8 Star Trek Gadgets that are no longer fiction

[MacLeod]

...Which is no trivial feature. Lifts today are virtually useless in skyscrapers because each of them needs its own shaft, complete with kilometer upon kilometer of extremely heavy cabling. If one were to build a true turbolift, a cabin that can move on its own and steer past fellow cabs, it would be an immense leap in construction. No more "sky lobbies" and separate express and local elevators. No more waiting, really. And a skyscraper could be 95% useful room, instead of the about 60% left over from elevator systems nowadays.

A mini SD card can hold up to 32Gb of data, no bigger than a thumb nail. In TOS, the memory cards were about the size of a cassette tape.

Which probably means the TOS card is the superior product. A mini SD is about the most user-hostile type of portable memory storage imaginable - thumbnails are not items to be carried and stored, but to be discarded as garbage. Teeny weeny pieces of junk are difficult to manipulate, always get lost, and cannot hold any sort of content information visible to the user until plugged in.

As for flip phones, the current ones are the size of continents! They would be useless without massive powerplants, vast networks of relay towers and centralized computing centers that create as much excess heat as the average paper mill. In contrast, the Trek device appears to be a self-contained "satellite phone" capable of contacting a fellow communicator or a distant starship without the need for relays of any sort. We're still decades away from the TOS "achievement" - and probably centuries, if we consider that there is no demand for anybody to develop the TOS technology since we already have this continent-sized variant.

Similarly, GPS relies on thousands of tons of distributed hardware to achieve what TOS apparently does with a single doodad aboard a starship. No real comparison there.

It's like arguing that Julius Caesar already had the internet because he could send interactive messages from Rome to Britain (the difference between horses on cobblestones and wave packets in optical waveguides being a trivial nuance)... We don't even have the capability, let alone the compactness of execution, for most of the items in the list.

Timo Saloniemi

I'm quite certain that we could if we wanted to invent a cableless lift. Perhaps using magnetic induction. Of course you would have the emergency clamps open when there is power so in the invent of a power failure they close. The question is would anyone ride in it?

 

[T'Girl]

^ Equal to receiving a full body MRI several times a day? Yeah, who wouldn't want that!

 

[Cyke101]

It also appears that we've got better synthetic textiles. The uniforms we see in Star Trek tend to rip and tear much more easily.

Or, TOS textiles could be really strong, it's just that Kirk goes the extra mile in making sure his shirt gets ripped

As for the subject of relay towers, Star Trek has subspace relay stations, though that might be a TNG invention, not a TOS invention (perhaps created to further the analogy of cell phones?).

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Subspace_relay

 

[Sector 7]

Glad to see some active discussions on my little thread.

I think Timo's comparison was taken much too literally by some. Simply put, today's cellular technology, TAKEN AS A WHOLE, is much more cumbersome than the handheld communicators of TOS. The reason is that TOS communicators do not seem to rely upon a massive network of towers, but rather can work on an unexplored planet with other landing party members or the ship in orbit.

Gary7 your comment about TOS textiles is my favorite observation!

 

[scotpens]

. . . I'm quite certain that we could if we wanted to invent a cableless lift. Perhaps using magnetic induction. Of course you would have the emergency clamps open when there is power so in the invent of a power failure they close. The question is would anyone ride in it?

Some people are afraid of riding in elevators today. Some people are afraid to fly. The vast majority will eventually adapt to new technologies.

As for the subject of relay towers, Star Trek has subspace relay stations, though that might be a TNG invention, not a TOS invention (perhaps created to further the analogy of cell phones?).

I don’t recall any mention of subspace relay stations in Trek TOS — just “subspace radio” and “subspace chatter.”

Perhaps what you mean to say is that the infrastructure necessary for them to operate successfully is the size of continents, which would be more accurate.

Nope, the infrastructure to operate them at all is of that minimum size. The handheld gadget has no functionality without said infrastructure, unless you count the use as a cute hand puppet that looks vaguely like a crocodile head or seashell.

