Unless you want to chart a nebula, or defend against a space fleet, divert an asteroid or examine some weird phenomena.
It should put all the transport ships out of work, though.
Immortality is discovered and is then promptly ignored
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It should put all the transport ships out of work, though.
That's an overly conservative way of looking at things, though. Charting a nebula would soon be conducted by transporting - it would just require Starfleet to stop thinking in terms of "horseless carriages" or "electronic mail" and start applying the tech in ways that make use of its novel qualities. Say, instead of flying a charting pattern through the nebula, Starfleet could chart every part of it simultaneously, varying the resolution rather than the scanning speed in order to achieve the desired results. And no doubt it would eventually become much cheaper and more efficient to beam direct destruction and deflection to enemy ships and nasty asteroids and skip the part where Starfleet hauls clumsy and vulnerable physical hardware to those locations.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
That made me think of the way they learn stuff in The Matrix with a quick jab of a needle in the neck and a software fix you can learn to fly a helicopter or fight well. I'd have to wonder how well that translates for those poor sods and how long they keep those new skills.
Worf (and me): "You're just supposed to sit here?"
I'm all for having NO more new Star Trek, ever, unless a challenging, complicated, no-comfort-zone version is done that blows the top off your head. A Trek set centuries later, in which all the ramifications of this tech are explored, that seems to imply we're a few steps closer to godhood... that would qualify. It would have to be very thoroughly and daringly planned out ahead of time. New consequences of more advanced tech, that we've already seen in primitive stages, would have to come at us right and left in every story as a basic part of life, not just one tech issue at a time. You could do it by showing rather than talking about it sometimes, I think.
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No more easily digested mere space adventure. Note word "mere". Plenty of adventure, as a delivery device for the other great stuff.
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Actually the thing in Insurrection was very long life not true immortality as such. And the ability to slow time down if you concentrate real hard and have a boner.
...Which is sort of the opposite of longevity, because you can now waste hours of your remaining life living through a single second.
What is "true immortality"? The Nexus in ST:GEN was supposed to be the opposite of "true", that is, it was thoroughly false. But would it involve any element of longevity? Or just the ability to travel in time (never truly demonstrated, because Picard only went back a few minutes)? Would you die a natural death after an appropriate number of years, only those years would have no meaning in the outside context and you might choose to hop aboard in AD 2293 and die after fifty years in AD 345 992 774?
Timo Saloniemi
What is "true immortality"? The Nexus in ST:GEN was supposed to be the opposite of "true", that is, it was thoroughly false. But would it involve any element of longevity? Or just the ability to travel in time (never truly demonstrated, because Picard only went back a few minutes)? Would you die a natural death after an appropriate number of years, only those years would have no meaning in the outside context and you might choose to hop aboard in AD 2293 and die after fifty years in AD 345 992 774?
Timo Saloniemi
Nobody wants to get old and die. But most people recognize that it happens and accept it as a natural, unavoidable part of life. Knowing that something must happen, is not the same as wanting it to happen.
That said, if I was offered immortality right now, I wouldn't take it. The kind of eternal life I want, can't be found on Earth.
Immortality aside, was there ever any followup to Scotty's transporter stasis? Such a tech could literally be standard medical emergency protocol for when death is seconds away, & no cure is forthcoming. Lock them up in a pattern buffer until the necessary administrations are available, even if that takes years
I always thought the process was unique to Scotty and that no one else was proficient enough to recreate it.
I have no doubt it can be explained away with that, easily enough, but the dude wasn't a wizard, just a magnificent engineer. People would want to study up on that bit of tech discovery just as much as a phased cloak or a sentient android, etc... I'd think
Here's another way to live forever: An android body like in "I, Mudd"
UHURA: No, they're lying. It's a trick. Doctor McCoy injected something into Harry Mudd to make him look sick. It's a trick to get back on board and sabotage the ship.
ALICE 1: Your request is refused.
KIRK: Uhura, why did you tell her?
UHURA: Because I want an android body. I want immortality. I'll live forever, Captain. I'll be young and beautiful.
ALICE 1: You have been of assistance. We shall fulfill our obligation.
UHURA: Thank you.
ALICE 1: The programming for your body will be completed before we leave.
UHURA: No, they're lying. It's a trick. Doctor McCoy injected something into Harry Mudd to make him look sick. It's a trick to get back on board and sabotage the ship.
ALICE 1: Your request is refused.
KIRK: Uhura, why did you tell her?
UHURA: Because I want an android body. I want immortality. I'll live forever, Captain. I'll be young and beautiful.
ALICE 1: You have been of assistance. We shall fulfill our obligation.
UHURA: Thank you.
ALICE 1: The programming for your body will be completed before we leave.
I really don't believe transferring a consciousness is possible. Copying one, maybe, but the original is still going to die. By copying their consciousness all they'd done is arranged it so their loved ones won't have to miss them, but they aren't avoiding their own death.
