Star Trek's Design Influence On Palm, New Tech 418
kevcol writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has a fun article describing how many of the inventions of Star Trek have made early appearances, 2 centuries ahead of Captain Kirk's time. They talk with one of Palm's UI designers, who admits that '...my first sketches were influenced by the UI of the Enterprise bridge panels', and also notes: 'When we designed the first Treo... it had a form factor similar to the communicators in the original series. It had a speakerphone mode so you could stand there and talk into it like Capt. Kirk'."
missed this one? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about the medical monitoring equipment McCoy had in his sick bay?
It could track heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, etc. I don't think those devices existed before Star Trek hit the air. Granted we don't have the "no-contact" versions yet (and I stress "yet") but we still have a few hundred years to perfect it.
Re:horrible (Score:5, Interesting)
Lapel phone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Beam me up scotty! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Orgasmatron (Score:1, Interesting)
Missed LCARS phenomenom (Score:5, Interesting)
There're a fair number of programs using such an interface (even a couple of products licensed by Paramount such as ``Captain's Bridge'' a virtual tour of all the star ships), and even a project on Sourceforge to create a programming system and UI guide (look for LCARS, Library Computer Access and Retrieval System).
I've found such programs fairly useful on my pen slate and amenable to use w/o a keyboard....
Links:
http://www.lcarscom.net/
http://www.lc
http://www.bennisoft.com/
http
William
Several episodes in original series AND TNG (Score:1, Interesting)
Also, (I don't have my desk reference handy here) in the sixth season of TNG, Picard is talking with the Universal Translater guy about whether or not there are four or five lights and the device he brings out is basically an iPod. His recreation device is just like our favorite device today. And what, the sixth season broadcast in, like 1990, right?
There are several other examples that I can detail if you wish.
Science or Fiction (Score:5, Interesting)
And as a side note, lots of UI's appear difficult to use and understand, but if you understand them then it becomes easy. Take a look at the QWERTY keyboard for example. To a complete novice the keys are laid out in a random formation that does nothing to help them type. They want 'A' to be at the top and 'Z' to be at the bottom. But as they progress and learn about 'Home Keys' typing becomes a lot quicker and easier, just because a UI looks different, doesn't mean that with practice it wouldn't be a lot simpler and easier to use
Re:horrible (Score:5, Interesting)
Every window opened full screen, important messages in large readable text, it has a very interactive feel. It gives the impression of an adaptable, efficient two dimensional interface for communicating with an embedded system. The Lines clearly delineate portions of the display of interest, the text is large enough to be seen and pressed with fingers, etc... they did put thought into the general look and feel and I think Okuda did a great job.
But generally you should just think of them as props, they in general aren't meant to be looked at up close so don't be too "upset."
3-d chess (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:horrible (Score:2, Interesting)
I assume that Starfleet training included using the interfaces. However, I do wonder about the three-dimensional interface mentioned by Jahdzia in the episode where Sisko's stuck bouncing through time connected to his son, and about the Dominion command interface.
If you think about it, LCARS was horrible, unless your goal was unusability. In one of the TNG episodes, a child thought he caused the destruction of most of his ship by falling on one of the consoles.
I did notice that non-Federation people rarely had any difficulty figuring out the computer systems. Even in Voyager, guests didn't have much of a problem using the systems. (Except for the occasional surprise at a holo-doctor.)
Re:horrible (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of Palm Pilots language, then compare it to QWERTY.. you'll find that "a bunch of squigly lines not even laid out in the same direction" can be most useful...
The impact of Star Trek (Score:5, Interesting)
Is anybody here old enough to share his/her impressions of the first Star Trek shown, back in '66 ? it would be like magic, back then. Today we consider cell phones, digital recording devices and palmtop computers as everyday reality, but back then, it must have been very jaw-dropping, to say the least.
Re:horrible (Score:3, Interesting)
You know that little laptop-like thing that Picard keeps on his desk? Watch how he uses it sometime. There is one button on it - to turn it on. He turns it on, then just hits the screen. Also, pull out the TNG technical manual sometime. They accually put a disturbing amount of thought into the design of their UI.
Re:Orgasmatron -- Nope, SFC just missed it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahem...
Re:missed this one? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm guilty of this too (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:horrible (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about it. People watching the show may not know anything about computers, but they still had to understand the occasional piece of information that was important to the plot. (One good example would be when Dr. Crusher was caught in her son's experimental warp bubble. She didn't know where she really was until she saw (and the viewer) saw a picture of the "nature of the universe" and recognized it as something she (and the viewer) saw on one of Wesley's screens in Engineering.
