Were PADDS ahead of their time in a different way?

[AntonyF]

We all know how tablets are basically PADD like devices and it's a time once again where Star Trek looked ahead of the curve.

But then equally so, they look kinda dated now. The fact that a PADD has a single function and needs to get physically transported looks positively archaic.

Or is it?

I can see as devices get cheaper and cheaper that you do have a device for a certain function. Even if you wipe it later and repurpose it, we are as a civilisation suffering an attention issue and having a device that is focused on one task that wouldn't let you browse the web or chat - that could be powerful.

I think we are already seeing trends towards focus. Smartphones with stripped back OSs. A resurgence of dumb phones. Yoto is a kids' audio player with nothing else to allow focus on audio - and I can see an adults Yoto being out in the next few years easily.

Even the taking them around the ship you could invent some potential reasons: one for security, if you have a document you want with an air gap. Or quite frankly attention - you want the person right there, right then to focus on it.

Thoughts?

 

[1001001]

Moving to Trek Tech.

 

[StarCruiser]

I think 2001: A Space Odyssey was much closer to what we have today:

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[publiusr]

Over at Hackaday, I have seen some E-ink builds that have the soft images you see above (from the use of projectors hidden below of course).

In-universe, my thinking is that each padd belongs to a crewman…and Picard or whoever can just set it down on the table to transfer contents…something that requires e-mail or text to this day in real life.

By simply handling the padd, you feel the weight of the crewman it represents.

This is about haptics and psychological connection.

Kirk’s communicator does not have the bells and whistles the smartphone I have in my hand does—-and rightly so.

No doomscrolling. A crewman can use it while his eyes are UP.

Of course, it uses subspace so is superior to Starlink even…

Neuromancer/Ghost in the Shell is the path we are on.

Star Trek’s technology is less Zuckerberg…more Plato’s Republic. More Tufte than Elon. Here the Daystroms look to ennoble humanity, rather than make it worse.

 

[Airmandan]

Wireless security protocols. We already have issues with devices trying to share or steal data over wireless connections. I would imagine wireless networked connections on a starship would be very restricted to ensure no cyberwarfare or hacking of ships systems.