When Treknology makes absolutely no sense
- Thread starter Mr Silver
- Start date
Most things are. Today, that's no problem for the private user, because in most commercial applications CPU power is created in copious amounts to be wasted. Aboard the E-D, CPU power would have to be scaled for much more demanding tasks than the constant monitoring of conversations, and the only question is, would the scaling be done so that there'd be no room for both the typical demanding task and the conversation analysis simultaneously.
Probably there would be room for both - the peak computational needs might be immense, but would apply so rarely that we'd never see when the computer temporarily shuts down the conversation monitoring and the doorways and sonic showers start to misbehave.
Timo Saloniemi
So you are saying that because the Holodecks and Holosuites are dynamic that the rest of the ship and or station should not have certain limitations? I kind of thought about why the Holosuite in "Our Man Bashir" was the only place that could store the transporter patterns of the crew. But in a sense it only has to perform one function through simulations, monitoring real people but not dealing with real things like worrying about a ship attack. I hope I am making sense b/c I really appreciate the points you and everyone else are making.
I guess I'm arguing that, since the impressive processing abilities of the holodeck never were considered to be a drain on the ship's overall computing resources (no emergency shutdowns for that reason, even if there was one for power reasons in "Booby Trap"), the extending of those abilities to the rest of the ship should not carry a noticeable computing penalty, either.
It's a good point that "Our Man Bashir" might hint at the holodecks having exceptional computing powers. But it may also reflect the low computing power of DS9 overall, as opposed to that of a starship. Quark would have installed top-of-the-line commercial Ferengi holo-hardware, while Cardassians could have relied on the lowest bidder for their military and industrial computing needs.
Timo Saloniemi
It's a good point that "Our Man Bashir" might hint at the holodecks having exceptional computing powers. But it may also reflect the low computing power of DS9 overall, as opposed to that of a starship. Quark would have installed top-of-the-line commercial Ferengi holo-hardware, while Cardassians could have relied on the lowest bidder for their military and industrial computing needs.
Timo Saloniemi
This is my big pet peeve. Those conversations start instantly and fluidly.
My other pet peeve is when they encounter another ship, and the Captain orders a hail. The communications officer will often immediately reply, "No response." They usually take this as a hostile action. If I were on that other ship, and you hailed me, it might take me a minute or two to pick up your phone call! Especially if I wasn't expecting your call. These future peoples are impatient.
Also, when someone uses the comm system to call someone else on the ship and they don't respond immediately, they always automatically assume something is wrong, often asking the computer to locate that individual. What if I'm sitting on the john? I'm not going to answer your page!
That's trivially explained by the fact that this is television drama. Our heroes probably do experience those delays. They are simply edited out of the action for our benefit!
We could try out some technobabble, though. In order to defeat the lightspeed barrier, communications in Trek have to be "active". And all communications probably are FTL, even across minimal ranges, because it would be pennywise to do STL at any point.
So, if somebody isn't sending out a FTL carrier wave, then he's explicitly demonstrating he doesn't want to talk - not merely that he's pondering how to respond, or gulping down a sandwich before answering.
With the lack of comm delay in Starfleet ship-to-badge or badge-to-badge conversation openers, though, the editing explanation works well enough. After all, the whole point of using the comm system is to call somebody who's out of camera view. So we have no way of telling whether Riker really heard "Picard to Riker, report!" in real time when the camera showed Picard saying those words - or the phrase delayed by a full second, with Riker responding before Picard's phrase even finishes coming out of Riker's badge. Or perhaps Riker merely heard "Riker, report!", delayed by half a second, which would be realistic without time machine use.
Of course, we could do the full "Picard to Riker, report!" today, too, without time machines. It would be a rather trivial matter of using compression software on the phrase: as soon as the computer realizes the call is going to Riker, it shortens the phrase by 25% to accommodate the playback lag.
This all does beg the question of why Starfleet protocol doesn't insist on the use of the phrase "Riker, from Picard" instead of "Picard to Riker" in all circumstances... But if technology can solve a problem, perhaps there's no need to try and avoid a problem in the first place? Perhaps our heroes do this because they secrety hate the computer?
