The most fantastic aspect of Star Trek isn't warp drive, teleportation, or replicators. It's a competent bureaucracy.<p>Starfleet seems to be just that: competent, usually very trustworthy, fair, and honest. Almost equally unbelievable is a society that isn't incredibly emotionally dysfunctional. There is little in the way of psychopathy, narcissism, addiction, unhealthy ideological fanaticism, or depression on display among the protagonists.<p>Cyberpunk has proven to be the most prophetic of the sci-fi genres by far. It's done that by being technologically optimistic and socially pessimistic. So far it seems right on-- technology continues to advance, but globally it looks as if the normal arc of society is from freedom to despotism followed by a decay into syndicated criminality. The mafia state -- almost exactly as depicted in the common cyberpunk setting -- looks like the ascendant future. If there are warp-driven starships in the future they will likely be flown by the various factions of the Russian mob, the American criminal overworld, Los Zetas, Chinese Triads, and of course the Yakuza. If they look like contemporary business and governmental organizations, the captain will be a narcissist/psychopath and his immediate subordinates fawning codependents.
I watched most of TNG, but I don't consider myself to be really into the series. One of the things that I found odd about it was how externally-focused it was - everything seemed to be about various alien species and unknown astronomical phenomenon, with almost nothing about what this Federation that they all serve is and how it really works. All I remember is drips and drabs of that, which is a shame, when there are so many ideas that could stand to be explored.<p>Like what exactly is a replicator, and how does it work? The fine details of that would all have massive effects on what the society as a whole looks like. Can anybody replicate anything on them? Including weapons and drugs? If not, who decides what they can make, and how do they enforce it? They presumably require energy, and where does that come from? Is there a limit to how much stuff a person can make?<p>This also gets into the rather odd and poorly fleshed-out idea of a society without money. Exactly how does this society work without money? Books can and have be written on ideas around this, but it's just kind of casually thrown out there, with no exploration of the implications on how the greater society functions.
Not a bad article. It is worth noting that TNG was super soft-sci-fi not "real" sci fi and as such reflects its era's social commentary, nothing more, no alternative universe type of effect which is so interesting about hard sci fi.<p>Don't have to limit consideration solely to Trek series to see a growing pessimism about the future from a cultural perspective. A smooth drift across all cultural properties from utopian to dystopian futures.<p>If you do want to have a tech talk about Trek, specifically TNG, its fun to recall tech of that era. I had an old XT class PC and watched it on a Sony Japanese made 12 inch SD TV, and for the TNG premiere, they simulcasted the audio on a local FM radio station in stereo, which sounded pretty awesome. Then after an episode I'd dial into a local BBS and discuss, of course a BBS being a BBS that means a good discussion takes about a week, which is just about right... About two years into the series I got access to usenet and eventually a SLIP account on the internet (SLIP being kinda like a static configured by hand networking parameters with out-of-band authentication, but otherwise kinda like PPP, of course in this post-modem era maybe PPP is becoming unknown?).
Sci-Fi is commentary on the present, or the near future.<p>Even Star Trek (TOS was 60's era Apollo optimisim, ST:TNG was 1980's "Communism is falling"/We're getting okay with Russia/The Economy is booming/Roddenberry said so!)<p>The reason why today's SciFi isn't hopeful is that there are lots of very easy to see bad ways today turns into tomorrow, and not very easy to see good ways.<p>I honestly think self driving cars will make life <i>crazy</i> better for instance. But there isn't Sci-Fi to write about that is interesting enough to publish or make a show about with that premise. Or for 3d printing. etc
Some one should make a series out of Iain M. Banks Culture novels. I find them very optimistic regarding technological advancement, its societal influence and liberal coexistence of minds of very different kinds and power.
"The Heisenberg uncertainly principle means that transporters like the ones in Star Trek are physically impossible, at least in terms of the physics that we understand. But that didn't stop Roddenberry and friends. They just assumed that human beings would figure out some way to "compensate" for the physical laws."
From what I've read, that's somewhat of a generous and optimistic view. My understanding was that the transporter was created purely as a money-saving feature, as they didn't have the budget to create planetary landing effects on a weekly basis. The Heisenberg compensator circuits were a convenient piece of techno-babble in an attempt to hand-wave the underlying physics problem of transporters away...
When it comes to storytelling, conflict is inherently more interesting than the alternatives. I can't help but feel that this explains most of what's going on here.
Neal Stephenson makes a similar point in this interview:<p><a href="http://damiengwalter.com/2014/05/07/nealstephenson/" rel="nofollow">http://damiengwalter.com/2014/05/07/nealstephenson/</a>
I think Internet made us not so naive about the future considering how we really are, specially after we get some kind of power. And the present is making us even more pessimistic about it.
I can't find it now, but I remember a brilliant comment on reddit that described the theme of TOS and TNG as being about <i>“what it means to be a hero in a utopian age”</i>.
<i>In 1994, technology was a part of our lives, but it did not dominate us completely. So it was possible for Star Trek: TNG to imagine a world in which we, as people, stayed much the same, but the worlds in which we traveled expanded infinitely outward. Technology for the past twenty years has relentlessly driven inward.</i><p>It's so interesting to me that commentators keep making this same point over and over again, and the only answer we get is "But we'll just make even cooler tech, and it'll all work out."<p>I don't think so. I think the time of man is at a close, whether we evolve past it or self-terminate. Billions of years of evolution has created this species of hominids that travel in packs. We are, instead, trying to re-make ourselves in something closer to the Borg. It's not going to end the way we expect it to.
I liked mostly all the Star Treks, but it bugged me that the later ones became so militarized. Zeitgeist of a post 9/11 world I supposed. I loved the optimistic future painted in TNG.