How do we get to the Star Trek future?

[Horizons96]

how do we get to the star trek future?

Start here:

The Philosophy of Humanism, (1949), 1965 edition: Ungar Pub Co ISBN 0-8044-5595-3, 7th rev. edition 1990: Continuum Publishing Company, ISBN 0-8044-6379-4, 8th rev. edition (with gender neutral references by editors Beverley Earles and Beth K. Lamont) 1997 Humanist Press ISBN 0-931779-07-3, Online version in Adobe Acrobat PDF format (originally published in 1949 as Humanism as a Philosophy

 

[T'Girl]

Start here:

The Philosophy of Humanism ...

The author Corliss Lamont. How can someone who supported communist state governments, with all the horrors and suffering they piled upon their citizens, call themselves a humanist?

There has to be a better book out there on humanism, than one written by this twisted individual.

 

[Horizons96]

Start here:

The Philosophy of Humanism ...

The author Corliss Lamont. How can someone who supported communist state governments, with all the horrors and suffering they piled upon their citizens, call themselves a humanist?

There has to be a better book out there on humanism, than one written by this twisted individual.

Many well-meaning people like Lamont were drawn into the (false) promises of communism, and more specifically the philosophy of Marxism, during that time (especially in the face of brazen corruptness of certain interests in the West who had their own agendas) , but went on to later criticize some of communism's massive shortfalls.

He swung further to the left in the 1930's as he studied the causes of the Great Depression, wrote a book on the Soviet Union, became head of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship and returned from visits to the Soviet Union with high praise. "The people are better dressed, food is good and plentiful, everyone seems confident, happy and full of spirit," he said. He later became more critical of Soviet failures -- deploring its treatment of political opponents as mentally ill, for example, and condemning the denial of free speech and other basic human rights -- though he insisted that a nation transformed from feudalism to superpower in a few decades could not be expected immediately to develop democratic institutions like those in the West.
Critics later said he had been oversold on Stalinism and they attacked him as hopelessly naive as he continued to promote Soviet-American friendship long after the Cold War had made it a myth. And his espousal of these themes -- and of organizations supporting them -- made him an obvious target of redbaiters on Capitol Hill in the 1950's

NY Times


And I'm sure others here would of already read in his wiki:

Lamont was president emeritus of the American Humanist Association and in 1977 was named Humanist of the Year. In 1981, he received the Gandhi Peace Award. In 1998 Lamont received a posthumous Distinguished Humanist Service Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union and he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.

Wikipedia

This was anything but a "twisted individual".

I will practically guarantee you that Lamont was a hugely influential figure in Roddenberry's thinking and, thus, Star Trek.

His book 'The Philosophy of Humanism' is a great read and is easygoing enough for those less inclined to enjoy essay-like writings. I implore everyone to try and give it a go. Many of the philosophical underpinnings of Trek that we've all taken for granted over the years will become more apparent, identifiable and articulated.

 

[Rarewolf]

Necessity is the mother of invention.

If necessity is the mother, who is the father? Pride, Greed, War?

The Space race was just that, a race.

 

[Hatshepsut]

The Star Trek future is not likely in the cards unless a fundamental change in our understanding of physics takes place alongside a massive hike in the size of energy flows our technology can control. Einstein's Special Relativity theory doesn't accommodate the whole "warp factor" thing, becoming the first basic set of physics laws we have to overturn, for instance. Not to say that human beings will never travel to another star system, or that we should give up efforts to explore outer space, but Star Trek makes it look a lot easier than it really is. The dead hulk of Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is the fastest man-made object to date, traveling toward the stars at about one parsec per 60000 years. The nearest stars are a thousand centuries away at this rate. Frankly Star Trek does better at presenting social ideals than it does at science.

 

[T'Girl]

His book 'The Philosophy of Humanism' is a great read and is easygoing enough for those less inclined to enjoy essay-like writings.

Yes, I did read the PDF (admittedly skipping over some portions), and did find it a interesting read, if not a great one.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Whilst not necessarily a STAR TREK future, per se, I never want to see flying cars become a reality. Celebrities who fly helicopters and small planes already crash into rivers and the sides of apartment complexes with too much regularity for my tastes. That's the last thing I want to see is a Chevy pickup flying towards my window, as I'm watching STAR TREK: INSURRECTION, with some texting moron at the wheel. I would like to see a sort of hover vehicle like what Luke Skywalker drives in the old STAR WARS movies. Of course even that has its problems, but if anyone ever got ran over by one, they could just pop up, give the driver the finger and go about their busy day, without missing a beat. And best of all, they're ground huggers - no flying into people's windows or anything like that. No more-so than with regular cars, right now, at any rate ...

 

[IrishNero]

Contact equal or greater extraterrestrial intelligence. Necessity is the mother of invention. Until we have a reason to do a thing, we won't. Until we must accept something outside of us as being as important or more so, we'll always be blind, self centered, little monkeys

Sadly, if I were an extraterrestrial intelligence and I knew anything about us, I'd consider this place a hazard zone, & would go to every length to make sure I never got discovered by us. Sometimes I imagine that to an intelligence elsewhere, we must look like a horrific cancer on this world

When I think about the amount of time & effort that's gone into finding other intelligence in the universe, without a single inkling of anything coming back, I sometimes consider it not wanting to be found is as likely a reason as there being none

As I have joked for many years: Perhaps the best evidence there is that there is intelligent life out there is that they have never tried to contact us.

 

[BeatleJWOL]

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

~William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 2 Act IV

 

[uniderth]

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

~William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 2 Act IV

No, that's not for another 60 years.

 

[Chronos]

A combination of science, ambitious projects, and private ventures.

As awful as it sounds, SETI is virtually useless. Space is too vast to rely on slow radio waves. Nobody is hearing our signals, and we aren't hearing anyone's signals. All of the money spent on these things is, unfortunately, being flushed down the drain.

Solving problems on Earth sounds good, but there's no apparent solution at this time. One does not simply say "fix Earth" and have it done. This will take time regardless, but maybe Earth's ascension to space will help unify things a bit.

The space race worked once, and it could work again, but anything further than the moon is going to require a powerful motivation to convince a government to send people there. Maybe if we discovered that Mars was made up of mostly gold and copper.

International cooperation is a good thought, but our current cooperation on things like the International Space Station is probably the limit to which we'll need to collaborate. Unless we can find a common space-related goal that would result in a large group of countries dropping tons of money and man-hours on a project.

More human spaceflight certainly isn't the way forward. As much as it's really cool to have people in space, there's not much more they can do than a probe or drone can. They're also far more difficult to transport because they require food, water, and oxygen, not to mention the fact that they probably need to be brought back. Unless it's a colonization mission.

Profit drives the world. I'm almost certain that it will be those who are looking to make a profit who will be the first to bring us closer to a warp-capable future. It's nice to think that government agencies like NASA can do the job, but really, where's the incentive? They have a (relatively) small budget and there isn't much return on investment when much of what they make is blasted into space never to return. NASA doesn't have the funding and people required to make a warp drive, but private enterprises looking to mine distant asteroids or even planets might.

 

[uniderth]

We've already missed the eugenics wars, DY-100 sleeper ships, launch of the nomad probe, and building the millennium gate.

I*think our most immediate concerns are building the Sanctuary districts, creating Interface, and inventing hover cars.