how StarTrek should have been?

[WaveMan]

You're just complaining, in effect, that a banana should taste more citrusy. Now, if you wanted to discuss what Star Trek might look like if it had embraced Transhumanism, that might be an interesting discussion.

You are quite correct and I apologize for the tone of my posts, and I should have gone the way you suggested (as in Star Trek embracing transhumanism). I suppose I have been stewing about this subject for many years and basically exploded. Again I am sorry for that. I did allude to it the way I wanted to go with mentioning Khan Ascendant, just wish I had the foresight to have gone that way.
I also don't want to imply I dislike Star Trek, to be brutally honest I love almost all aspects of it and it is for me, my favorite sci-fi series. I think my ShadowRun (RPG) bias was showing thru (love of cyberware...LoL) I have seen every episode (I either own the DVD's or have downloaded them) of all the different series(original series, next gen, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, all the movies, and including most of the fan based stuff that recently has been done (Prelude to Axanar for example)and consider myself a Trekkie at heart.

As far as the inevitability of human genetic manipulation, cloning, integration of humans and machine, biosyntectic replacements of all major organs for all those that need them....etc IMHO yes I truly believe it is inevitable. We can already see these technology's emerging and there are already precedence's of them starting to be integrated into our lives. I also believe andriods/robotics will also be a massive part of human culture(again already started).

here's a view of homo-novus that I could see becoming a reality in the near future (nootropic drugs [brain enhancing drugs, the first step in creating the next stage in our evolution] are a reality, just not refined to this degree)
http://future.wikia.com/wiki/Homo_Novus_%28species%29

[Aldaron]

Waveman,

With respect, isn't the "inevitability" argument you're using a little like someone in the late 19th century steadfastly maintaining the inevitability of extremely efficient steam-engines taking us to the Moon?

[WaveMan]

I don't think so mate. I take it you don't believe these things will come to pass?

[Aldaron]

Well, they might, and from our position in 2014, they may even be likely...but my point is that we cannot, by definition, predict the unpredictable.

Back in the 1920s every "futurist" depiction of the early 21st century had mile-high cities, people flying around in hovercars, and afternoon trips to the Moon. None of these have come to pass...but the unpredictable did: ubiquitous electronic communication has changed the world more profoundly than hovercars, but in the 1920s the idea of this was simply not thought of.

In the 1880s, the idea of thermonuclear fusion was starting to float around in Einstein's mind, but for most people - futurists included - steam power was the most modern, up-to-date form of generating power. There was, quite simply, no way anyone then could have predicted that only a little over a century later, we would be working steadily toward a form of clean, unlimited energy that produced no nasty side-effects. Even Jules Verne, with his forward-thinking, thought the Nautilus would be powered by electricity provided by chemical batteries.

So from here, esconced in our early 21st-century level of technology and knowledge, we might confidently predict that genetic engineering of humans leading to Transhumanism is inevitable. But in ten or twenty or a hundred years time, we may discover something that renders it obsolete. What? I have no idea...I'm the 1922 "World of the Future" designer that has no idea how a microchip will change the world because neither I nor anyone else has, at this stage, thought of a microchip.

I just like to avoid absolutist terms like "inevitable" when it comes to human progress and change, because if history tells us anything, it's that we're terrible at predicting where things will ultimately go. We're very good at looking at stuff in hindsight and saying, "Oh, of course that would have happened! Makes perfect sense!". In our hubris, however, we rarely see things coming.

[WaveMan]

the one thing all those people you mention lacked was computer modeling, which takes into account history and then model future predictions on current events extending them into the future (using the logical progression, governments all over the world presently use it to predict infrastructure, population etc expansions). I am not deluded enough to believe futurists are precognitive but they do have a lot of computing power available to them and can make a far more educated guesses as to how the future may unfold.

[Dan Gurden]

Why is the computer modelling so important to you. I recall that stuff like computers and their ability to predict events have been the stuff of sci fi long before they could actually do it. Doesn't that score bonus points for the authors over computers?

[C5]

Computer modelling may be powerful, but it is limited by the data we feed to it and our knowledge in programming it. A modelisation that would have absolutely no knowledge of electrical or nuclear power (let's assume the computer running it is a working version of Babbage's analytical engine) would simply not be able to predict anything resembling our current world and may consider "inevitable" the fact that we will need city-sized steam engines if we are to reach the Moon.

To answer the initial question, the Trekverse technology seems to be based mainly on ethical concerns instead of the other way round. Of course there are inconsistencies here and there, but on the whole they seem to give the human spirit priority over any other technological advances. You can find that irrealistic of course, but that is how the universe was designed (just like all the senior officers on a ship beam down headfirst on potentially dangerous planets).

We can however try answering the question: "What would Trek be like if Treknology could exist in our own world ?" (the answer is probably "not much like Trek", but that would is still fun to ponder).

[Aldaron]

the one thing all those people you mention lacked was computer modeling, which takes into account history and then model future predictions on current events extending them into the future (using the logical progression, governments all over the world presently use it to predict infrastructure, population etc expansions). I am not deluded enough to believe futurists are precognitive but they do have a lot of computing power available to them and can make a far more educated guesses as to how the future may unfold.

Nope, that doesn't address what I'm saying. I'm talking about unpredictable variables introduced into the modeling. Doesn't matter how powerful a computer model is, if it misses a variable, it will be wrong.

If a futurist in 1880 had access to the most sophisticated, powerful computer in 2014, they could still only program the model with variables they had thought of. They couldn't put in some kind of technology like fusion power, or cold fusion power, or dark energy, or the Casmir Effect, because nobody had any inkling of those things in 1880. Doesn't matter how good the model is, if it doesn't take the "x-factor" into account and that "x-factor" becomes a reality further down the track, the model will quite simply be wrong.

