Indiana In The 24th Century

[Malicia]

In some episodes of Voyager Janeway talks about her home in Indiana and makes it sound like somewhere with vast countryside, farming communities and Amish settlements. Dogs playing in the yard while kids build a kite on the grass. Apple pie cooling by the window. Dad working on the motorbike and his transistor radio playing golden oldies. I'm getting carried away and I've never even been there but that's what I think somewhere like the rural Indiana where Janeway lived is like but the 24th century Indiana that Janeway is from will be very different so does she ever mention anything technological or alien about her hometown or is the idea that we think of a 21st century Indiana even though it's a 24th century Federation Indiana?

It just occurred to me recently that Janeway's Indiana will be very different to what I envisage. I can't think of any specific examples but there is one episode when Janeway is talking to Chakotay about her family life and it seems like they were going for the 1980s nostalgia vibe when the reality of Janeway's Indiana life before leaving for the Voyager mission would have been very different.

 

[Oddish]

Even though Vulcan is part of the Federation, its fashions, architecture, food, and customs are probably still very much the same as they were centuries before. Maybe humans will have retained some of their traditions as well.

 

[Finn]

Janeway hardly described where she grew up. It could easily be like La Barre where Picard grew up, in the outskirts of Bloomington.

 

[Malicia]

La Barre looks like the small Irish town my dad grew up in and is the kind of place I think of Janeway living but hundreds of years in to the future her Indiana is going to be different to the Indiana of the time which it seems the show is going for. I watched Live Fast And Prosper last night and there are a few references of Janeway's home being a 'small farm in Indiana' but in her timeline farmland would probably be a rare commodity so the landscape would be very different. Just like my dad's hometown which was mostly fields up to the 80s and those fields are now hotels and housing estates.

 

[filmnoter]

In many of the scenes we see of futuristic cities in Star Trek (the matte paintings), they are often of very tall skyscrapers. Perhaps by this time cities have grown very vertical (or gone underground) so green space has become more prevalent. Maybe humanoids have learned how to fix climate change by then and have been able to take back the land so it is easier to live off the earnings of a small farm. Or, since humans have been able to live off Earth, the Earth itself has become less populated so areas have been able to be less densely populated (or humans have learned to control their population numbers better). Maybe Janeway's family was very well off and her childhood farm was a luxury property where her family was able to live further away from the cities.

 

[Finn]

Earnings? Do you even watch Star Trek?

 

[Timo]

Even with a population of putative additional billions, Earth isn't exactly short on room. Everybody could have a "small farm" even today if there was a need plus the 24th century resources that could make farmland out of Sahara. And I gather the incentive would be there in the 24th - whereas "need" is more like "interest", and nobody really seems to depend on efficient large scale farming or urban industrialism. Making a living on running a restaurant 19th century style is fine. Running a vineyard is fine. Operating a "small farm", either for income or sustenance or just for killing time, is likely to be fine as well.

That the farm would be in Indiana rather than in India or Iceland is where nostalgia kicks in, and nostalgia and interest go well together.

As for the population issue, Data in ST: First Contact makes it pretty clear that a population of nine billion is anomalous for Earth in the late 24th. The standard might be fifty billion or fifty million equally well: we never really get a "millions we protect" or "billions we threaten" statement on Earth of that era from any of the heroes or villains, oddly enough.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[filmnoter]

Although the way Indiana was talked about sounded like the show was suggesting a 20th century type of small farm (maybe even early 20th century), perhaps by the 24th century "small" meant something larger or even more automated or industrialized than what we know now. The way the Caretaker's imagined world was realized showed that the crew recognized that sort of setting, so a rural type of setting was not unknown to them, whether as history or as lived experiences of their own.

 

[at Quark's]

350+ years is a long time. How would a late 17th century European have imagined early 21st century Europe? (Choosing Europe as an example as it knew no major colonization efforts in that time frame and hence had a development with more continuity). Probably very different from what we have today in most areas of life. Many changes cannot be foreseen.

 

[Oddish]

Is it wrong for this topic title to make me think it's about Indiana Jones's latest adventure, set 400 years in the future?

 

[F. King Daniel]

350+ years is a long time. How would a late 17th century European have imagined early 21st century Europe? (Choosing Europe as an example as it knew no major colonization efforts in that time frame and hence had a development with more continuity). Probably very different from what we have today in most areas of life. Many changes cannot be foreseen.

I've seen that clickbait article! We all had our own personal hot air balloons, which allowed us to walk on water.

 

[at Quark's]

I've seen that clickbait article! We all had our own personal hot air balloons, which allowed us to walk on water.

I haven't, myself, but you're making me curious to what article you're referring to Though I suppose I have seen similar pieces in the past (about how people back in 1900 thought 2000 would turn out, and such)

 

[F. King Daniel]

I haven't, myself, but you're making me curious to what article you're referring to Though I suppose I have seen similar pieces in the past (about how people back in 1900 thought 2000 would turn out, and such)

It was a tumblr post linking to one of those clickbait articles. Don't know if I'll ever find it again, sadly.

 

[Tenacity]

Earth (my image of it) has big cities for those who desire that life style, and small towns, and country living for people who want that. No one size mandated to fit all.

Earnings? Do you even watch Star Trek?

Sure the future for Humanity that obviously has money with buying and selling, and every once and a while someone will say they don't have money.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I've always figured that the Earth's population took a big hit in WWIII, and thereafter figured out how to take care of itself. Between mass exoduses to new worlds and the technology to manage population growth while also knocking out hunger and most disease, I don't think the Earth of the early 24th century would be an overpopulated megalopolis like Coruscant. if anything, I'd wonder if they'd be worried about population decline more than anything else.

Furthermore, Janeway's part of a Starfleet family. I don't think her dad would have time or interest to manage a farm in Indiana if there was Starfleeting to do in an office or ship somewhere. OTOH, Kathryn herself seemed to think of Captaincy as a day job, and would be back home to Mark and the pups pretty frequently...

Mark

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Sure the future for Humanity that obviously has money with buying and selling, and every once and a while someone will say they don't have money.

Federation credits. 'Nuff said.

 

[Deks]

Federation credits. 'Nuff said.

Mentioned all but once or twice and for mostly non-federation species.
We've seen heavy emphasis on trading with non Federation alien species and Federation credits falling into oblivion mostly.

 

[DaystromDropout]

Let's not forget that these towns suffered nuclear fallout and the eugenics wars. It's not a stretch to think that the cities and areas we see today were quite different after those events.

 

[Timo]

Then again, we see they are not!

That is, several cities still have their landmark buildings standing, and indeed feature whole areas that look much like they did in the 20th century. Okay, perhaps they are replicas, rebuilt from scratch (including the pseudo-squalor we find Barclay in, in "Pathfinder")? But they would then be built for "historical purposes", for show - in which case ruining the impression by adding the distinctive modern buildings we also see would be unlikely. So it's rather natural to instead interpret that Cambridge, Paris and Boston never got nuked...

Which is fine and well, because only major cities were said to have been destroyed. If the definition of "major" is 10 million people at the barest minimum, not only does this disqualify most of the cities in the First World, but it also leads to the total reported death toll with just 60 kills or fewer. Basically, then, it might be that Cairo, Mexico City and forty cities in China and ten in India were destroyed, and the small towns like New York or London either weren't deemed worth hitting, or had First World defenses that kept them intact while lesser but bigger cities went up in flames.

Timo Saloniemi