How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and TMP?

[chardman]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

The overall difference in instrumentation and interface isn't really all that radically different compared to the differences between old physical aircraft dials and control yokes, and the glass cockpits and joysticks that replaced them. There really was no gradual transition. One generation of plane used one system, and the very next used an entirely different system.

How do you account for the drastic design change between the cell phones of just a decade ago, with their standard 12 key interface, and today's phone w/ full alpha-numeric keyboards and/or touch-screens? Simple. Things change. People adapt.

 

[Timo]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

Still, the issue seems to be that dozens of such generation changes happened all at the same time. Cell phones didn't appear, or go flat, simultaneously with the introduction of jet engines or glass cockpits or cordless razors or flared trousers or automatic transmissions.

But we might wriggle and squirm a bit and claim that just two or three important things really changed simultaneously, while the rest was changed to usher in a "new look" (for the usual political reasons) even though the technologies underneath remained unchanged.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

The computer systems were completely different. They went from candy buttons and blinking coloured squares to controls that bore zero resemblance. They weren't upgrades, they were complete swap-outs.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

Even going to touchscreen phones, the dialling graphics, numbers and icons are the same as the old physical button layout. There's nothing so similar between TOS and TMP.

 

[chardman]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

Okay, let's look at another example: In the 1970s, Americans traveled in space in the Apollo capsule. The very next decade, the 1980s, and we were using the space shuttle. That's how radically spacecraft design drastically changed in just a few years time.

In a sense, the question shouldn't be asking for an explanation of the drastic differences in the span of so few years, but an explanation for the drastic similarities that seem to persist across whole centuries in the Star Trek universe.

 

[Christopher]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

As I've said, I think the problem isn't that some things changed between TOS and TMP, it's that everything changed simultaneously. In real life, while some things would be radically redesigned, others would stay much the same. My current cell phone is a lot more advanced than my previous one, but my watch and my blue jeans aren't substantially different from the ones I had a decade ago. I don't think anyone's saying the changes shouldn't have happened, just that it would be more believable if there'd been a more gradual transition, with some familiar designs coexisting with the new ones.

 

[sojourner]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

Even though the TMP ship was extensively redone, another vessel of the same class was later seen to feature a less extensive reworking, with remaining TOS-style GNDN piping on the lower decks, and with a less reworked shuttle landing deck - but correspondingly with a bridge layout representing a newer generation than the TMP refit.

I'm having a bit of a brain lapse this morning. What ship are you referring to here? The Ent-A?

 

[The Castellan]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

Okay, let's look at another example: In the 1970s, Americans traveled in space in the Apollo capsule. The very next decade, the 1980s, and we were using the space shuttle. That's how radically spacecraft design drastically changed in just a few years time.

Least in Apollo, we were actually going places, in the Shuttle, all we did was go around and around in a circle.

 

[Christopher]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

Apollo vs. the space shuttle isn't a good analogy for the Enterprise refit, because the two craft had very different functions and thus naturally had different overall designs. But I bet if you compared the cockpit controls of the Eagle and Columbia, you'd find that they used a lot of the same kinds of switches, knobs, and dials. Even a new design would probably use a lot of proven, standardized equipment rather than changing absolutely every detail.

 

[Timo]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

...Although one might well argue that the modern Orion (or perhaps the CST-100) pod would be to the Apollo CM what the TMP ship was to the TOS one. Minor cosmetic changes everywhere, and invisible jumps to all-new technologies elsewhere, plus a lot riding on a cosmetic makeover to help people forget that it's just the same-o. Really, "changing absolutely every detail" is a good description of what is going on there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

Well, as for the controls, look at the changeover to glass cockpits. I recently saw an aricle on the U2 that showed its original gauge-and-toggle cockpit, and the current planes' new all-flat-panel replacement controls. That kind of upgrade happens to a lot of military aircraft, and civilian airliners.

The F-35 even has a all-glass touch-screen dashboard with no (or limited) physical controls. Pretty much, just like the 1701-D's.