That kind of driving force behind usability would probably be benificial to general use of computers.
Personally, though, I prefer {NeXT|OPEN}Step, GTK, or QT.
Re:But what about... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, the "new me" will be immediately certain its safe. Everything will seem exactly the same. Except now that I've thought about it. How will I know that I am who I was? How do I know that now?
I suppose that if you arbitrarily come up with a rule saying there can be only one person with a given set of recollections at a given religious destination for souls, then you can declare as a consequence that the soul is moved, not destroyed, or you'll have two John Does in heaven (or hell) (or purgatory) (or whatever you believe in), arguing over which one is the real one.
Wasn't there a series of episodes in one of the current sci-fi shows about that? A human who was cloned, including memories, and nobody knew who was the original? "Stick a lobster on my head" comes to mind.
Re:missed this one? (Score:1, Interesting)
Temperature: digital thermometer, works without contact, but must be near (not inside) the ear (a doctor used on my daughter some 2 years ago).
Heartbeat & Pressure: all methods are non-invasive, usually based on sound. Unborn babies can be heard with ultrasound. A foetus heartbeat is about 160 bpm. BTW, don't do abortions. Think.
Level of oxygen: a sensor measures passing of light thru a finger and (as I was told) counts red cells (?!)
Another interesting fact: there have been reports of rare dogs being able to smell tumors (or associated chemicals) before they're visible. I wonder if dogs can smell DNA.
It has also been said dogs can warn of impending epilepsy attacks (maybe by noticing its owner's pre-stroke behaviour?).
UI of Kirk's Enterprise (Score:4, Interesting)
The first PDA in a Sci-Fi movie... (Score:3, Interesting)
You can also see Robby, which is a robot that behaves like a tool without developing his own will and running out of control. Many newer sci-fi adventures are way less mature than this movie.
Re:Speaking of medical tech (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:horrible (Score:5, Interesting)
I took apart a keyboard to turn it into a "Star Trek" keyboard - no buttons, you just touched spots on plastic - which is basically what a keyboard is underneath the buttons.
I didn't even get all the way and it was annoying as hell - it was quite responsive when you touched the right spot on the plastic, but when not staring at the keyboard there was no feedback - no feel of the buttons to tell you where your hands were located, since it was all a smooth plastic film, and you lost the tactile feedback from pushing the button and knowing it was pushed.
Tim
Who was it that said . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone else in the thread has noted, the Holodeck was a really problematical thing to add to the series.
The fact that it figured in so many episodes is evidence of either a), that the producers don't find the idea of exploring new worlds all that interesting, or b) that they're unimaginative hacks who can't make space exploration interesting.
The ultimate irony: The VERY FIRST Star Trek story, "The Cage" AKA "The Managerie," was about a decadent civilization whose people spent their time living out their fantasies via telepathic thought records.
Stefan
Re:horrible (Score:3, Interesting)
That can be said about actually every major science fiction flick or tv series. What's funny is about the same time when ST:TOS was on the air, Douglas Engelbart [virginia.edu] was already working on the real user interface for the 21st century computers - mouse, pointer, windows etc. In 1968, you could even attend The Mother Of All Demos [stanford.edu] to see the 21st century computing. Of course, the event passed virtually unnoticed and everybody was excited by famous (yet utterly missed) vision of 2001 in the Clarke/Kubrick movie. Probably somewhere someone right now knows what the computers of 2050 will look like - and he might even right now show the demo. Virtually unnoticed, as always.
Re:Speaking of medical tech (Score:4, Interesting)
And yeah, if you flinched, it hurt...I think it had to do with the airstream being angled instead of straight down. The good medics would walk by, tap you on the arm with the tip of the gun to make you flinch, then do it again right after you'd flinched, and fire.
I'm not sure if the air was used to carry the medicine, or just accelerate it. It'd guess just accelerate it, since blowing air under someone's skin strikes me as being unsafe for some reason. }:)
When I was a kid I had the Star Trek blueprints (Score:3, Interesting)
It was a standard ch14 walkie-talkie schematic. I don't know how many people they had intended on being able to interpret the schematic but it was there back in the 1960's blueprints package I had.
They weren't too far off from reality back 30+ years ago..
