With the internet, the temporary nature of the tablet’s historical use case returns, but with a twist. The internet enables one tablet computer to be used for multiple different things simultaneously. This introduces a new variable into the dynamics of tablet user experience: distraction.

What we could be asking ourselves is: why didn’t Star Trek predict the fact that people in the future would be losing the ability to maintain eye contact, carry on deep conversations and generally be in the present moment?

Perhaps the bizarrely antiquarian analog quality of the tablet technology in Star Trek is a cautionary tale. Ever notice how intense some of the passages of dialogue are on Star Trek? Long stretches of emotive exchanges, with generous pauses underpinned by the hum of the space ship. This isn’t just good drama or storytelling, it may also be a good archetype for genuine human interaction at times.

Full disclosure: my company is currently developing a new whiteboard tablet technology. This article jumped out at me because just yesterday we released this teaser video, A Brief History of the Tablet: https://vimeo.com/98473277

But sometimes cheesy works well to set the scene. How many movies and shows today still use “teletype” in the lower third to indicate a location or date? Usually with equally cheesy digital bleeps. Unrealistic, but it works. It preps the audience for something techy to come.

But I think you could say the same thing for the cliched “NOW HACKING PENTAGON” progress bars and other nonsense that used to make up computer UIs in movies. Those were there because the filmmakers were afraid that the audience wouldn’t be able to follow the storytelling points happening through the computer UI. We’ve only just reached a point where everyone is so familiar with computers that those kinds of shortcuts have become embarrassingly comical (I’d date the moment change to David Fincher’s The Social Network, but you could probably pick other points).

And I think we’ve reached a similar point with Internet usage. Obviously the Internet was around during the 80s and 90s when TNG and DS9 were airing. As I mentioned in the post, I’ll bet the writers of Star Trek were right there with you as early adopters using i. However, it’s now reached a point of ubiquity and comfort for the viewing audience that the lack of it on these shows is starting to seem like a historical artifact of the time of the shows’ creation. The idea of starship captains in the 24th century operating in a way that looks more like mid-century
generals or businessmen is getting increasingly bizarre as the 21st century marches on.

I remember watching The Next Generation when it first aired. Captain Picard was handed a crew report on a PADD. Perhaps I was ahead of my time, but I remember thinking “why didn’t he just pull it up on his own PADD?”

So the technology certainly was already within reach, even back in the 80’s.

Then I realized: it doesn’t make good storytelling. The viewer doesn’t want to see Picard searching for a file or syncing his PADD with somebody else. That isn’t what a starship captain does. He is handed reports, takes important decisions and gives commands, which his crew dutifully execute. That’s what the story is about.

The same goes for async communications. Reports often “come in” to the bridge from sickbay or engineering or “all decks”. The audience doesn’t care about the message, or the medium, but about the characters and the plot. When it makes sense for the story, the characters are shown in real time (“video chat”) and can talk. When it doesn’t, reports “come in”.

And as for the internet: it certainly did exist. We just didn’t call it that yet. We called it Usenet, uucp, FidoNet etc, depending on your particular flavor.

And same thing with replicators. Every third DS9 episode is about some kind of intrigue with cargo or the cargo holds. Why are they physically carting around so much stuff instead of replicating it? Is it really harder to replicate “gold-pressed latinum” than complex food stuffs that have the right chemical composition to get various races drunk?

The replicators and transporters seem to have replaced certain kinds of human labor without actually altering the structure of society or culture much.

I definitely agree that a lot of this is to tell a better story. DS9 might be better sci-fi if it was utterly alien, but it would be probably significantly worse drama.

Don’t you think this is not only a paradigm problem, but a Paramount problem? To this day, big media conglomerates want to anchor bits to atoms. What is revolutionary in the Star Trek universe is the replicator – 3D printing’s apotheosis. Atoms are essentially bits in Star Trek’s world because it is so easy to copy things. Maybe by the 23rd century, our obsession with virtuality and the digital will be seen as a product of our Internet blinders – we can only imagine ubiquitous copying of data, not (like those prescient Star Trek folks) physical objects.

Anyway, the rebooted Battlestar Galactica showed us what happens if you let the Internet onto your starship. It’s not pretty.