The thing is, as soon as a technology is developed and perfected, you're going to see it very suddenly applied everywhere it can be. Like, BANG!

The transition between basic cell phones with buttons to everyone having iPhone/Android/Whatevers, for another example, was not exactly gradual.

 

[Christopher]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

^I still have a cell phone with buttons.

 

[Ian Keldon]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

The same applies to STXI. It's not more advanced in-universe than TOS was, we're just seeing Trek world through the eyes of the 2010's, not the 1960's.

In the first few minutes (Kelvin era) you are most probably close to being correct.

In the 2250s however, the conceit used by the producers was that the encounter with the Narada affected the rate of technological advance, speeding it up considerably and steering it in directions it didn't go originally.

 

[chardman]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

The thing is, as soon as a technology is developed and perfected, you're going to see it very suddenly applied everywhere it can be. Like, BANG!

Right. Plus, (to Christopher) whoever said these changes all happened at once? They could have been introduced, one at a time, gradually, over a period of years, including changes that could have been occurring back on Earth DURING the 5-year-mission. After all, we didn't see a lot (any?) scenes of Earth itself during TOS run. So you can add the length of that 5-year-mission to the period of time between TOS and TMP for the period of time in which these changes occurred.

All in all, easily a decade has passed between the time Enterprise left home, and our first real view of that home in TMP. And a lot of change can occur in such a period of time, both technologically and in overall design aesthetics. In a lot of different areas.

Technological change supposedly occurs at an exponential rate. Things can already change quite a bit in a single decade, but add a couple of centuries to that, and the amount of change that will occur in a single decade of the late 23rd century will be far more pronounced than it is today. Prior to TMP, we'd only seen a 3 year slice of that particular reality, and then, only of people in the field, far from the epicenter of the Federation and Starfleet, where all the "gradual" (relatively speaking) changes were taking place. Change that was simply unseen by those of us who were following the exploits of those out on the frontiers of space, who were far from the supply chain.

 

[Ian Keldon]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

Real world, here's a progression of airliner cockpits (Boeing 700 series 707-787) showing just how tech can change in appearance:

Boeing 707
http://www.curetti.com/blog/707cockpit.jpg

Boeing 717
http://www.reilindustrial.com/717-200g.jpg

Boeing 727
http://www.bigbendaviation.com/b727cockpit.jpg

Boeing 737
http://waggenerjon.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/737-20-cockpit.jpg

Boeing 747
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/B747-cockpit.jpg

Boeing 757
http://images.picturesdepot.com/photo/b/boeing_757_cockpit-20050.jpg

Boeing 767
http://www.flightglobal.com/airspac...400/cockpit-of-boeing-b-767-300-simulator.jpg

Boeing 777
http://www.plane-pictures.com/upload/files/actual/boeing_777_cockpit.jpg

Boeing 787
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/aircraft-pictures/b787fdeckboeinglarge.jpg

 

[Timo]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

^I still have a cell phone with buttons.

You aren't alone in this respect. In Finland, where the introduction of cell phones was among the most rapid (and earliest) in the world, it's still quite common to find first generation GSM phones today; even the old less-than-global NMT standard has only disappeared because it's no longer being supported. Many people own a smart phone, plus an old phone that can actually connect your calls and help you get support when your smart phone goes dumb on you.

Even a five-year mission plus another five or six years spent recovering and refitting wouldn't keep Kirk and the audience in the dark for the lifespan of those old phones... And we should expect the consumer market of the advanced 23rd century to be free of the sinister attempts of the industry to rapidly outdate their own products, and the military to be even more conservative than that. If everything changed, it's probably indication of something major happening.

Happily, the Trek universe certainly allows for "major things" happening. Change of regime, input from a new alien culture, vicious attack that destroys all the old stuff, even timeline tampering that is only partially countermanded.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

^I still have a cell phone with buttons.

Me too - hell, mine's a K-Mart $19 burner, and the only time I ever use it is to call home from a traffic jam to tell the wife I'll be late.

