Computers Beyond the Final Frontier

Me and Jamie (Jamie the housemate, to be sure) made an interesting observation today. We were sat watching Star Trek the Next Generation, as we often do these days since our friend Nevitt decided it would be a good thing to download every single episode. Being a computer geek, what always interests me in TV shows is how computers are represented... I remember laughing a lot when I saw an episode of "A Touch of Frost" a few years ago where all the computers appeared to be running DOS... maybe the Police still use it? Is the public sector really that bad? Probably. Anyway, but needless to say, Star Trek's representation of computers is a bit more enlightened, its much more of a HAL type figure, an omni-present servant who they can issue verbal commands too. There were a few things however, that clearly dated this vision of what computer's roles in our future will be.

The first one I noticed, was the complete lack of security. OK, so sometimes it seems they have to verbally speak some kind of pass code before they can execute certain commands, such as self destruct and blocking all other users commands, but that seems to be it. Anyone seems to be able to create force fields, teleport themselves anywhere and request any information they want from its memory banks. OK, so right now I suppose I could look up whatever I wanted on Wikipedia or Google, and on the USS Enterprise, asking the ship's computer a question is pretty much the same thing. However, Wikipedia does not know everything, obviously, and doesn't contain sensitive data: most the data on Wikipedia is common knowledge, simply collected in one place. The Enterprises computer, however, has the whole crews personal data on it, schematics of their entire ship, including its weapons systems, and ultimately the computer controls their life support systems. So your'd think they might be a bit more touchy about letting any bugger who comes aboard do whatever he wants to it. I suppose, this fits in with Gene Roddenberry's vision of future human society, without money or any real crime, I suppose to the crew of the Enterprise, access privileges and encryption might seem draconian. They all trust each other with their information, unlike we do (see the xxx million Facebook stalker scare stories and headlines).

Its interesting, because I remember, about a year ago, reading about a man who for a short period was being followed by the FBI. He had absolutely no idea why, but once when returning from holiday, he nearly got refused entry back into his native land, the US, and since that point he was follow, calls monitored, cars followed etc. I think he might have been Muslim, I'm not sure. But, the part that interested me was, his reaction to this, was to buy a really smartphone, get a website, and take a photo of himself every few minutes, and upload it to the website, for the world to see. He kept complete logs of his every action, and had himself constantly tracked by GPS on his phone, then uploaded live onto his website. Quite an odd idea really, but he argued that after doing this for a few weeks, the FBI stopped following him. He claimed, the idea behind it was simple, if you make your privacy public, then it becomes worthless. No body is hacking into your phone to listen to your voicemail or tapping your phone, because they already have access to them because you make them available yourself, to show you have nothing to hide. He argued the more you try and hide your actions, the more secretive you are, the more you try and lock things away, the more people will assume you have that they must want, so they'll try harder to get at it. Maybe that's how the USS Enterprise works... they all know everyone knows everything about them, so they don't care, they don't have to protect it. Its an odd idea, and perhaps it could work on a personal level, obviously on a corporate level, I can't really see that idea taking off. But since there are no companies in Star Trek, might work for them.... bloody commies.

But anyway, me and Jamie talked about the security thing, and he pointed out that its probably just because the show was made in the early nineties, pre-Internet, so people were a lot less scared about privacy and security on computers. The idea that someone would remotely access or abuse the Enterprises computer system didn't seem to occur to the writers of the show. You try suggesting to people today that they have to carry their mobile phones attached to them all the time, anyone can ask their computer where someone else and their computer will tell them, and the computer always knows where everyone is, and people start irrationally screaming "big brother" at you. I guess the writers just didn't see the cons of everyone sharing their information in one big computer with no access levels or user accounts or other security checks. That's the other point I would make as well.... there is only one main computer! In this day and age, were we all have our cameras, mp3 players, phones, laptops etc. the idea that we would all just have one, all powerful computer, just seems bizarre. I suppose its like that famous speech of Bill Gates or the head of IBM or whoever it was, who said that maybe one day the world might need 2 computers. The idea of personal computers clearly hadn't taken off when the series was being written, everyone just has terminals and panels that connect to one big computer. If that goes down, I seem to recall them saying the only other computers they could have was a bunch of tri-coders linked together! Wheres their DRP? Whose their IT manager? Imagine working in an office where if the main sever goes down, you have to hot wire a bunch of calculators together to check your email....

Clearly the ideas of peer to peer networks and the Internet, were just a long way off.... which is odd, considering its the future. lol.