you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 50 points 1 day ago (12 children)

Someone pointed out how there's no phones in Star Trek and it's probably deliberate. I get it.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 12 child comments
  • [–] 26 points 1 day ago* (1 child)

    There is an episode where a new game is brought on board. It's really enjoyable, and once people start playing, they don't want to stop. Soon, the whole crew is addicted. It turns out the creators of the game are using it for mind control.

    Seems like the perfect metaphor for modern cellphone/app usage.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 14 points 1 day ago* (6 children)

    I dont think that in the 60s-90s anyone would have necessarily anticipated the existence of smartphones as they are now. Rather than it being a “deliberate” choice not to have them in the show. Its just not a futuristic idea of communication that existed at the time. Theres not smartphones in The Jetsons either. Earlier ideas of what the future would be like were a lot more utopian than the dystopian hellscape induced by smartphones and social media. Their various ideas of the future were a modification of the way people actually lived then, which was simultaneously less connected but also more interpersonally social. They dreamed of a more connected future, but not one where that level of connection would rip apart established social fabrics

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago (5 children)

    There's a lot of newer Trek shows that seem to have stayed away from smartphones too, though.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    There's not a whole lot of entertainment value in having a bunch of people sitting in silence texting other people off screen with the occasional loud video being played to nobody. Even if they are in space.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago

    Ditto for AI. Oh, sure, they played with AI, but always in an embodied holodeck character or an android, never as a disembodied computer program. Imagine a show where every major decision point on the bridge was "do what the computer says."

  • source
  • parent