Star Trek's outdated vision of the future

[jefferiestubes8]

io9 has an article up with a controversial title "Why Star Trek’s Vision of the Future is Out of Date".

Nobody can deny that Star Trek made the world a better place. In fact, Star Trek is famous for its portrayal of all sorts of technological wonderments that we now possess in real life

while the future may not look like anything portrayed in Star Trek, that doesn't mean it's going to be any less fantastic and vast.

the future will be far different — and much weirder — than Roddenberry and other ST writers could have ever imagined. The challenge now is to admit that humanity is headed into a very different kind of future. It's time to set aside Star Trek's outdated vision of the future and focus on real possibilities.

Why Star Trek’s Vision of the Future is Out of Date
While it mentions technologies and theories I still don't think there is much substance. Of course we will send out manned missions to planets within our solar system in the next 100 years. Beyond that though...

 

[C.E. Evans]

I look at Trek as a fictional universe. As a result, I have no problems whatsoever with things there not matching up things with the real world.

 

[Mytran]

An interesting article - but then again Star Trek was never meant to be about realistically predicting the future, it was about telling stories (relatable to a contemporary TV audience) in a futuristic setting.

 

[Sci]

I think Dvorsky frames his arguments in some needlessly confrontational, sensationalist ways. One can talk about how real advancements in our understandings of the universe and in technological development may go in different directions from Star Trek without essentially framing it as, "Star Trek is obsolete!"

Besides, that's the ultimate fate of all science fiction: To be surpassed by reality. This is not a bad thing, it's just the nature of the genre.

The article also doesn't acknowledge the evolution of Star Trek over the decades -- how its operating assumptions have changed, how its ideas about the future have changed. Nor does it acknowledge nuances within the Star Trek canon -- we know that genetic engineering is banned save for serious medical illnesses, for instance, but what does "serious medical illnesses?"

Dvorsky also radically over-states the so-called "inevitability" of transhumanism. He's not acknowledging that there will always be people who don't want their bodies or minds tinkered with.

 

[SchwEnt]

I would consider it outdated if ST was meant to be some predictive fiction, a rational extrapolation of where mankind and technology are headed.

But that was not the case, nor the intention. That fact that much of ST has come to pass in reality, I consider to be coincidental or influential.

ST's vision of the future was about hope and possibilities and optimism. A vision of what could be, a drama, speculative fiction at best.

As far as ST's premise, its vision of the future is only outdated if you no longer have hope for humanity, no dreams of a better tomorrow, no better world for our children, all that crap. If one has a fatalist view, then yeah, I suppose the vision if outdated. To each his own.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Star Trek is a what-if scenario. Sure, it's unlikely humanity will ban genetic modifications altogether - or cybernetic body parts - or "outgrow" nationalism, religion and greed - but it's interesting to see what might happen if all those things did come to pass

 

[Knight Templar]

I dislike articles like this because, as in many such articles over the last decade or so, they harp way too much on advances in computer technology to the exclusion of most else.

Who is to say that computer technology is going to advance at ever growing rates?

What if spacecraft propulsion technology suddenly starts advancing rapidly?

 

[Prologic9]

Well, I don't agree with some of his ideas about how things will be/should be portrayed, but the basic idea is spot on. Star Trek's future is outdated, and it hurts.

When Trek really became popular you could watch it and believe in the future you were seeing. The further away from that you get the less relevant Trek has become.

Right now it's not a huge deal, but as more time passes it becomes a bigger and bigger problem. I think it's just a shame they did nothing at all to address it now that they've already rebooted the series once.

 

[YARN]

Didn't I cover this months ago in the Star Trek is Already Steam Punk thread?

 

[Dantheman]

"Star Trek is an outdated vision of the future because it doesn't mention The Singularity" .

So freaking what if it doesn't? Like's it ever really gonna happen. People like this guy need to STFU and relax.

 

[Christopher]

I think there are some valid points in the article -- certainly if I were rebooting ST from scratch I'd include more acceptance of transhumanism and bionics, more AI, and the like -- but some of the ideas he takes for granted, like mind uploading and the inevitability of the Singularity, are SF conceits just as implausible as the conceits he's deriding. So it's too narrow-minded and biased to be a legitimate critique.

 

[Knight Templar]

Well, I think the idea that "humans will be modified because space his hostile" is beyond ridiculous.

Back in the 1940s, scientists were suggesting "modifying" future fighter pilots to adapt them to extreme high altitude flight.

Instead they just came up with fully pressurized cockpits and better pressure suits.

I don't see humans ever wanting to be "modified" when they can just carry their environmental needs along with them. And terraform planets when necessary.

 

[YARN]

Well, I think the idea that "humans will be modified because space his hostile" is beyond ridiculous.

No, it stands to reason. Spending a great deal of time in space presents unique challenges to human physiology.

Back in the 1940s, scientists were suggesting "modifying" future fighter pilots to adapt them to extreme high altitude flight.

Pilots don't spend months on end in the cockpit.

There is nothing, prima facie, wrong with this idea btw. If in 1940, they'd found a cost effective and useful supplement for pilots, they would have used them. The technology wasn't there yet.

