what TREK TECH will never be realized?

[RobertScorpio]

Do you think there is a technology on STAR TREK(S) that will most likely never see reality? Transporter? Warp Speed perhaps?

I don't think either transporter tech will ever see reality, as seen on Trek. Someday they might beable to create small worm holes to transport between point A and B instantly. But the 'desconstruction' and 'reconstruction' of people as depicted on Trek seems a bit far fetched to me.

Strangely enough I think Warp Speed, faster than light travel, is possible. Subspace waves or bubbles I can almost see happening. So..who knows..maybe we will see some sort of warp drive. Come on Mr. Hawkins!! What's taking you so damn long!!

The tech I want most may come true through..sooner than later. Holodeck!! My use of such tech would make Lt. Brocoli look like a boy scout!!! Vulcan Sex Slaves...yeah!!!

 

[JiNX-01]

RobertScorpio said:
The tech I want most may come true through..sooner than later. Holodeck!! My use of such tech would make Lt. Brocoli look like a boy scout!!! Vulcan Sex Slaves...yeah!!!

Actually my first response to your question was holodecks. I doubt that a computer will ever be able to project solid objects that can be manipulated and used as if they were in the real world.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Dammit!! Go ahead and trample on my dreams!!!

 

[JiNX-01]

RobertScorpio said:
Dammit!! Go ahead and trample on my dreams!!!

Are you Scott Adams? He wrote in one of his books that if he had a Star Trek holodeck he would never come out of it. He'd just stay there forever have holographic sex and getting massages.

 

[Dayton3]

I don't see transporter tech as shown in Star Trek ever being real either.

Personally, while I think that faster than light travel will one day be possible, I do not think it will ever be dropping into and out of warp like changing gears.

I think it will be more along the lines of Battletech where starships sit at a certain distance from a star for days or weeks, making calculations and accumulating power before jumping to warp.

 

[USS KG5]

Dayton3 said:
I think it will be more along the lines of Battletech where starships sit at a certain distance from a star for days or weeks, making calculations and accumulating power before jumping to warp.

Well that is a computer speed and maybe sensor accuracy thing - if it took a year to calculate an FTL jump the very first time, it might only take a minute with technical advances 50 years later.

I'd love to go back to the Wright Brothers and tell them one day their invention would develop into fighter aircraft capable of reaching 50,000 feet and flying at twice the speed of sound or more, or that air travel would be as casual as by train, and all this less than a century after the first powered flight!

 

[misskim86]

Artificial intelligence

 

[Scatter]

JiNX-01 said:
Actually my first response to your question was holodecks. I doubt that a computer will ever be able to project solid objects that can be manipulated and used as if they were in the real world.

agreed. for the same reason i think transporters are out too - the amount of computer power required would be simply absurd. at least, they'll be unfeasible as far as animate matter is concerned. inanimate matter might be a totally different kettle of fish...

 

[C.E. Evans]

IMO, number one on the list of things that won't be realized is warp drive. Sure, there are countless theories about how FTL propulsion can be achieved (i.e., wormholes, folding space, etc.), but no one has really postulated a viable way to make any of them possible...or survivable. The speed of light remains an inviolate universal speed limit otherwise.

Even in Treknology, the whole thing resides on two magical substances--dilithium and verterium cortenide--as the lynchpins that really makes warp drive possible. Still, you can have all the high-energy electroplasma at your disposal, but your ship isn't going anywhere without the actual means of distorting space, time, and gravity...

 

[RobertScorpio]

Yeah, I pretty much see it your way as well. But you never know. But yeah, Im with you

 

[Balthier the Great]

C.E. Evans said:
IMO, number one on the list of things that won't be realized is warp drive. Sure, there are countless theories about how FTL propulsion can be achieved (i.e., wormholes, folding space, etc.), but no one has really postulated a viable way to make any of them possible...or survivable. The speed of light remains an inviolate universal speed limit otherwise.