I thought the one exception to that was Ira Graves. His behavior certainly did seem to reflect a smugness of having beaten death
IMO, just because the copied/transferred consciousness believes himself to have "survived death" doesn't mean the original didn't still experience death from his subjective perspective.
I think insurrection was about immorality too. The planet they were on reversed the aging process and prevented aging.
DOUGHERTY: The Prime Directive doesn't apply. These people are not indigenous to this planet. They were never meant to be immortal. We'll simply be restoring them to their natural evolution.
Let's keep it real though. In the strictest sense, sooner or later their sun would go nova and they would die that way.
I don't really believe what Dougherty had to say.
I think the effects of the metaphasic radiation slowed down aging but didn't hinder disease or natural death. I think at some point people in that world would eventually die..
Also didn't explain Annij and her time slowing abilities.
Here's the relevant dialogue
PICARD: How old are you?
SOJEF: We came here from a solar system on the verge of self-annihilation, ...where technology had created weapons that threatened to destroy all life. A small group of us set off to find a new home, ...a home that would be isolated from the threats of other worlds. ...That was three hundred and nine years ago.
PICARD: And you haven't aged a day since then?
SOJEF: Actually, I was a good deal older when we arrived ...in terms of my physical condition.
ANIJ: There's an unusual metaphasic radiation coming from the planet's rings. It continuously regenerates our genetic structure. You must have noticed the effects by now.
PICARD: We've just begun to. ...I suppose you're seventy-five.
ARTIM: No. I'm twelve.
TOURNEL: The metaphasic radiation won't begin to affect him until he reaches maturity.
PICARD: To most offlanders, what you have here would be more valuable than ...gold-pressed latinum. ...I'm afraid that's the reason that someone may be trying to take your world away from you.
I think the slow motion thing was just some trick they learned over the years
ANIJ: You stop reviewing what happened yesterday, ...stop planning for tomorrow. ...Let me ask you a question. ...Have you ever experienced a perfect moment in time?
PICARD: A perfect moment?
ANIJ: When time seemed to stop ...and you could almost live in that moment.
PICARD: Seeing my home planet from space for the first time.
ANIJ: Exactly. Nothing more complicated than perception. ...You explore the universe. We have discovered that a single moment in time can be a universe in itself, ...full of powerful forces. ...Most people aren't aware enough of the now to even notice.
PICARD: I wish I could spare a few centuries to learn.
ANIJ: It took us centuries to learn that it doesn't have to take centuries to learn it.
But I expect sooner or later the planet would naturally lose the ability to sustain them.
Are there any takers for this Cellular Regeneration and Entertainment Chamber being the key to immorality? From DS9 "In the Cards"
^ All indications are that the chamber has no actual function. It doesn't actually DO anything. Giger might think it does, but it's just a placebo. It's worthless.
Here's the relevant dialogue
PICARD: How old are you?
SOJEF: We came here from a solar system on the verge of self-annihilation, ...where technology had created weapons that threatened to destroy all life. A small group of us set off to find a new home, ...a home that would be isolated from the threats of other worlds. ...That was three hundred and nine years ago.
PICARD: And you haven't aged a day since then?
SOJEF: Actually, I was a good deal older when we arrived ...in terms of my physical condition.
ANIJ: There's an unusual metaphasic radiation coming from the planet's rings. It continuously regenerates our genetic structure. You must have noticed the effects by now.
PICARD: We've just begun to. ...I suppose you're seventy-five.
ARTIM: No. I'm twelve.
TOURNEL: The metaphasic radiation won't begin to affect him until he reaches maturity.
PICARD: To most offlanders, what you have here would be more valuable than ...gold-pressed latinum. ...I'm afraid that's the reason that someone may be trying to take your world away from you.
I think the slow motion thing was just some trick they learned over the years
ANIJ: You stop reviewing what happened yesterday, ...stop planning for tomorrow. ...Let me ask you a question. ...Have you ever experienced a perfect moment in time?
PICARD: A perfect moment?
ANIJ: When time seemed to stop ...and you could almost live in that moment.
PICARD: Seeing my home planet from space for the first time.
ANIJ: Exactly. Nothing more complicated than perception. ...You explore the universe. We have discovered that a single moment in time can be a universe in itself, ...full of powerful forces. ...Most people aren't aware enough of the now to even notice.
PICARD: I wish I could spare a few centuries to learn.
ANIJ: It took us centuries to learn that it doesn't have to take centuries to learn it.
But I expect sooner or later the planet would naturally lose the ability to sustain them.
Are there any takers for this Cellular Regeneration and Entertainment Chamber being the key to immorality? From DS9 "In the Cards"
OK thank you I didn't know..... I will have to go find a copy of Insurrection and watch it now. Which will be OK. I loved the music.
That chamber looks like a 24th Century tanning bed.
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