Which brings me back to my original point: we cannot, by definition, predict the unpredictable. And history shows that we are constantly blindsided by things about which we think "Oh yeah...we should have thought of that", but we didn't, because it wasn't inherently predictable. Whether it was someone doing a double-slit experiment, or discovering the electron, or devising E=mc², or superconductors, or dark matter, or...well, anything else that wasn't anticipated, it changes how things are perceived at a fundamental level. A hundred years ago, nobody thought of quantum computing because nobody had come up with quantum theory or invented a computer. Yet quantum computers may well revolutionise (again) how we store and access data in the future...or not. Because some other hitherto unkown thing discovered next year may flip it all upside down.

To assume we can predict something as "inevitable", given the history of human knowledge and development and technology, pretty much defines the word "hubris", in my opinion.

[Aldaron]

Bah! C5 ninja'd me!

[Cpt. Lundgren]

Computations to predict the future have two main problems. First of, it can only compute on what is known; so as mentioned above, it will miss all the game changers. The second problem is chaos theory. Even in a perfectly understood model, where there are a lot of integrated parts, the slightest change somewhere can cascade to a completely different result down the line.

But whit that said, there are some really interesting stuff already on experimental and prototype level. Goats producing spider-silk in their milk, for one. How long ago was a pacemaker science fiction? The ability to connect electronics to the nervous system is still in its infancy. So while not inevitable, a lot of things are at least quite plausible.

Good thing with Trek, thanks to the Mirror Universe and the TNG episode Parallels, it can always be explained away as being in a different parallel universe

[WaveMan]

OK I concede it may not be inevitable, but that being said it is probable that it will end out like I am suggesting. I do believe medical science will solve many of our shortcomings, which leads into the probability of all the above posts I have made.
Why I keep going back to computer modeling is , computers can process vasts amounts of data (in the not so distant future strong AI computers will process more info in one second then all of the thought processes of all mankind over our entire history...) and if you can use this ability to process vasts amounts of possibility's and make predictions from that data, then you can make best guesses as to what may come to pass, but as said above crap in then crap out so modelling can go only so far, that raw data still has to be processed by futurists and then predictions made. You guys will also note I said "best guess" for computer modeling and I understand that's what it is.

But you will also have to concede that we can see trends occurring now (say for instance the progression of the "G" network, we are currently at 4G phone network, eventually we will have 5G and so on, and you can speculate on how that will effect us. I personally think the next big step for us as a species will be the creation of a true Singularity, and the merging of AI with the human brain. This may either make us or break us.

Good thing with Trek, thanks to the Mirror Universe and the TNG episode Parallels, it can always be explained away as being in a different parallel universe

I like this quote, well said mate...

Current predicted technology that interests me is the Alcubierre drive, reminds me of the coaxial warp drive that star trek was visionary enough to postulate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
this could be science fiction becoming science fact eventually.
Cold fusion will also be the "next big thing" for us for clean energy production.

I also feel many that posted here didn't bother to actually read through all the links I included, there is some very interesting reading in all of them.One thing I hope doesn't take so long to achieve is FTL travel (in Future Timeline they predict it will be a million years AD before we will crack the light speed barrier...)
http://www.futuretimeline.net/beyond...00.htm#1000000

[C5]

I like to say that our predictions of the future are like tangents (in the mathematical sense) to a curve: a straight line drawn from a specific point, and sharing the same direction as the curve at this point, but usually going nowhere near the eventual destination of the curve (especially for exponentials).

So, no matter how strongly we think that the future will involve cybernetic or genetic enhancements, it is quite possible that none of these could come to happen as we see them, while on the contrary something else we never thought of would take place instead. I'm still waiting for the personal jetpack countless sci-fi stories were promising me, but the same stories were surprisingly silent about smartphones and Internet.
An middle age alchemist may have been convinced that the discovery of the transmutation of lead to gold would happen very shortly. It took us centuries to achieve it, and it's done in such a way that it costs more to transmute than the resulting gold.

We may have completely misunderstood a basic law of physic that prevents what we consider a given. For instance, it could be that a true AI is simply not possible with our current computer technology, and may need either a quantum computer or simply another computing paradigm we have no idea about, and may not have until year 2200. Cybernetics may not be possible without eventually causing horrible psychoses for which there is no cure to be found without having empathic powers. Conversely, it might be ridiculously easy to transfer our mind into a piece of hardware without losing any human quality. Just as we can imagine spectacular breakthroughs, we can also imagine spectacular blocks.

We can have fun guessing what Trek could have been, but I don't think we could say with certainty how it should have been (and I don't think we ever will before the year 2300).

PS: Sorry Aldaron

[WaveMan]

I'm still waiting for the personal jetpack countless sci-fi stories were promising me,

announced today on Aussie news networks, a functioning New Zealand design that costs $200K

http://www.gizmag.com/martin-jetpack...avwatch/34830/

[Owen E Oulton]

announced today on Aussie news networks, a functioning New Zealand design that costs $200K

http://www.gizmag.com/martin-jetpack...avwatch/34830/

I remember back in the very early days of the new millennium an ad with Avery Brroks saying "It's the 21st century - they said we'd have flying cars by now. I want my flying car!"

[The Tatterdemalion King]

I remember back in the very early days of the new millennium an ad with Avery Brroks saying "It's the 21st century - they said we'd have flying cars by now. I want my flying car!"

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