Old Technology still being Used...

[Cyke101]

While tricorders are infinitely useful, they seem to be rather clunky to use these days, with those itty bitty screens and pads no bigger than half your palm.

Back in the 90s, I found it odd when Paris or Jake Sisko would have piles of PADDs lying around, too. I would imagine that one PADD would still suffice to do almost everything you need on a literal level, in such a way that would still keep the info compartmentalized. The PADDs = neat concept, strange execution. Amazon's Kindle could be an ancestor of the PADD, but no matter how cheap the Kindle gets, you'll rarely see large stacks of them all for one person, I imagine.

Additionally, while LCARS will always have a spot in my heart, the holographic interfaces in Iron Man is closer to what we have today, and yet seems (on the surface at least) to be more intuitive and practical than the touch screen consoles on the E-D.

 

[Captrek]

Also absurd is that personal combat weaponry in the 23rd and 24th century still consists of point-and-shoot weapons. Here in the early 21st century we are developing robots that can move around a battlefield intelligently (either on the ground or flying through the air), identify targets and attack them without exposing a human operator to counterattack. This can be done either with artificial intelligence or with remote control by a human operator. But it’s not done in Star Trek.

We did see bots like that in S1 TNG.

Ah, yes, The Arsenal of Freedom.

I think it's a Starfleet thing, but also perhaps the "wagon train to the stars" element.

An even simpler combat technology that the world of Star Trek seems to have lost is grenades. We constantly see battle scenarios in which grenades would be useful, but nobody ever uses them. Apparently in the future they forget how to make them.

INS shows Worf with some kind of bazooka, but I have to agree.

The landing party also uses a Starfleet issue grenade launcher in the first act of Arena. So I guess they have the technology, but they don’t use it because point-and-shoot looks cooler.

I wonder if there was something in the writing guide stating that battles should be like old westerns.

Just laziness, I imagine. It’s a lot easier to rely on well established techniques for depicting battles on screen than to attempt to visualize what combat might actually look like in the future. Also, this kind of combat is an easy way for people to get injured or killed, which enhances the sense of danger and turns our fighters into heroes. Sometimes the plot requires somebody to get injured or killed in combat, which isn’t likely to happen controlling an Arsenal of Freedom type weapon from a safe distance.

 

[NIUPonyBoy]

The communicators. My cellphone does more.

Your an idiot you know that.. with ur smiley face of smugness.

Knock off the personal attacks. The thread asked for a response and that's what Pleco's post was. Your "idiot" comment goes too far and won't be tolerated here.

He also spelled it wrong.

It should be you're, not your.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

There was one thing I thought of last week. I watched both an episode of TOS and the movie A Clockwork Orange. As usual there was a scene where Spock put one of the colored plastic blocks into the computer There is a scene in ACO where Alex puts in a tape of Beethoven. The tape is a small cassette, like an old answering machine tape. I turned to my girlfriend and said, "no one anticipated the disc".

 

[Maurice]

He also spelled it wrong.

It should be you're, not your.

Don't open that kettle of worms. People here protect their right to misspell like it was guaranteed by the 3rd Amendment or something.

 

[Major Chord]

Grenades were used in a good handful of situations in ENT, even before the MACOs showed up. I believe they were used aboard the Suliban ship by Reed and Archer in the Season 1 finale. So, we know that on Earth, at least, they were still considered a viable technology. Also, mentioned upthread, was the wide beam stun used in TOS. That was used in at least one episode of DS9 if I remember correctly. Damned if I remember which one though...the senario involved Kira and Sisko storming a room during a tactical drill, looking for changelings, or something like that. They use the widebeam setting to blanket the room.

 

[Trevacious]

Would a sentient aquatic life form be prohibited from working as a bridge officer simply because the bridge is not filled with water?

Why not just assign it to a ship filled with water and other aquatic life forms? Pragmatic IDIC.

As for the other issue, having bridge officers on the bridge, perhaps that IS future advancement, placing teams back in eye-contact with each other for better communication.

 

[Arpy]

Segregation preferable to creating a better communications system?

I like to think they environmental suits aquatic lifeforms or others need to wear are so refined that they barely even notice them. Maybe even get more out of them than when they're suitless in water-filled ships.