My niece’s 18th birthday is on August 31st, when Sisko and Bashir arrive…
Past Tense - Date of the Episode is Approaching
- Thread starter cgervasi
- Start date
My plan is to re-watch the episode on August 30th.
I gues you missed what we left behind? I managed to see it at some random cinema in London, was amazing - something I’d never think possible.
I imagine in the show their riots and live-stream drew attention to the issue and eventually lead to reforms. I imagine they explained that they lost their job, got evicted, friends and family could only take them in for a short time, so they decided to live in their car and go wherever they could find work. But before that could happen, they got arrested and sent to over-crowded prison camps making it impossible to find work.
I could understand how that horrible lack of respect for people's rights could lead to large-scale riots. I do not understand why, now that we're here in the future, there's risk of instability. Unlike in the show, there are plenty of jobs for people who would be gimmies in the show. At least in my area, there is a movement to avoid jailing people with mental illness who would be dims. Crimes is down compared to the 90s, so fewer ghosts. We don't have replicators, but additive manufacturing and automation have come along way, making most everything, except for real estate, formal education, and medicine, much less expensive. With all those facts, it would be hard to explain to my 19-year-old self that people are so dissatisfied that there's political violence, a risk of instability, and a very remote risk of civil war.
19 y/o cgervasi: "Wait, if most social problems are getting better, there's no immediate threat of large-scale war, people can publish their thoughts on FidoNet and the information superhighway without a gov't license unlike in Past Tense, and the world has become more prosperous, you're not going to be fighting about whether to fund a "federal employment act" or something. Did you say you actually have computer you can ask questions to like the Enterprise-D's computer, and most people can afford one? That's so phat. What's there to riot about?"
49 y/o cgervasi: "Well, it's about think like whether people say words like latinx, which is a general-neutral form of latino or latina. And you know how people in your time are starting to say disabled instead of handicapped? Well now some people say things like "differently-abled". Also, people have different tastes in things like cars and music. Some people say the differences are so extreme, violence may be the only way to resolve them.
49 y/o cgervasi: "Well, it's about think like whether people say words like latinx, which is a general-neutral form of latino or latina. And you know how people in your time are starting to say disabled instead of handicapped? Well now some people say things like "differently-abled". Also, people have different tastes in things like cars and music. Some people say the differences are so extreme, violence may be the only way to resolve them.
It makes no sense at all to me. We're closer to the prosperity and technology of Star Trek than I ever thought I'd see in my life. It doesn't seem like conditions where I'd expect someone proposing creating prison camps for people seeking work. I'm hoping the prosperity trend continues, and we don't have live through too many, in Sisko's words, mistakes that pave the way for things they take for granted in the Star Trek universe.
Fortunately, many of the gloomy predictions we have seen in Star Trek have never taken place.
Not the Eugenic Wars and most likely not the events in Past Tense.
Maybe humanity after all is better than the pessimistic Star Trek writers thought that it is?
Or was it Henry Starling's dabbling with time which has caused certain things not to happen?
(VOY epiosde Future's End)
In that case, we owe a lot to this great man!
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Strange New Worlds established that repeated time travel shenanigans have pushed some key events down the timeline by roughly 30 years at least.
We are not out of the woods yet.
We are not out of the woods yet.
No, but thanks to people like Henry Starling, those dreadful events are at least postponed.
France just elected a group of neo-Trotskyites...
Move over Simpsons!
There have been a handful of broadsheet articles over the past year or so noting the "Bad Vibes Economy" or "Vibecession" in the United States - by objective metrics the economy is growing and most people are well off (at least compared to where they would have been five, ten or twenty years ago) yet opinion polling suggests the public feel they're in state of stagnation and poverty.
This post made me realize that the Simpsons were on tv when Past Tense aired (and really, before DS9 was ever on the air), and the Simpsons are still on the air now!
Not to derail the topic, but I doubt the timeline changed because of SNW.
How do we know that Gary Seven or another Watcher did not pull a Tallin and made the Romulan agent think she killed Khan?
Besides, that there one only one photo of Khan in existence circa the ‘90s suggests Khan may have simply faked his death, or played along with Gary Seven and vanished for a few years. Which further suggests that the 1990s Eugenics War occurred secretly, and more akin to a cold war of sorts.
That’s explains why the Shenzhen Conventions are a thing in 2024.
Timeline preserved.
Still on track for the Bell Riots.
The timeline didn't change because of SNW. But SNW implied in the Khan episode, that established events got pushed down the timeline because of accumulated timeline changes from all over Trek. It showed teh outcome, not the cause.
I disagree with you about holodecks. I expect that we'll have a VERY primitive version of a holodeck within my lifetime (meaning within the next 40 years, give or take). Except it will be a combination of video displays and projections. Nothing solid.
Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your list.
In dealing with economics there is the other relevant episode from DS9, House of Quark.
It shows why EveryBody should know accounting.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations has been free in Project Gutenberg since 2001. Search it for "read, write" and you will find multiple instances of "read, write and account". Smith used the word 'education' Eighty Times.
So what would this country be like if accounting/finance had been mandatory since Sputnik?
Robert Heinlein said a competent man should know accounts.
It shows why EveryBody should know accounting.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations has been free in Project Gutenberg since 2001. Search it for "read, write" and you will find multiple instances of "read, write and account". Smith used the word 'education' Eighty Times.
So what would this country be like if accounting/finance had been mandatory since Sputnik?
Robert Heinlein said a competent man should know accounts.
I majored in accounting and it is a pretty hard subject to learn. What should have been mandatory in schools is personal finance and how to invest. I'm an investor and if I had learned what I know now (And I'm still learning) back when I was going to middle and high school, I probably would be that much better off.
I was going to watch "Past Tense" on 8/30/24, but I've changed my mind. I don't want to get ahead of where I am in my DS9 Rewatch. I'm only four episodes into Season 2. I'll get there soon enough, but I don't want to disrupt the rhythm I have by jumping around.
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