming here to bring up this exact issue. It is damn near impossible to control a touch screen when there is turbulence. If anything, it explains why TOS had buttons. Your fingers need something to reference on, or you'd never be able to control the ship in rough situations. As for the fingerprints, I was just reading that some of the newer mirrorless cameras have an ultrasonic vibration feature to knock dust off their sensors, so maybe the displays do something similar to aerosolize oils and dusts, which are then handled by the air filtration systems.
According to my casual google-fu, "humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour - about 1.5 pounds a year." So, 7 years x 1.5lbs /person /year x 1014 people = 10,647 lbs of skin cells during the TNG tv run. Thats the equivalent of 71 150-lb people collecting under the beds and in the corners of the Jefferies Tubes. Yuck.
I wonder if Data applies some makeup to his skin. We know he has natural hair growth (oddly), so maybe his gold makeup serves a function of some sort. I'm not saying his skin is a different color, just that he adds another coat of a similar shade. Maybe to keep from drying out and flaking off or something.
Well, they do have 400 years to perfect the process. Their Siri is certainly far more sophisticated. The changeability of the buttons is also far superior to TOS, where any station can give you infinite data and control options, without having to crane your neck, walk across the room, or to another deck. Plus, how often were they looking at unmarked glowing jelly beans, without a screen display? They just had to know what set of jellies to punch in what order, and what they all might mean, for the one job they could do. We know that the ship cleans itself. Surfaces may be coated in something that dissipates oils, or maybe there’s an energy sweep of every room the moment it’s emptied for oils, hair, feathers, scales, and dust.
The problem with physical buttons is that they immediately limit you to one type of UI, which may be well suited for one task, but poorly suited for another. TNG consoles can take over just about any role. Fly the ship and run engineering from ops? No problem. If this stuff were real, you'd expect a combination. Most things would be touch screens, but a few important, commonly used features would still be buttons. Look up the cockpit of the F-35 fighter. One huge touch screen, but also a throttle with like 20 switches on it.
How about: You don't actually touch the surface on an LCARS station. It's a mini holographic projection of what would be the screen? dJE
Or maybe the TOS jellies were like the Art Lebedev keyboards where the buttons had mini display screens that changed context based on what you were doing? https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/popularis/