Khan..when???

[RobertScorpio]

I remember watching SPACE SEED way back in the day. And when they said that the events on Earth with Khan happened in the 1990s I actually believed by that time that we would have landed on Mars by that point, and easily, in the late 60s-70s, could have seen the world events play out in the real world that resembled the world situation mentioned in space seed..

But..it wasn't meant to be. We're still stuck here, barely able to get Shuttles into space, and nowhere near mars....but at least STAR TREK made me dream. What do today's kids have to inspire their minds? PIMP MY RIDE???

Rob

 

[Cakes488]

It's very sad that every kid I have met ...(or just about) all of them lack any serious kind of imagination in today's age. I have a place in the country and I don't allow video games/tv on during nice days, you must go outside and play.... there is a ton of room and plenty to do, that's no so unreasonable right??? Nope not these kids...they can't think of one thing to do (when I first got the place) I had to force feed them ideas and "pretend" games....I was like this is pathetic guys...I'm better at playing make believe then you are, something is wrong with this picture! Now that was a few years ago and I'll admit that nowadays they're able to go play on their own a little bit better but I still need to help them out here and there and there will still be the straggler kid who wants to come in and veg out on the tv/video crap....again I find it all very very sad indeed.

 

[RobertScorpio]

It's very sad that every kid I have met ...(or just about) all of them lack any serious kind of imagination in today's age. I have a place in the country and I don't allow video games/tv on during nice days, you must go outside and play.... there is a ton of room and plenty to do, that's no so unreasonable right??? Nope not these kids...they can't think of one thing to do (when I first got the place) I had to force feed them ideas and "pretend" games....I was like this is pathetic guys...I'm better at playing make believe then you are, something is wrong with this picture! Now that was a few years ago and I'll admit that nowadays they're able to go play on their own a little bit better but I still need to help them out here and there and there will still be the straggler kid who wants to come in and veg out on the tv/video crap....again I find it all very very sad indeed.

Do you think this is because of the game age? Has gaming retarded the imagination of the young?

Rob

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Read The Forever War. Haldeman had us engaged in an interstellar war in 1997. That's way past even the projections of Clarke and Kubrick in 2001.

I love out-dated SF.

 

[Gary7]

The worst offender was Gerry Anderson, IMHO. In 1970, we got to see a TV show called UFO, where a secret military organization headquartered in England is fighting off a UFO invasion while operating in a covert manner to keep the public unaware of the danger. The time frame? 1980. 1980. So, in just 10 years we'd have that capability. Sure, we were advancing technology at a very fast pace, but certainly not on a curve that steep.

I think 2001 had such an influence on people in the entertainment industry that they used it as the benchmark... expecting that 2001 was accurate, they worked their way backwards and came up with dates somewhere in between.

Now... 2001 was quite ambitious as well. A little more believable, given how we went from shooting off satellite rockets in the late 1950's to putting a man on the moon about a decade later. That was fast. But the technology progression to achieve an extensive base on the moon of Clarke/Kubrick magnitude by 2001 was way out there. Kubrick should have called the movie 2100. But that would be telling all the viewers of the movie in 1968 that they won't live to see this... 2001 was in reach and a major milestone (new millennium). So maybe that's why it was chosen.


There is plenty to keep the imagination of people going. Just look at Star Trek. Star Wars. BSG. But you know what? The sad truth is that space travel is extremely expensive and extremely risky. The Mars project is suspended for now while we try to get back to the moon... and guess what? In a spacecraft that looks curiously like the Saturn V. Yep, we're still stuck with shoving astronauts up into space on a giant stick of dynamite. This is not going to change in our lifetime, nor in the lifetimes of the next few generations. As Scotty so aptly said "You cannot fight the laws of physics!" Reality is just not nearly as exciting as imagination.

I predict that the human race will eventually become like the Talosians... living out our lives in holodeck fantasy worlds of incredible realism. We will explore the galaxy... but by sending sophisticated Hubbel like satellites into the cosmos and recording all they see, creating holographic astrometric projections to simulate navigating through deep space. That is... if we get through our international social adolescence and create a peaceful world to live in.

 

[Alrik]

Do you think this is because of the game age? Has gaming retarded the imagination of the young?

Rob

You can't blame it on just gaming. Think about how much has changed in the last 40 years as compared to the advances made between '29 and '69. Growing up in the 70's, we had three TV stations here and I was my dad's remoter control when he got home at night.

Kids who's formative years have been within the last 15 years have never known life that didn't have:

24/7 cable or sat TV with 100s of stations to choose from.
Remote controls for most electronics.
Cell phones.
Access to a computer.
Internet.
Gaming systems.

