No Television In the Trek Universe-unrealistic?

[Dayton3]

In "The Neutral Zone", Data makes the comment about television dying out as a medium in 2040 IIRC.

In Voyager, when the ship goes back to the 1990s, what's his name makes the comment regarding television (while Kes and Neelix) watch it that he couldn't understand just watching something instead of being a part of it (like on the holodeck).

Is any of this at all realistic?

As someone once said, in most homes the television is little more than a talking lamp. That is few people pay much attention to it until something comes on and it grabs their attention.

I mean come on.

We know the Federation has a News service so they must broadcast that news.

Do we really think that in the 24th century people come home tired and turn on the news, but insist on being projected into a holodeck version of it?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Mayby they were refering to the technology. Holo killed the video star.

 

[Kryton]

In the future they have ACTUAL talking lamps.

 

[Jack Bauer]

We know the Federation has a News service so they must broadcast that news.

Do we really think that in the 24th century people come home tired and turn on the news, but insist on being projected into a holodeck version of it?

Nope. In Endgame they showed a future version of Janeway watching the news.

 

[RandyS]

We know the Federation has a News service so they must broadcast that news.

Do we really think that in the 24th century people come home tired and turn on the news, but insist on being projected into a holodeck version of it?

Nope. In Endgame they showed a future version of Janeway watching the news.

In a future that was erased, and therefore never happened. Besides, continuity was not VOYAGER's strong suit.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

We know the Federation has a News service so they must broadcast that news.

Do we really think that in the 24th century people come home tired and turn on the news, but insist on being projected into a holodeck version of it?

Nope. In Endgame they showed a future version of Janeway watching the news.

In a future that was erased, and therefore never happened. Besides, continuity was not VOYAGER's strong suit.

There was also mention of Azetbur's raise to Chancellor as being "on the news" by Valeris in TUC. Perhaps, television as we know it is dead. What Janeway was watching and Valeris could've been a future iteration of the internet.

 

[Kryton]

Well, don't forget the "video journalists" on board for the launch of Enterprise-B in Generations as well.

 

[trash80]

There has been talk a few times of interactive media replacing "passive" media (for want of a better term), i remember back in the 90s people said rock was dead and people would interact with an artist's music and make their own mixes et cetera. it didn't work out that way because a lot of the time (most of the time?) people don't want to interact with media, they just want to sit back and be entertained.

For that reason i find it hard to believe some kind of TV beyond news does not exist in the future, unless people really are that bored in the 24th C they can only watch a story if they dress up and play a role.

 

[Therin of Andor]

There has been talk a few times of interactive media replacing "passive" media (for want of a better term), i remember back in the 90s people said rock was dead and people would interact with an artist's music and make their own mixes et cetera.

Free-to-air commercial television is almost dead now...

 

[HortaVorta]

I also think the references to a news service indicate it's just that--information, not diversion. Data's specific line is "that particular form of entertainment did not last"--and news channels that were just reportage and journalism, not flashy ad-revenue generation, wouldn't necessarily count precisely as entertainment. There's probably a UFP Council equivalent of C-SPAN as well.

Or maybe Data was just talking pedantically about network-style broadcast TV, where the viewer can only choose from what's on the schedule and can't choose when they want to watch it. And frankly, given WWIII, there were a lot of things that "did not last much beyond 2040."

 

[Ptrope]

In Trek's time, going by today's trends, something like the Internet will evolve to wipe out TV and replace it with, if not an immersive experience, at least an interactive one that isn't bound by archaic notions like fixed schedules and plots. Actually, that'll probably happen a lot sooner than Trek's time .

 

[Sci]

A lot depends on how Data was defining "television." Did he mean any audio-visual telecommunications signal? Or was he referring exclusively to analog A/V signals transmitted through the air?

 

[3D Master]

Not at all. Television is already dying today. It's slowly being replaced with signals and programs you take off of the internet whenever you want to watch it.

Television; as in a passive receiver of some signal being broadcast through the airwaves, is going the way of the dinosaur. In fact, Data's prediction of the mid 2020s seems to be spot on.

