Trek Technologies that Seemed Fantastical But Came True in Our Lifetime

[cgervasi]

We already have almost achieved a more primitive version of [TOS's computer voice interface] today (not yet with the degree of freedom the TNG era computers allow for in natural speech commands, but only in limited areas), and it looked like we would achieve what we have today in the not too distant future at the time ENT was made, so I don't think adding a (perhaps slightly more primitive than TNG era) form of computer voice interface would have particularly hurt the credibility of 'less advanced tech'. Also because the UT doesn't exist as of yet, but is clearly in its formative stages during the ENT era.

This discussion on the Enterprise Forum got me thinking about how some technologies that I thought were a stretch for the 23rd century have come true already.

• In Naked Now, Riker gives Data the impossible task of searching for a story somewhere of someone showering in his clothing. Data says it will be nearly impossible. He is able to find it pretty quickly once Riker remembers it was from a book about the history of ships named Enterprise. I could see books being digitized, but it seemed like a stretch to search all books with that theme, and it seemed like it would take some time to download the digitized books.
  
• In Darmok, Troi verbally asks the computer for all references to a foreign word, and it starts listening them off like Wikipedia. This seemed far-fetched to me. I imagined this like "looking through the abstracts index book", but it being digitized. It just seemed impossible.
  
• "Resolving it into our language..." in the The Last Output. They have a page of text with all foreign characters, and the computer can translate it by pressing a button. A machine simply translating the words would be unintelligible and unintentionally funny, I thought.
• In the episode with the Binars, Captain Picard touches his com badge and requests to talk to Data on a distant starbase. I remember laughing at this. Of course some manual work would be required to set up a repeater uplink to a subspace radio. (I also found it hard to believe that a middle-aged man could sit down at a computer terminal on an operating system he didn't know and do anything. Get him a typewriter. Computers were for people my age, I thought. It never occurred to me I would ever be a middle-aged man. )
• TNG Touch Screens - I loved them being different from the TOS-era buttons. They really stood out to me. But it seemed hard to imagine doing serious work on a touch screen.
• My tech manual said the PADDs used the same radio frequency and had a protocol to share it. I thought for sure they'd be on separate frequencies. Time-division multiple access (TDMA) were a mature technology by the time I was finishing college in the late 90s.
• Handsfree chat without feedback or echos
• Handheld weapons with a "stunning effect that's not very pleasant," as Kirk described it. In Man Trap, Spock questions Kirk using stun instead of a lethal setting, apparently because the stun effect isn't as reliable at stopping an armed threat. I actually did think when I saw that that if such a weapon existed Kirk and Spock debating using it as an alternative to more lethal force would be the exception. I figured people would use it for the slightest provocation, which unfortunately was correct.

Of course, I also thought the Space Shuttle program was just the beginning. We had been to the moon before I was born, and that was old 50 years after the first airplanes, so by the time I was my parents' age, we'd have bases in low earth orbit, on the moon, and on Mars. The Space Shuttle was just the first in a line of resuable vehicles to get easily between earth and low earth orbit. Obviously none of that happened.

But I'm thrilled to be 42 years old and be using and sometimes involved in designing equipment that 30 years ago seemed too fantastical for Star Trek.

 

[Push The Button]

3D printers are certainly the first baby step toward the replicator, and the system that allows Stephen Hawking to communicate is already far beyond poor Captain Pike's blinking light.

 

[JasonJ]

Lithium-Ion batteries/cells providing tons of power per gram of weight, a big leap in tech that could/would power many ST like devices.

PADDs coming to fruition with the release of the iPad and subsequent Android based tablets. The things that can be done with any modern tablet are a thousand times more functional than any PADD seen on Star Trek.

Advances in nuclear power. Significantly more output in much safer operations.

Quantum entanglement experiments leading to the first "transported/teleported" particles. Spooky action at a distance proven and demonstrated.
Giant high definition displays becoming ubiquitous in modern times; much like the MSD's and conference room displays seen in ST.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Voice interaction with computers.

Computers being able to parse your grammar and guess intent, and search for information in a way that intelligently applies this intent.

 

[Smellincoffee]

The internet is a collective database -- if you can't find a recording or movie on youtube, or an ebook version of something, it's possible to request a physical-data version of even the most obscure of books. Almost rivals the Star Trek libraries.

 

[geotrek]

3D printers are certainly the first baby step toward the replicator

Agreed. I write about additive manufacturing quite a bit, and this technology will only continue to evolve.