Using your logic, then, automobiles are the size of continents because they can’t operate without a network of roads. No, wait — cars are useless without fuel, which is made from oil that may have come from halfway around the globe. So that means a car is half the size of the Earth.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

A cellphone without a telephone network to connect to is just an overpriced paperweight. So, it's a very fair point that all that's necessary for point to point communication has not been miniaturized into a cell phone.

 

[sojourner]

Using your logic, then, automobiles are the size of continents because they can’t operate without a network of roads. No, wait — cars are useless without fuel, which is made from oil that may have come from halfway around the globe. So that means a car is half the size of the Earth.

Your roads analogy is correct if viewed as cars being part of a transportation system. However, no one suggested that communicators never needed recharging, so your fuel analogy - not so much.

 

[Gary7]

A mini SD card can hold up to 32Gb of data, no bigger than a thumb nail. In TOS, the memory cards were about the size of a cassette tape.

Which probably means the TOS card is the superior product. A mini SD is about the most user-hostile type of portable memory storage imaginable - thumbnails are not items to be carried and stored, but to be discarded as garbage. Teeny weeny pieces of junk are difficult to manipulate, always get lost, and cannot hold any sort of content information visible to the user until plugged in.

I don't know what your problem is. I am talking about the miniaturization of memory, using the thumbnail sized micro SD card as an example. We never get any figures on how much storage one of those cassette sized cards can hold, but given how many of them are stacked about in various scenes, it suggests there is a limit. All we ever see are brief segments of videos, and periodic loading of programs. Given the series production time period, the estimated memory capacity for the future fell significantly short of reality. Memory capacity and miniaturization progress into the 21st century outpaced late 60's predictions many times over. In any case, your statement about content information not being visible to the user until plugged in makes no sense--the memory cards in TOS have the same restriction.

 

[Timo]

Using your logic, then, automobiles are the size of continents because they can’t operate without a network of roads.

Exactly. Which in this context would make a Star Trek hovercar a vastly more compact technology, because it wouldn't need those roads! Two utterly different technologies there, even if both can look like a DeLorean on the surface.

I'm quite certain that we could if we wanted to invent a cableless lift.

There are some experiments on using cableless lifts on modern aircraft carriers, which have electricity to spare; these ride on linear electromagnets, like many "personnel mover" systems (both wheeled monorails and maglevs). The EM fields are not a health hazard - but the linear engines are pretty expensive, as each centimeter of the rail is high tech compared with steel cables.

I am talking about the miniaturization of memory, using the thumbnail sized micro SD card as an example. We never get any figures on how much storage one of those cassette sized cards can hold, but given how many of them are stacked about in various scenes, it suggests there is a limit.

Or then different items are stored on different cards. It's perfectly normal for people to carry half a dozen memory sticks today for storing an amount of information that could be packed in a tiny corner of a single stick...

All we ever see are brief segments of videos, and periodic loading of programs.

And, interestingly enough, memories of today are less efficient at storing that sort of information than memories of yesterday - because visuals and programs become oversized, outpacing the development of memory capacity just because the creators of the visual storage formats and programs feel they are not limited by memory capacity.

I'm afraid storing a single photo might well require the total memory capacity of a pocketable storage unit in the real 2200s, be it the size of a floppy disk or a fingernail.

That aside, we never get any true indication of a maximum memory capacity on the TOS disks.

Memory capacity and miniaturization progress into the 21st century outpaced late 60's predictions many times over.

But 60s predictions were not manifest in Star Trek in any way.

In any case, your statement about content information not being visible to the user until plugged in makes no sense--the memory cards in TOS have the same restriction.

At least they could be labeled by writing on them, which the user-hostile thumbnail memory does not allow for at all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MacLeod]

^ Equal to receiving a full body MRI several times a day? Yeah, who wouldn't want that!

Well we do have mag-lev trains. And really how much time would you be spending in it?