 

[ambelamba]

From my knowledge, Trek writers are not known for creating fully living and breathing universe. For example, they didn't really thought of how the economy of future really works. Hence, the contradiction between First Contact and the use of that gold bulion thing in DS9 happens.

I guess the writers wanted to make future look different. That's it. I know that this sounds really painful to you but the creators of the shows really don't care how merticulously analytical the fans are.

This is my take. Humans are voyeuristic animals. Although the physical form of TV will change definitely, there's no way that broadcasting itself will be completely abolished. I believe that TV and internet will eventually 'merge', not one devouring another. And look at the general population. Half of the planet earth don't even have an access to the internet. Look outside of your cozy, western lifestyle, folks.

In "The Neutral Zone", Data makes the comment about television dying out as a medium in 2040 IIRC.

In Voyager, when the ship goes back to the 1990s, what's his name makes the comment regarding television (while Kes and Neelix) watch it that he couldn't understand just watching something instead of being a part of it (like on the holodeck).

Is any of this at all realistic?

As someone once said, in most homes the television is little more than a talking lamp. That is few people pay much attention to it until something comes on and it grabs their attention.

I mean come on.

We know the Federation has a News service so they must broadcast that news.

Do we really think that in the 24th century people come home tired and turn on the news, but insist on being projected into a holodeck version of it?

 

[RandyS]

Well, don't forget the "video journalists" on board for the launch of Enterprise-B in Generations as well.

Yeah, plus in DS9, Jake works for something called the "Federation News Service"", and it's never explained what that is, exactly, was it?

 

[tobindax]

What trek didn't know was the computer networking revolution.

It's not just holodecks, the future is full of intergalactic interwebs of holodecks.

 

[ambelamba]

Well, don't forget the "video journalists" on board for the launch of Enterprise-B in Generations as well.

Yeah, plus in DS9, Jake works for something called the "Federation News Service"", and it's never explained what that is, exactly, was it?

I bet the writes never came up with the explanation.

 

[Timo]

It sounds realistic to me that broadcast TV would indeed be dead by the Trek 2020s, and could be much farther on the way to oblivion in the Trek 2000s than it is in our 2000s. Even with Henry Starling dead in 1996, Earth home computer technology would probably be at least every bit as prevalent as it is in our universe, and probably more so. And while random marketing factors might prolong the life of broadcast TV in our universe, different random events in the Trek one might drive TV to extinction much faster and promote alternate media.

I'm sure there would remain a few enthusiasts of the old art of broadcast TV, just as there remain practitioners of other "essentially dead" arts such as eloquism or calligraphy or troubadour singing. That wouldn't mean TV was still alive, though, just like the work of a few SCA activists doesn't mean the medieval theater troupe would remain a living art.

It sounds perfectly realistic to me that there would be manned interstellar spacecraft and cryonics in the Trek 1980s, too. It really is an alternate history, and such minor technological and cultural hiccups would fall well within the borders of the possible.

It's a slightly different issue whether things like 2060s FTL drive and alien visitations would be realistic in the Trek universe. I mean, it's part and parcel of the Trek universe that aliens do exist, and we can then speculate on the in-universe realism of them coming down to Earth in 2050s; IMHO, the odds for that are very good. And it's part of the Trek universe that FTL is possible in theory and practice, but IMHO the in-universe odds of a human coming up with that invention in the 2050s already are pretty low. Death of TV is plausible, birth of warp drive is implausible. (In our universe, odds for a Cochrane are IMHO zero and warp drive will never come to be, but that's a different argument again.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[stupidname]

Well, don't forget the "video journalists" on board for the launch of Enterprise-B in Generations as well.

Yeah, plus in DS9, Jake works for something called the "Federation News Service"", and it's never explained what that is, exactly, was it?

His history as a writer suggests that his role is probably to provide written media, though. It's only the reporters with cameras on the E-B that makes a news service incompatible with the notion of no television.

 

[Deks]

I would say that any televised broadcasts in the Trek universe are primarily used for news services and emergencies.
Entertainment on the other hand is accessible to the general public through other means.

As for the economics ... they work just fine.
The gold pressed latinum was always used in trade with species that do use money in their society, and DS9 as a station was outside Federation territory.