Timo Saloniemi
We could try out some technobabble, though. In order to defeat the lightspeed barrier, communications in Trek have to be "active". And all communications probably are FTL, even across minimal ranges, because it would be pennywise to do STL at any point.
So, if somebody isn't sending out a FTL carrier wave, then he's explicitly demonstrating he doesn't want to talk - not merely that he's pondering how to respond, or gulping down a sandwich before answering.
With the lack of comm delay in Starfleet ship-to-badge or badge-to-badge conversation openers, though, the editing explanation works well enough. After all, the whole point of using the comm system is to call somebody who's out of camera view. So we have no way of telling whether Riker really heard "Picard to Riker, report!" in real time when the camera showed Picard saying those words - or the phrase delayed by a full second, with Riker responding before Picard's phrase even finishes coming out of Riker's badge. Or perhaps Riker merely heard "Riker, report!", delayed by half a second, which would be realistic without time machine use.
Of course, we could do the full "Picard to Riker, report!" today, too, without time machines. It would be a rather trivial matter of using compression software on the phrase: as soon as the computer realizes the call is going to Riker, it shortens the phrase by 25% to accommodate the playback lag.
This all does beg the question of why Starfleet protocol doesn't insist on the use of the phrase "Riker, from Picard" instead of "Picard to Riker" in all circumstances... But if technology can solve a problem, perhaps there's no need to try and avoid a problem in the first place? Perhaps our heroes do this because they secrety hate the computer?
Timo Saloniemi
May be the energy that creates subatomic particles is somehow tied to the timeframe of the universe itself.
Since FTL implies time travel, and most Trek tech (including the computer cores if you believe the TNG Tech Manual) use FTL tech, I'm going to assume that the reason everything happens so fluidly is that the "Picard to Commander Riker," request is, due to the FTL nature of the transmission and processing, sent a few seconds into the past.
In order to avoid the causality violation, the transmission routing and delivery are delayed so that Riker doesn't respond before Picard asked for the conversation. The FTL computer cores always date stamp their directives, so they know when something has come from the future.
Since the Computer core can see into its own future, it is somewhat God like. Federation Starships tolerate their crews because they find them entertaining and rather quaint. The Computer cores aboard the Enterprise created Dr. Moriarty, because Geordi and Data were getting uppity. It's worth noting that the main computer was well aware that Dr. Brahms was married and intentionally set Geordi up for the world most elaborate practical joke.
Reginald Barclay is the only human who really understands the computer. He was cured of his emotional problems by the alien download that lead him to develop the perfect man machine computer interface. But in being connected to the main computer, Barclay looked into the eyes of god, and that experience, and the fear of what might happen if he ever told anyone the truth, restored his previous emotional damage.
In order to avoid the causality violation, the transmission routing and delivery are delayed so that Riker doesn't respond before Picard asked for the conversation. The FTL computer cores always date stamp their directives, so they know when something has come from the future.
Since the Computer core can see into its own future, it is somewhat God like. Federation Starships tolerate their crews because they find them entertaining and rather quaint. The Computer cores aboard the Enterprise created Dr. Moriarty, because Geordi and Data were getting uppity. It's worth noting that the main computer was well aware that Dr. Brahms was married and intentionally set Geordi up for the world most elaborate practical joke.
Reginald Barclay is the only human who really understands the computer. He was cured of his emotional problems by the alien download that lead him to develop the perfect man machine computer interface. But in being connected to the main computer, Barclay looked into the eyes of god, and that experience, and the fear of what might happen if he ever told anyone the truth, restored his previous emotional damage.
http://sheol.org/throopw/tachyon-pistols.html
FTL implies time travel. That's one of the reason's FTL is generally seen as impossible. But that isn't important, because the time travel aspect is reference frame dependent. By invoking a special reference frame, time travel can be avoided. However, physicists dismiss this because that invocation runs counter to Relativity which posits that there are no special reference frames.
But the idea the the Speed of light is "just a number" is bad science. Read up on Relativity. There's a lot of info on the interwebs and in the age of google there's no excuse for failing to check up on things like that.
Nothing about the FTL implication of Time travel says everything must go into the past, but it seemed a bit excessive to go into all that for the sake of joke.