And within the last few years they have had:

MP3 players.
BBSing and then IMing.
Now social networking sites.
Gaming is now interactive.
Smart (cell) Phones now access the internet from almost anywhere.
They rarely watch scheduled network programing even on cable stations. They watch what they want, when they want via the net.

They don't know what its like to have to go to the Mall to play the coolest and latest video game. As a matter of fact, most don't know what its like to go to the Mall and hang out with their friends. They just talk to each other on Facebook now.
Most wouldn't know how to use a Library if their life depended on it.
Make one use a rotary or even just a phone connected to the wall and you'll likely be met with frustration.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Has imagination been hindered? Not really. Its more a case that changes in today's world have made today's young comparatively lazy and demanding of immediate gratification as opposed to the generation before them. However, this is nothing new. Each generation has been accused by the one before it of having life much easier than their's was (with, of course the Depression Era). This has been pretty much true ever since the Industrial Revolution.

But this is also a sweeping generalization. There are still very many of today's young who don't fit the profile. They don't spend all of their time in front of a computer or TV. They're not glued to Facebook and don't always have their ear buds in. They think outside the box and exercise their brains. They ask questions and seek out knowledge and conversation. Their imaginations are still very much alive and well.

 

[JustKate]

I think a lot of kids just don't run around and play that much any more - particularly by themselves. When I was a kid, we'd run out of the house and be gone until lunch, then run out of the house after lunch and be gone until dinner. Our moms could have found us if they really needed to (just by listening for the noise 5-20 kids make when they play ), but mostly they just let us be.

Or if the weather was bad, we were nonetheless expected to entertain ourselves, and the amount of TV we could watch was limited. So even indoors, by and large, we were just let be.

I don't think kids have very much time any more when they are just let be.

It's true that we used a lot of our "just let be" time playing tag or riding our bikes, which doesn't use a lot brain power. But we did make up games sometimes and play make-believe games, and even the most mundane form of entertainment (and you can't get more mundane than tag or Barbies) required more of us than sitting looking at a monitor. Maybe that's more important than it at first appears.

But to get back OT, there still is lots of fabulous stuff out there to help them dream, and many of them do, as Alrik points out. But you won't find it on Xbox. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

 

[T'Bonz]

I remember watching SPACE SEED way back in the day. And when they said that the events on Earth with Khan happened in the 1990s I actually believed by that time that we would have landed on Mars by that point, and easily, in the late 60s-70s, could have seen the world events play out in the real world that resembled the world situation mentioned in space seed..

But..it wasn't meant to be. We're still stuck here, barely able to get Shuttles into space, and nowhere near mars....but at least STAR TREK made me dream. What do today's kids have to inspire their minds? PIMP MY RIDE???

Rob

In the late 60s, very early 70s, I figured we'd have a colony in space by now. The way the space program seemed to be going back then, it didn't seem unreasonable.

While we've got some cool things on earth (laptops, microwaves, cellphones and such,) we sure missed the boat on the space bit. Now we hold our breath that a shuttle will make it to the space station and back.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I remember watching SPACE SEED way back in the day. And when they said that the events on Earth with Khan happened in the 1990s I actually believed by that time that we would have landed on Mars by that point, and easily, in the late 60s-70s, could have seen the world events play out in the real world that resembled the world situation mentioned in space seed..

But..it wasn't meant to be. We're still stuck here, barely able to get Shuttles into space, and nowhere near mars....but at least STAR TREK made me dream. What do today's kids have to inspire their minds? PIMP MY RIDE???

Rob

In the late 60s, very early 70s, I figured we'd have a colony in space by now. The way the space program seemed to be going back then, it didn't seem unreasonable.

While we've got some cool things on earth (laptops, microwaves, cellphones and such,) we sure missed the boat on the space bit. Now we hold our breath that a shuttle will make it to the space station and back.

And when ever I have a twinge of doubt we went to the moon? That is why. We went there with Viet-Nam era tech...and now adays, we hold our breaths each launch..huh?

Rob

 

[JustKate]

That's because now we know just how badly things can go wrong, Robert. Despite Apollo 1, I don't think we (that is, the general public) really did back then. We were perhaps overconfident.

The stakes are higher now too, I'd say.

 

[RobertScorpio]

That's because now we know just how badly things can go wrong, Robert. Despite Apollo 1, I don't think we (that is, the general public) really did back then. We were perhaps overconfident.

The stakes are higher now too, I'd say.

