Wouldn't Earth Teleportation Be Too Disruptive?

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

There will always, always be those who cheat the system. Criminals will exploit jury-rigged transporters and grab loot or harm others.

 

[Kor]

Whoa there, "criminal" is a strong word for just wanting to do things your way and work around the system.

Kor

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

There will always, always be those who cheat the system. Criminals will exploit jury-rigged transporters and grab loot or harm others.

In the much-vaunted society with no money and where everything is free?

It would also depend on the availability of home shield generators or transporter inhibitors ( perhaps even scramblers ).

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I was referring to people who want to use it to break in and steal or kill or vandalize. Whole different class from the guy who just doesn't want to pay an expensive transporter bill every month.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

But in the Federation where anything worth stealing can be replicated, what's there left to steal?

In any case, just because there may still be criminals, doesn't mean they shouldn't be stopped. We may not be able to eradicate all crime, but it's still worth it to stop what crime we can.

 

[Kor]

I would imagine that certain items like artwork, cultural artifacts, etc. would still be considered to have some intrinsic value outside of the monetary system.

And I would also have a bootleg transporter signal scrambler to avoid having my privacy disrupted by people like me.

Kor

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

In the much-vaunted society with no money and where everything is free?

Ferengi burglars.

 

[Greg Cox]

There is no sense that anyone has a house transporter even in the 24th century. Things still seem to be more akin to subway stations or perhaps bus stops, depending on what so considered appropriate distances between transporter locations verses other means of transportation. Transporters also seem to be pad to pad for most civilian applications. There might be other methods, but that seems the most logical as one also needs to be sure they can transport back later.

That's always how I've always (vaguely) imagined it: as a form of public transit. You have a meeting in Rome at 3 pm, you schlep yourself to Grand Central Transporter Station. Or maybe you have pad-to-pad transporter "bus stops" to get from one end of town to the other in a hurry.

In one of my novels, in fact, I wrote that Marla McGivers was orphaned when her parents were killed in a tragic transporter mishap, which I treated as the 23rd century equivalent of a plane crash or traffic accident.

 

[Sakonna]

There is no sense that anyone has a house transporter even in the 24th century. Things still seem to be more akin to subway stations or perhaps bus stops, depending on what so considered appropriate distances between transporter locations verses other means of transportation. Transporters also seem to be pad to pad for most civilian applications. There might be other methods, but that seems the most logical as one also needs to be sure they can transport back later.

Sisko once mentioned something about a new girl moving into his neighborhood and he asked her out before her parents had even finished beaming in the furniture.

I suppose it could have been the moving company that was doing the beaming, though.

There's a scene in "Explorers" where Sisko tells Jake a story about how homesick he was when he first left home to attend Starfleet Academy in San Francisco, and how he would transport back to New Orleans for dinner. He says he would materialize in the living room every night at first, and his parents would act as if he'd just walked downstairs from his bedroom. Jake responds "you must have used up a month of transporter credits!"

So we know there's some way to transport directly into private residences on Earth. Fun to speculate how this would work. Maybe it's like setting your privacy settings on social media -- these contacts are approved to beam into my home unannounced, all others would have to be specifically approved beforehand.

I agree it seems unlikely there was a pad in the home. He probably had to walk to the nearest transporter station to get beamed back to the Academy at the end of the night.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

There'd be like an approved DNA signature list. Transporters would have a bouncer algorithm to keep unwanted guests out.

 

[Tenacity]

In the much-vaunted society with no money and where everything is free?

Rapists.

Crime isn't always about money, sometimes it's harming another person for the criminal's own enjoyment. Or the satisfaction of being outside "the system." Or because society supposedly owes them something.

 

[sojourner]

Can you imagine the computing power required to handle millions of transports a day?

 

[uniderth]

Wouldn't you rather have transporting be limited to an approved network, rather than anyone being able to beam into your house any time they wanted?

That would depend on who is doing the approving. Are we sure we want the government, or even a major corporation controlling something like this?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Somebody's gotta do it.

(I'd trust the government over any corporation, anyway.)

 

[The Old Mixer]

If transporters weren't strongly regulated on inhabited planets, it would make abduction/kidnapping far too easy (a la "Menage a Troi"). I know the Federation is supposed to be all squeaky clean, but still.

 

[Kor]

That would depend on who is doing the approving. Are we sure we want the government, or even a major corporation controlling something like this?

Today's public transportation systems are run by government agencies, so why not?

Kor

 

[diankra]

You can get to the summit of most mountains by helicopter if you really want. But people still climb them.
Motivation can override convenience. And yep, as others have said, planetary transporter networks seem to be mass transit hubs, not personal.

 

[Tenacity]

Are we sure we want the government, or even a major corporation controlling something like this?

Today's public transportation systems are run by government agencies, so why not?

But there's also private transportation via commercial airlines, passager (water) ships of various sorts, buses, taxis, uber, etc..

I think in a lot of ways the planetary transporter system would be more like the international telecommunication system. The on-site equipment woud be important, but more important would be the system of interconnections between individual transporter stations/pads.

How and where the matter streams all gets routed.

You're in a public place, the transporter has fifty pads, every person is going to a different destination. You indicate your desired destination and pay through your Padd, you mount the platform, one-two-three-energize, you're on a new platform with fifity different people.

Get the hell off the platform.

Your destination would have a long address like the IP address to your computer, but you use something like "mom's house," or "Jimmy," or "work."

 

[Shawnster]

The discussion assumes site-to-site transport would be possible for civilian use. For all we know such transport that doesn't use pads could require specialized sensors or other equipment possibly not available to the average person.

At the very least I would imagine a global transportation network would require global satellite systems to operate. Federation starships have transporter emitters. A civilian system would also require emitters in addition to targeting sensors.

If a transporter network is pad-to-pad, then regulating it would be easier to regulate. Nobody can beam into a private transporter network (or pad) without the proper authorization or code. Perhaps site-to-site systems (if they exist) could work in a similar fashion. Site-to-site transporters would still need to access the transporter network, emitters, targeting sensors, etc... Those systems could be programmed to only allow transport to certain locations. This could prevent theft or violations of privacy.

 

[KelisThePoet]

I imagine that when, if ever, private/personal transporter use becomes ubiquitous on Earth, there will be some kind of shield or inhibitor covering certain neighborhoods and apartment buildings, much like gated communities and such today. As with the home security measures familiar to us now, security against unauthorized beam-ins will probably be set up at either high risk or high value sites. The average Earth family in the average Earth neighborhood won't bother, not because crime will have vanished (though replicators should reduce it greatly), but because the odds of a crime happening to them won't be high.