If you could only have one: Transporter or Holodeck

My holodeck would have an external power plug or physical power switch if I have to wire the danged thing in myself.

 

My immediate, knee-jerk reaction is:

"Ha! Obviously the Holodeck! This is easy!"

However, then I comprehend the uses of the transporter...

1. Being able to go anywhere. No commuting, no hours and hours of my life wasted in traffic or delays or just merely travelling.
2. Expense. I could have a holiday, to Barbados...right now. Just the price of a hotel...if I decided to stay there..I COULD just transport home to bed and beam back at will.
3. I'd never be late for anything. Ever.
4. Did I forget my ticket to this gig? Oh no worries, Ill just beam home and get it and be back in about 7 seconds.
5. The gifts I could buy my G/F would be epic. Belgian chocolate cake for dessert? How does visiting the Colliseum tonight sound? Hell the holidays would be epic.
6. There is a sort of magic factor to it as well. As in, you could visit places you would never realistically visit. Victoria Falls? Sure. Summit of Everest? Better wrap up! Vladivostok? Sure. Middle of a jungle? Why not!

The holodeck would be incredible. Your only limit would be your imagination. However...none of it is real. I'd kill for a holodeck....but the transporter would practically be so much more useful.

 

I don't understand why there is still a debate - I thought I won the thread.

Step 1: Bring some bulk raw materials into your holodeck from the outside world.
Step 2. Have the holodeck generate a machine or machines that can take those raw materials and process them into equipment.
Step 3. Have the machine make these items in this order:

1. 24th century power generation system of some kind - ask the holodeck computer what is appropriate - suitable to run a shuttlecraft. Probably a small warp or anti-matter reactor.
2. A shuttle shield generator. As soon as this is complete, set up the shield generator and the reactor outside the holodeck to defend it with.
3. A hand phaser. Power it up from the reactor, then use it to defend the holodeck and reactor. Probably unnecessary with the shield, but let's not tempt it.
4. A small launch vehicle, a small mobile satellite armed with shield and a phaser, sensors, and a handheld control unit. Send those up to better defend the whole setup and provide sensor data for the next step.
5. Now you make your transporter. It can be a single platform, and this can use up the last of the raw materials you brought in, because from this point forward, you can beam in any additional material needed.

I'm going to stop here, because I think it is pretty obvious how to continue at this point to get to having your own starship in orbit, as well as to conquering Earth.

 

Im going to assume than the holodeck is incapable of inventing new technology by itself without some proper programming our outside stimuli to provoke such development.

Even Geordi worked WITH Leah Brahms....he didnt just drop some pens and paper and say "Yo babe, Im going to grab a pint in ten-forward, have my problem fixed when I get back".

 

Holodeck. It's less likely to kill you if something goes wrong.

Just ask the families of Sonak and Lori Ciana (from ST:TMP) how safe transporters supposedly are.

Sure, a transporter would allow you to get somewhere instantly, but I would settle for a functioning mass-transit system. Again: less likely to kill you in the event of malfunction.

 

Hey, at least the transporter wont send angry Nazi's at you every time a firmware update goes wonky.

 

Besides, transit-obsessed that I am, sometimes it's *fun* to take a train that takes a bit of time to get where you're going. I'm not necessarily talking about, say, the 4 train at rush hour in NYC, just a leisurely train ride. That can actually be fun. Transporters would do away with all that.

 

You have actually reminded me of a thought I have in regards to Earth in ST. I love the thought that all the roads are gone. Or atleast, greatly reduced and minimalized. No more landscape ripped apart and divided up, no more animals getting killed by cars.

Are'nt train-like machines still in service by the 24th century? They are just super fast, non-polluting etc?

 

Who said anything about NEW technology? I asked and HIjol stipulated that the holodeck would have access to the 24th century databases. The material processing machines are basically just replicators - I think the holodeck can whip one of those up, and if the materials it draws from to generate objects are non-holographic matter, then the objects should be, too.

(This is a modification of an idea I've had about Green Lantern's ring in the past, too. There was this whole plotline where the Green Lantern named Kyle Rayner gave this guy back his legs using the ring, but the legs were made of green energy, and the next time Kyle's ring lost all of its charge, the guys legs disappeared. Stupid, stupid, stupid. You don't will legs into existence, you have the ring draw on the huge database of stuff that the Guardians that created it knew about to will into existence a machine capable of pulling raw materials from the air and making the guy some new REAL legs. )

 

The roads are not gone. We saw San Francisco in detail in STID, and it still had roads - with cars, pedestrians, trains, the whole shebang.

 

True, all of that is still in the places where humanity still has communities, but a lot of roads might be gone. With the population down from the wars (WW III, Eugenics, etc), plus offworld colonizations, plus improvements in birth control technologies and better education for the population that IS there, there may be whole cities, much less small towns, that just aren't there anymore - so no need for roads or tracks to go to them, either. Maybe it was just me, but even the impression I got of Riverside, IA, in Star Trek 2009 was of a place that, aside from the shipyard facilities, was actually SMALLER than Riverside, IA, in our 2014.

 

Agree, Transporter.

 

I never said they WERE gone. Though I really dont count JJ Trek as cannon...

I cant help but feel that, what we were shown in the tv series, perhaps there has been some deconstruction of the road network in areas.

 

Holodeck, with of course, safety protocols well-activated. If I make a mistake with the holodeck, I don't risk to be beamed into a brick wall or on a lightning rod.
I don't think a transporter can be something everybody has at home. I would be risky to have a lot of simoultaneous transportation at 8:30 am into a classroom or a office.

 

Plus, who wants to teleport with someone and accidentally merge like Tuvix?

Memom: "Oh no, now I'm my own mother."

 

Holodeck. I don't mind defending myself against crazed holoprograms, but there's no way I'm going to let a machine break down my molecules and reassemble them somewhere else.

 

You said "I love the thought that all the roads are gone". In what other way could this possibly be interpreted?

Don't take this personally, but you have no choice. You MUST take it as canon, simply because it is. It's onscreen, therefore it is. It's not up to you (or me) to decide any differently.

Well, to be fair, we never actually saw Riverside in the film. All we saw was the bar and the Starfleet shipyards. We never had any glimpse of the city itself. There were those huge structures off in the distance, but those could be anything.

 

For what it's worth, Kirk didn't know how to drive in "A Piece of the Action," but maybe he just didn't know how to use an old-fashioned clutch.

 

There's a lot of possible transporter accidents (or fake accidents as we see in Data's Day) despite these devices are usually operated by trained people and receive a regulare maintenance. So, a home transporter would need regular visits of a technician from the company...and this technician is a potential victim from a malfunction of your transporter.

A brand new source of daddy issues!

 

In all honesty-

The transporter can do one thing. Move folks. Yes, that can be good, but with it comes implications (where does the soul go, what happens to the original transportee, etc), plus if the thing ever breaks down you're out of luck.

On the other hand...

If you're handed a holodeck you can create literally anything your heart desires, plus you can use it (with some tools and the right program) to create more holodeck technology- like a repair/backup portable hologram generator so you'll never have to worry about it breaking down. You could even, if you wanted, create your own personal Chief O'Brien and have him make you a transporter, so you could have both.