Oh, yes I do agree with that. Had there been a press like this back in ww2? I think we'd all be listening to non-stop Wagner

Rob

 

[Alrik]

That's because now we know just how badly things can go wrong, Robert. Despite Apollo 1, I don't think we (that is, the general public) really did back then. We were perhaps overconfident.

The stakes are higher now too, I'd say.

That's a very valid point Kate. With as dire of an outlook that was Apollo 13, the invincible NASA brought her home. I was a student of the Orbiter program (back at the time that NASA cringed when someone called it a shuttle) from early in the 70's. I remember when Enterprise () made her test flight/glide. I got myself up at 2:00 am to watch coverage of the first launch only to have it scrubbed and then doing it all over again a couple of nights later. But even for a junkie like me, launches had seemed to have become pretty routine by the time of the Challenger accident. But even then it seemed like that was a one off event. I took my family to KSC for the tour in the summer of '02 and confidence there was once again very high. Little did we know that in less than a year Columbia would be gone too. With that, the innocence and over confidence was gone for good. I think that in looking back, more and more people understand that the Apollo program actually had more than it's fair share of luck bestowed upon it.

 

[Navigator_NCC2120]

This thread is making me feel nostalgic. I recently saw a "2001: A Space Odyssey" Documentary that was uploaded to YouTube called "Movies That Shook The World ' 2001: A Space Odyssey ' ". In it Space Historian Howard McCurdy states in 1969 President Nixon asked his Space Advisers (NASA?) what they wanted to do after the Apollo Project. The Advisers basically said what was depicted in the 2001 movie. Nixon said the country can't afford it (Space Station, Shuttles, Moonbase, Rocket Buses), but Nixon said that they could pick one thing that was in the 2001 movie that was a Human Space Flight Initiative and he would approve it. The Space Historian said that they picked the Space Shuttle Program, but I believe he is mistaken as we did have the SkyLab Space Station in the early 1970s after the Apollo Project as well as the Space Shuttle Project. Here is a link to the documentary. I do miss growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, as a kid back then it seemed like nothing was impossible.


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

 

[Mallory]

Read The Forever War. Haldeman had us engaged in an interstellar war in 1997. That's way past even the projections of Clarke and Kubrick in 2001.

I love out-dated SF.

And I loved that story when I read it way back when.

 

[Sky]

Read The Forever War. Haldeman had us engaged in an interstellar war in 1997. That's way past even the projections of Clarke and Kubrick in 2001.

I love out-dated SF.

And I loved that story when I read it way back when.

Yeah, Forever War is brilliant. It's sad that the sequel, Forever Free, is such a flop.

 

[USS Triumphant]

The difference between the Mirror Universe and the Trekverse is apparently now set at the reaction Cochrane had to the Borg, and the way they greeted the Vulcans because of it.

Similarly, it is my theory that the difference between our universe and the Trekverse is Gandhi. In our universe, he was who we know him to be. In the Trekverse, he embraced the Thuggee religion, which survived into the 20th century. This resulted in a much bloodier overthrow of the British rule of India, and an India hostile to the West afterward. Thus, Khan, and a thoroughly different latter half of the 20th century - but different in ways that don't necessarily invalidate ST:IV, and probably actually lend themselves to the past shown on Voyager, since they would have no Indian tech support.

 

[JustKate]

^ Whoa. If you just came up with this now, you are some sort of smartass genius, Triumphant, but if you've been working on it for a while...hmmmm. A little scary! Oh, well, there are worse hobbies a person could have.

 

[USS Triumphant]

^ Whoa. If you just came up with this now, you are some sort of smartass genius, Triumphant, but if you've been working on it for a while...hmmmm. A little scary! Oh, well, there are worse hobbies a person could have.

For some reason, almost all of it just popped into my head, not just then, but a couple of weeks ago when someone in the ST:XI forum was talking about the possibility of Khan being in ST:XII.

The part that occurred to me while writing it here was the part about Voyager and the tech support angle. I don't think there's anything in the Henry Starling episodes that preclude the possibility that war is going on elsewhere in the world and, as in WW II, for one reason or another, the U.S. is "late to the party" again. If anyone remembers anything that contradicts that, I'd appreciate hearing it. I'm a bit fuzzy on a lot of Voyager, to tell the truth.

Oh, and thanks... I think.

 

[JustKate]

^ It included the word "genius," so yeah, you can take that as a compliment.

 

[USS Triumphant]

^ It included the word "genius," so yeah, you can take that as a compliment.

Okay. Thank you.

I just wasn't sure with the "smartass" part in there. I get called that a lot, and it isn't usually complimentary.