Are you sure they haven't? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The impact of Star Trek (Score:5, Interesting)
I was six years old in '66, and I recall eagerly looking forward to ST's debut, to the point that I conned my parents into letting me stay up past my bedtime ("Mom, Dad said it was okay...", "Dad, Mom said it was okay...").
A little background: I was pretty well aware of tech back then, having been to the '64-'65 Worlds' Fair [ucla.edu] two or three times over the previous years. And in '64, my father's company bought an IBM System 360 [wikipedia.org], a roomful of machines that was administered by men in starched white lab coats, so I had a good idea what a computer looked like.
As for Trek tech, some things were impressive, some were underwhelming, even for a starry-eyed six-year-old. Transporters, phasers, and tricorders fell into the former category, while the viewscreen, the computer, and the various consoles on the bridge fell into the latter. I think they were underwhelming to me because I had the impression that running a starship would involve more in the way of dials, gauges, buttons, switches, etc. One of the things that fascinated me back then (and really still does) are pre-glass cockpit aircraft flight decks. I guess I expected something more like that. Instead, the bridge consoles looked like an orderly collection of gumdrops.
The computer wasn't impressive to me because it was, in essence, a disembodied voice. I knew that somewhere in the ship was a room full of hulking grey or black boxes with rows of toggle switches and blinkenlights (the contemporary show Time Tunnel was more impressive in this respect), and I damn well wanted to see it. Maybe they did show it, but I don't recall any specifics or particular episodes. Seeing 2001 a few years later, I recall that one of my favorite parts was when Dave enters Hal's "core" and starts to pull out memory modules, little rectangular lights that I suppose were meant to be reminiscent of the Monolith. Symbolism aside, that scene was like a money shot for a tech-obsessed pre-teen like I was at the time.
Same with the viewscreen: I'd seen a videophone demo at the World's Fair, and it just seemed like something we'd all have in our living rooms in a few years. One thing that bothered me even then were the displays that were arrayed around the bridge, above the stations and near the ceiling. They always seemed to show some random nebula or Spirograph-like pattern. It looked cheesy, even to a six-year-old kid.
All in all, I had no doubt that I'd see some of these things in my lifetime. And why not? There were more jet planes flying overhead than propeller-driven craft (I lived near an airport back then). Televisions came in color now, skyscrapers were built with glass and steel instead of granite and stone, and it seemed like every other month there was another Gemini spacecraft being launched. They promised us flying cars and jet packs by the year 2000, and I had no doubt that they'd deliver.
I hope this hasn't been too much of a Grampa Simpson-like ramble. Oh, did I mention how I used to tie an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time...?
k.
Re:horrible (Score:5, Interesting)
The contractor then employed some game UI designers to rewrite the combat system.
It's a true story! I don't have tome to search for the reports now, but it should be available on www.smh.com.au or www.theaustralian.com.au.
user interface is king in Star Trek (Score:5, Interesting)
TrekUI (Score:3, Interesting)
As for the actual UI, it really DIDN'T make sense, because if it did it would just feed the nitpickers, and Gene R. really wanted the focus of the show to be on the plot. It did seem that the UI was very 'flow' oriented, with very little available at a given time, but very easy to get from one task to another, sort of like my WindowMaker setup. Also, there wer no 'files' or 'applications' as we know them, the experience seemed to be very task-oriented and realtime.
Very early UI (Score:3, Interesting)
This was a big hit. People would stand outside the glass computer room wall to watch. It was self-explanatory enough that people could follow it effectively.
not technology, energy (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing holding us back from going "where no man has gone before" is a lack of energy sources powerful enough and available enough to power all the cool gadgets indefinitely. And of course the engines, but that technology isn't even practical to start considering without the energy source.
When you're 1 million miles from Earth, refueling would likely be a bit of a bitch.
Faster than you think... (Score:3, Interesting)
We are only a hop skip and jump from fully automated manufacturing from discovery to home delivery. Once that happens... human beings are going to experience a world of liquid change, a flashing blur that can barely be grasped... that is until we begin to engineer ourselves.
Then the real fun begins...
Genda
Re:Speaking of medical tech (Score:3, Interesting)
The actual mechanism is a high-power squirt gun. Somewhat disturbing to watch the medic cleaning one out by shooting into a trash can 20 feet away. And whatever you do, don't flinch! They told us this in those exact words. One session, they were giving one in each arm, and one guy didn't see the second one coming and flinched away. He ended up with a bunch of stitches to close up the gash.