FTL implies time travel. That's one of the reason's FTL is generally seen as impossible. But that isn't important, because the time travel aspect is reference frame dependent. By invoking a special reference frame, time travel can be avoided. However, physicists dismiss this because that invocation runs counter to Relativity which posits that there are no special reference frames.
But the idea the the Speed of light is "just a number" is bad science. Read up on Relativity. There's a lot of info on the interwebs and in the age of google there's no excuse for failing to check up on things like that.
Nothing about the FTL implication of Time travel says everything must go into the past, but it seemed a bit excessive to go into all that for the sake of joke.
Oh, I agree. Given the fact that subspace fields can create pocket universe, I figure it is even possible that UFP science could actually whip up a computer core that could see into the future, or failing that, send messages into the past, which would amount to the same thing.
If people can travel in time, information can. In any event, the existence of TimeFleet pretty much means it isn't just possible, it will actually happen at some point in that universe. The Temporal Transporter would require it.
If people can travel in time, information can. In any event, the existence of TimeFleet pretty much means it isn't just possible, it will actually happen at some point in that universe. The Temporal Transporter would require it.
One observation that occurred to me while I was reading through the latest "how is there no money" thread, but frankly didn't really feel like posting about at the time, is that the humans in Star Trek are descendants of the survivors of the Eugenics Wars, World War III, and who knows what else. Therefore, instinctively appropriate behavior that these people tend to exhibit with respect to the treatment of common property could plausibly be different from the behavior that we might tend to exhibit.
Case in point is that they might accept the dangers of recklessly tinkering with time travel, without question, so that they just wouldn't choose to do it except under only the most controlled conditions. Doing it recklessly to them might be simply unthinkable, just as refusing to share common property might also be unthinkable.
Greater self-restraint and a greater sense of social responsibility than we have may have been bred into them. Or looking at it another way, perhaps the more self-indulgent and antisocial elements were bred out of the human race.
Case in point is that they might accept the dangers of recklessly tinkering with time travel, without question, so that they just wouldn't choose to do it except under only the most controlled conditions. Doing it recklessly to them might be simply unthinkable, just as refusing to share common property might also be unthinkable.
Greater self-restraint and a greater sense of social responsibility than we have may have been bred into them. Or looking at it another way, perhaps the more self-indulgent and antisocial elements were bred out of the human race.
This makes sense. I don't expect Starfleet plays lightly with time travel, even in their computer cores. WRT the subject here, I think the most likely explanation for the behavior of individuals in a "Picard to Riker" scenario is narrative simplicity. There's no need to show Riker getting out of the shower nor is there any need to show the conversation on the alien ship's bridge while they decide if they are going to respond to a hail (unless something in that conversation acts as exposition to support later events." Trek is a story first.
Still I think there's something to the time traveling processor. I did mean it as joke, but there is that whole TimeFleet thing being an 800 pound gorilla. At some point, the Federation has to start dabbling in temporal computing, and it makes me wonder what made them do that. I agree with your assessment. The existence of Temporal Investigations suggests that the UFP takes messing with time to be a serious business. It's unlikely TimeFleet would have happened without some stressor that changed their minds.
I would say you're correct, but it seems you're alluding to some sort of physical, genetic change in our species that occurred, while I would argue it as a cultural evolution.
I disagree for the simple reason that the survivors of WWII bred the most selfish generation yet. That's the root cause of the current economic disaster.
I agree that bred may not necessarily be the best word.
Revised version:
This way of putting it neither assigns nor limits the location or extent of the developments. Thanks.CorporalCaptain said:
The western hemisphere was virtually untouched by the horrors of 20th century war.
Direct effects yes. Indirect effects were felt globally though. There was rationing in the states. A whole generation was sent off to war. That last part is what affected the baby boomers. Their parents were affected by the war which caused the boomers to go off their rockers.
This makes no sense to me. Sorry.
I'll try again. I'm not the best writer so here goes.
I was agreeing that the west did not have any major direct involvement like say, England, for example. However there were effects that shaped the culture for decades. For some reason the baby boomers which were the generation after the war went nuts when they hit college. When that generation came to power it set up the events that caused the current problems. My generation is getting screwed because of the selfishness of that generation. They had to have it all and I get to pay the bill.