I got no need at all for anything fancier.

 

[Christopher]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

Right. Plus, (to Christopher) whoever said these changes all happened at once? They could have been introduced, one at a time, gradually, over a period of years, including changes that could have been occurring back on Earth DURING the 5-year-mission. After all, we didn't see a lot (any?) scenes of Earth itself during TOS run. So you can add the length of that 5-year-mission to the period of time between TOS and TMP for the period of time in which these changes occurred.

Sure, but if you have to rationalize something based entirely on conjecture beyond what's actually onscreen, I count that as a weakness of the onscreen material itself. All I'm saying is that the actual content of the film would've been more credible if there had been a few more familiar elements of unchanged TOS design, something more than just Uhura's earpiece and the rank stripes.

Technological change supposedly occurs at an exponential rate. Things can already change quite a bit in a single decade, but add a couple of centuries to that, and the amount of change that will occur in a single decade of the late 23rd century will be far more pronounced than it is today.

Which is a naive and shortsighted assumption. If you study the full scope of human history, not just recent times but the ten thousand years or so since the dawn of civilization, technological progress follows a pattern of punctuated equilibrium: the normal state of affairs is one of stability and slow, incremental progress, but in certain specific cases where the need, resources, and societal mindset come together in the right way, a burst of rapid innovation will occur. The problem is that we're within one of those bursts of innovation now and have been for a few centuries, which seems like forever to us short-lived humans, but in the grand historical perspective is merely a passing phase. So it's unreasonable to assume that the current state of affairs in the tiny sliver of history we occupy is some kind of absolute universal law. If history is anything to go by, things will eventually settle back down to a more normal level of stability and gradual change.

Indeed, Star Trek seems to bear this out, because the amount of change between the TOS movie era and the TNG era, separated by over 70 years, is much less than the amount of change that's occurred in the past 70-odd years in real life. There are a few notable advances like replicators and holodecks, but most other progress is merely a matter of degree, and some of the same starship classes are still in service after 8 or 9 decades. And if anything, the 24th-century UFP seems rather timid about developing potential breakthrough technologies like genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, soliton or transwarp propulsion, and the like. When a hint of real progress shows up in an episode, it's usually forgotten thereafter. To all indications, the 24th-century Federation is far more tentative and conservative when it comes to technological progress than the 21st-century developed world.

 

[Forbin]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

Which is a naive and shortsighted assumption. If you study the full scope of human history, not just recent times but the ten thousand years or so since the dawn of civilization, technological progress follows a pattern of punctuated equilibrium: the normal state of affairs is one of stability and slow, incremental progress, but in certain specific cases where the need, resources, and societal mindset come together in the right way, a burst of rapid innovation will occur. The problem is that we're within one of those bursts of innovation now and have been for a few centuries, which seems like forever to us short-lived humans, but in the grand historical perspective is merely a passing phase. So it's unreasonable to assume that the current state of affairs in the tiny sliver of history we occupy is some kind of absolute universal law. If history is anything to go by, things will eventually settle back down to a more normal level of stability and gradual change.

I truly fear you're right. The technological leaps since the turn of the 20th century were astounding, and reshaped to world. Now we seem to have settled down, and even retreated from that technological acceleration. Well, except in the development of communication and information-sharing.

 

[Christopher]

Re: How do you account for the drastic design change between TOS and T

I'm not saying it's something to fear. Just because something is the way we live now, that doesn't automatically make it more "right" than the alternative. Rapid progress happens when it fills a societal need, like the way the Industrial Revolution enabled Europe to compensate for its lack of resources and prosperity by gaining the means to acquire resources, goods, and territory all over the world, or the way the development of agriculture enabled former hunter-gatherer populations to continue feeding themselves after a climate change made food less abundant. But if society reaches a point where the technology it has fills its needs effectively, then perhaps equilibrium becomes healthier for society at that stage. After all, if the system works, then changing and destabilizing it could do more harm than good.