Instead they just came up with fully pressurized cockpits and better pressure suits.

This was an easier solution in this particular example. This does not establish the ridiculousness of modifying humans for extended space travel.

The next generation of fighter aircraft (post F-22/F-35) is projected to be pilotless. Even easier than putting a guy in a pressure suit is to let the plane fly itself. Indeed, have you noticed that most of our space exploration has been done by robots? You can send rovers and probes off into solar system at a discount, because you never have to bring them back.

I don't see humans ever wanting to be "modified" when they can just carry their environmental needs along with them. And terraform planets when necessary.

We're already modifying ourselves. Artificial limbs. Contact lenses. Hearing aids. Smartphones to Google glasses(?) to full cyborg implantation. Genetically modified foods. Vaccines. Sex selection in IVF plantation. Gene therapy. Insulin pumps. Organ transplants. Humans have always wanted to modify themselves - how else would they sell all those silicone implants and little blue pills if we didn't?

 

[Knight Templar]

Not the same.

 

[Christopher]

Well, I think the idea that "humans will be modified because space his hostile" is beyond ridiculous.

Back in the 1940s, scientists were suggesting "modifying" future fighter pilots to adapt them to extreme high altitude flight.

Instead they just came up with fully pressurized cockpits and better pressure suits.

I don't see humans ever wanting to be "modified" when they can just carry their environmental needs along with them. And terraform planets when necessary.

But the flaw in that argument is that genetic modification wasn't actually available in the '40s. So they didn't actually choose not to use it; they simply didn't have the option.

Really, when have humans ever passed up the opportunity to modify ourselves for our convenience, even if it's as simple as hair dye or shaving? How common is laser surgery to correct vision these days? It's reached the point where some people with perfectly good vision use laser surgery to make it even better. And it's probably too late to have any chance of eliminating steroid use from pro sports. Once technology reaches the point that genetic modification can give people new abilities or enhancements, there will be people who embrace it, just as there will be people who resist it.

There are a lot of cases where engineering or modifying human bodies would simply be a more efficient and practical solution than building ships and suits to protect unmodified humans. For instance, dealing with the intense radiation in space would require thick, cumbersome shielding that would be very massive and need a great deal of fuel to push around -- but engineering the human body with an improved ability to repair DNA damage from radiation (like the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans) could let humans survive in spaceships with much lighter shielding, ships that could have much more efficiency and power because they had less mass to push around. Same with microgravity -- in unmodified humans, it erodes bone and muscle mass and impedes the body's ability to heal, so they'd require cumbersome rotating sections on their ships or be unable to live for long on the Moon or other low-gravity bodies. But modified humans could thrive in lower gravities and, again, be able to use lighter, more efficient ships.

This is actually a major thread in my upcoming novel Only Superhuman, whose cover is my current avatar. It's in a future where transhuman enhancements are frowned upon on Earth but embraced by space-dwelling humans because they're necessary in that environment.

 

[RandyS]

I look at Trek as a fictional universe. As a result, I have no problems whatsoever with things there not matching up things with the real world.

Exactly. The whole thing about "forward looking" and "inclusion", and IDIC is nice and all that, but it's been overblown. The bottom line is that Star Trek is entertainment.

Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[horatio83]

On the contrary, many people enjoy Star Trek precisely because it is not merely entertainment but also offers a bright and hopeful view of the future. While the current team at the helm of the franchise, fans who repeat the factually wrong "it is just entertainment" and the fairly reactionary Zeitgeist make it likely that Trek is about to change at least I will certainly stop watching something which bears the name of Trek but has become soulless. There are some fairly lax general principles and if Trek doesn't follow them anymore it stops to be Trek.

 

[Sci]

On the contrary, many people enjoy Star Trek precisely because it is not merely entertainment but also offers a bright and hopeful view of the future. Of course the current team at the helm of the franchise, fans who repeat the factually wrong "it is just entertainment" and the fairly reactionary Zeitgeist make it likely that Trek is about to change.

I don't see why you would say that; Zachary Quinto and J.J. Abrams, for instance, have made it clear that they want their Star Trek films to reflect a bright, optimistic vision of the future.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

On the contrary, many people enjoy Star Trek precisely because it is not merely entertainment but also offers a bright and hopeful view of the future.

Actually 2 days ago io9 did an article on that for the sci-fi genre but not specifically the Star Trek franchise.
David Brin on the Need to Restore Optimism to Science Fiction

 

[stj]

What if? fiction about a world that might actually happen has a compelling interest that makes it more entertaining than Can't happen! fiction. The entertainment standard is not a standard at all, but a tag for a refusal to analyze what's entertaining. Of course there's no requirement to bother analyzing what entertains you but then, why ever would you want to engage in a discussion (aka group analysis) of entertainment?

Star Trek has slipped into Can't happen! Of course it makes it less interesting. Tranhumanism and the Singularity are more interesting to those people who think they can happen than they are to those of us who think they can't happen in any fashion remotely similar to what these people are thinking. The fictional science of a Star Trek reboot needs to be reconceptualized (one of the reasons the Abrams version is mentally and emotionally impoverished,) but then, would people call it Star Trek?