What real life invention will have the biggest impact on new Trek?

[Jedi_Master]

Trek has influenced modern tech, and modern tech has influenced Trek. For instance flip cell phones seem to be modeled after Trek communicators, and touch screens worked their way into Trek stories.

What modern invention will find its way into a major role in Star Trek's future stories? Google glasses? Implantable tech?

 

[T'Girl]

They're going to have to account for smart phones in the next series.


Separate communicators, scanners, tricorders, padds, cameras?

 

[Shawnster]

They're going to have to account for smart phones in the next series.


Separate communicators, scanners, tricorders, padds, cameras?

That was my first thought. My phone can do all those things they had se parate devices for. I think the way the Internet and the smart devices have exploded will really influence how the future is. You can make a smart home and control everything on your phone or on your laptop. How will that affect starships? They are developing pills you can swallow that will perform medical diagnostics. What further or future applications of such devices can we think of?

I first thought the translator microbes on Farscape were a lil hokey, now I'm not so sure. Spread these nanite microbes in the drinking water of the Federation like fluoride and who will need the UT (at least when it comes to Federation members)?

 

[Metryq]

What real life invention will have the biggest impact on new Trek?

New digital cameras and production tools... Oh! You meant story-wise.

 

[T'Girl]

The scifi series Sanctuary did away with a lot of physical sets, and the technology of virtual computer sets has surely advanced in the years since then, so a new series may take advantage of that.

 

[2takesfrakes]

J.J. Abrams hates shooting in blue/green rooms, he says. It's confusing and the actors have a very hard time knowing how to bracket their work in that kind of an environment. And no matter how advanced CGI gets, it's never going to be cheap. I can't imagine a STAR TREK without partial sets, at least.

 

[Sindatur]

The scifi series Sanctuary did away with a lot of physical sets, and the technology of virtual computer sets has surely advanced in the years since then, so a new series may take advantage of that.

Sanctuary, although still quite CGI-set heavy, did go to more physical sets as the show aged.

Also, in order to keep the show at a reasonable budget, it pretty much took about 39 weeks (IIRC) per episode to make an episode, so, basically, they just about worked all year 'round, in order to produce episodes every season. BSG Blood and Chrome, over ran it's budget on both time it took to make, and money to make it, so the time it took made it unfeasible to have a Season of Episodes every year. So, yea, Sanctuary and BSG Blood and Chrome, could've been made faster, but, that would entail throwing more people at it, and increasing the cost.

 

[Vandervecken]

They're going to have to account for smart phones in the next series.


Separate communicators, scanners, tricorders, padds, cameras?

Tricorders should still have to be separate. My phone can't take life readings, environmental readings, etc. Not beyond very rudimentary stuff anyway.

 

[thumbtack]

Genetic engineering. It's not going to be banned in the real world. Not for long. People getting it done on the black market would have a sudden, "unfair" advantage over mere humans.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

They're going to have to account for smart phones in the next series.


Separate communicators, scanners, tricorders, padds, cameras?

Tricorders should still have to be separate. My phone can't take life readings, environmental readings, etc. Not beyond very rudimentary stuff anyway.

And even though smartphones can take pictures, actual cameras are still much, much better at it. No serious photographer would ever rely on a smartphone as their only camera.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

If speaking of near-term possible technologies, then life extension.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The thing about modern genetic engineering though is that you have to do it well before birth, and we're a long way off from being able to create super strength or super intelligence with it. Immediate applications will be more to prevent passing on of genetic diseases.

One thing Trek has never really portrayed is the social media world where everybody communicates with everybody all the time. Future communication always resembled newspapers and cell phones more than the Internet.

 

[C.E. Evans]

They're going to have to account for smart phones in the next series.


Separate communicators, scanners, tricorders, padds, cameras?

That was my first thought. My phone can do all those things they had se parate devices for. I think the way the Internet and the smart devices have exploded will really influence how the future is.

I think an argument for having separate devices might be that while having integrated devices are ideal for the household or the office, they might be too fragile for use on Starfleet missions. In the field, "simpler" might be better for more rugged devices meant to take a lot of abuse. That utilitarian approach might also extend to the use of audio-only communicators, even though audio/video communications were already present in Trek from day one.

You can make a smart home and control everything on your phone or on your laptop. How will that affect starships?

In a real sense, a ship's main computer is the ultimate smart device, since a person can generally tell the computer what to do (including fly the ship). IMO, crewmembers are really there only to monitor & maintain various systems, and to intervene in the case of an emergency.

Maybe in the real future, there will be the elimination of handheld devices for the home and office. Everything will be handled by an unseen computer that will be controlled by voice commands.

 

[HIjol]

J.J. Abrams hates shooting in blue/green rooms, he says. It's confusing and the actors have a very hard time knowing how to bracket their work in that kind of an environment. And no matter how advanced CGI gets, it's never going to be cheap. I can't imagine a STAR TREK without partial sets, at least.

...and, those pesky lens flares...

...so, there's that on top of it...

 

[HIjol]

..but, back on-Thread...

How about money, as in currency...???

 

[T'Girl]

Majority of purchases would be through electronic funds transfer, Uhura initially intended to buy that tribble, yet she didn't appear to be carrying currency.