Even in Treknology, the whole thing resides on two magical substances--dilithium and verterium cortenide--as the lynchpins that really makes warp drive possible. Still, you can have all the high-energy electroplasma at your disposal, but your ship isn't going anywhere without the actual means of distorting space, time, and gravity...

I think FTL travel is possible -- there's a theory that allows for it (Heim Theory), and this same theory has made a number of correct predictions about the behavior of subatomic particles. So I wouldn't count out Warp. It just takes a hell of a lot of energy (which we don't have)

Two that jump out at me are transporters and talking computers. Talking computers won't exist because it's a silly technology that doesn't make computers easier to use and it is hard to secure. Spoken passwords are the dumbest idea I've ever seen (esp. since other Trektech allows a person to clone your voice). Transporters in the break down and rebuild manner just doesn't make sense, heisenberg's theory says you can't know where any particle is at a given time, yet that's exactly what you have to do to rebuild a person. I don't expect replication either.

I'd also expect that society will never be completely cashless and not have money.

 

[USS KG5]

misskim86 said:
Artificial intelligence

Oh this one is possible - in some ways it is on the way.

We can already produce staggeringly powerful computers, our knowledge is increasing so we can program logical behaviour and responses to stimuli into computers and whats more using results to re-qrite responses to stimuli is also on the way.

So maybe we won't see Data in the next century but maybe Robots as smart as a Dog are not far off - though maybe not as cuddly...

 

[Sean_McCormick]

USS KG5 said:

Dayton3 said:
I think it will be more along the lines of Battletech where starships sit at a certain distance from a star for days or weeks, making calculations and accumulating power before jumping to warp.

Well that is a computer speed and maybe sensor accuracy thing - if it took a year to calculate an FTL jump the very first time, it might only take a minute with technical advances 50 years later.

I'd love to go back to the Wright Brothers and tell them one day their invention would develop into fighter aircraft capable of reaching 50,000 feet and flying at twice the speed of sound or more, or that air travel would be as casual as by train, and all this less than a century after the first powered flight!

Actually, in the BT-Universe jumpships don't sit there because of calculations, they just need that long to recharge the jump-drive.

 

[USS Excelsior]

What's always turns out to be the case throughout time is that there are always many elements of physics which are previously undiscovered.

So you never know about faster then light speed travel.

 

[sbk1234]

transporters.


And performing brain surgery without mussing up the patient's hair.

 

[Galactic Alignment]

BalthierTheGreat said:I don't expect replication either./quote]I expect replicators at some point in the future, but much simpler devices along the lines of the 'protein resequencer' food machines in ENT, not the (more useful) transporter based replicators from the 24th century.

 

[stj]

Artificial intelligence n the Trek style is basically an artificial human mind (or soul) in a bottle. It's nonsense. Not to mention, creating a human mind in a machine is rather like creating a quadriplegic. It would be pointlessly cruel. But an artificial intelligence shouldn't be required to mimic human intelligence. Genuine AI will come---it just won't look like pulp fiction.

Holodecks? I have no idea what holodecks are supposed to be. They also gibber about force fields and photons. The very idea is incoherent and therefore impossible.

Sensor technology as on Trek and the Universal Translator are impossible. Period.

FTL/time travel are so far theoretically possible. Practically? Not bloody likely. Ditto replicators and transporters.

 

[Bill Morris]

LCARS computers. I've got them in my house.

 

[misskim86]

That looks more like virtual intelligence not artificial intelligence.

I don't think AI is possible at all, VI yes but not AI

 

[USS KG5]

misskim86 said:
That looks more like virtual intelligence not artificial intelligence.

I don't think AI is possible at all, VI yes but not AI

It depends - when we have the ability to program computers so they don't just mimic the behaviour of intelligent organisms but actually replicate it, responding to external stimuli and learning from the experience, that will mean we create a true electronic intelligence.

The thing is though you get onto philosophical ground pretty quickly - if an artificial system behaves like an intelligent organism does it have a soul etc.