Given how quickly technology can miniaturize and advance in a century let alone 900 or so years, I have no trouble accepting that the 32nd Cent. combadges can combine so many functions (PADD, tricorder, communicator) along with a power source and be accessible through a personal holo-projector. The one thing I cannot wrap my head around is the personal transporter. Setting aside that the whole concept of the transporter is a bit "magical" technology wise, I can accept that it too can be miniaturized into the badge. What I can't understand is how the bloody thing works??!! Every time we see one used, it's just pressed/activated and it takes the user to where they want to go, but how does it know where the user wants to go? I've seen no voice commands, or other input pre-activation. No indication at all that the destination was somehow input into the badge. So, how does it know where to take the user to?? Can anyone clue me in?? Am I missing something?
Most of the time we see the "double tap" (i.e. the user taps twice on the tricom badge). That's the HOME function. Meaning, it returns the person being transported to wherever they last came from. A single tap, OTOH, activates a holographic coordinate system where the user can select where they want to go. I can't remember if we ever actually saw anybody do this, but it's there.
To be fair, cell phones today can do amazing things from streaming television to performing calculations, to personal banking and shopping to photography but are also easily breakable if stepped on. I could see future tech being relatively robust and water resistant but not made to be stomped on by the heel of a boot.
The most interesting thing about a personal transporter is that it transports itself, so it manages rematerialisation while dematerialised. Impressive. Most impressive.
As bullshit as it admittedly seems I guess they're just following the direction of travel seen when Janeway and Leonardo Da Vinci beamed themselves to safety with that drinks flask-sized personal transporter and the combadge-sized one from Nemesis. If Starfleet had the Nemesis version in 2379 they'd no doubt have something a bit better 800 years later.
Technically they should be combining this with Scotty and Spock's transwarp beaming formula to teleport anywhere in the galaxy. In the first episode I thought Book was jumping Michael to different planets each time, but apparently not. I recall this being debated about the Nemesis version. It was single use, so it could plausibly leave some parts behind. Maybe this version uses a micro replicator to do same, or holographic "machinery" which somehow takes a few seconds to fade away (as some TNG and Disco holos seem to)
I like to think that "personal transporters" have some kind of external infrastructure, like cell phones which appear to be autonomous at first glance but actually rely on a network of cell towers, GPS satellites etc to function. I'm not sure this entirely works with how they're portrayed, but it makes me feel better.
You would think given that programmable matter and all that exists that things wouldn't smash up like a 21st century phone
They don't. The comm-badges likely send a signal to the target coordinates and then move there. It would be like a ship going to Warp essentially.
Could be. I mean, is it a self-contained personal transporter or is it a remote control button for a transporter that is elsewhere?
Magic wands make perfect sense within the fictional constraints of Harry Potter. That does not mean that the word salad of Star Trek teleportation makes any sense at all in terms of real physics and science. "The Miracle Transporter from RonCo! It slices, it dices. It moves people back and forth between universes, splits them in two and before you know it, puts them back together again! Merge two whole people into one! Make them younger, then make them older again! And, with the Pattern Buffer attachment - available at no extra cost if you order now - scatter their atoms all over space and bring them back alive!" Trek transporters are, to use your word, "rubbish." Damn things must be powered by Red Kryptonite.
Why engage with this sort of conversation at all then if you're basically going to argue that none of it is real anyway? People know this. Yes it's fictional technology depicted by a science-fiction show. Well done for noticing.
With a whole lot of inconsistencies and specialized attributes thrown in for specific plot purposes. TNG:Realm of Fear, for example. From what we are told about transporter tech, how can Barclay grab someone out of the transporter stream in mid-transport?
I assumed the personal transporters just send a signal to the ship's transporter and initiates a site-to-site transport, not that the actual badge has a tiny transporter in it. Not sure if that's contradicted by anything on-screen.