Ahead warp factor one
Image courtesy - Reddit
In case you thought the title appears
from some sci-fi movie or, series, it indeed is!
This famous line marked the end
of an episode for most of the legendary Star Trek – The Original Series (TOS).
The warp factor indicated the
target speed the famous starship ‘Enterprise’ would attain; warp factor
one stood for light-speed.
My fascination for the
series got ignited after I watched a documentary “For the Love of Spock” about
Leonard Nimoy who played the epic character Spock; what followed was 60
episodes of Star Trek absorbed over 35 days.
Broadcast in 1966-69, the series
put the voyages of the Enterprise in an inter galactic space 300 years
into the future. The last episode preceded man’s landing on the moon by six
weeks, with several episodes referencing moon landing as a retrospective event.
Why re-discover Star Trek – TOS?
Prototyping a future
To imagine a future in certain
scientific details that’s not 10, 20 but 300 years away is more than just a leap of imagination.
It starts with the mission and
you get to hear it at the beginning of every episode.
“Space, the final frontier.
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission,
To explore strange new worlds.
To seek out new life, and new civilizations.
To boldly go where no man has gone before.”
As you watch the series, you cannot miss the consistency of this message.
The Enterprise becomes the mother
ship and its crew led by Captain Kirk becomes the Point A of this journey.
The various episodes are paths to
a new planet, a new ecosystem, unique challenges and solving them.
There is limited indulgence of visual
effects or, gadget overload when you reference this from the available
production technology of the 60s.
In a definitive way, the vision
of the future has not been made as an extrapolation of the present, or as a complex
domination by humans or machines.
How did they get it right?
Be it mobile phones, video calls,
using AI to do forensic investigation of voice samples and text to developing serums
that cure viral infections, it appears prophetic.
As I watched the series, the
number of products to technologies we are using today became unbelievable.
In many ways, Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001:
A Space Odyssey’ represented to me a bold but worrying visualization of a
future with AI gone rogue. Even Kubrick’s 1968 cult-classic was two years late
compared to Star Trek’s vision of a future with AI or, communications
tech.
A future where machines or AI
work cohesively to enable new discoveries and solve problems, with some obvious
friction around ethics, privacy and discretion, is not far away but we are
already in it.
Good team makes it possible
The characters that are permanently
etched in memory of generations that have watched Star Trek are Captain
Kirk, half-human, half-alien Science Officer Spock, Chief Medical Officer McCoy,
Chief Engineering Officer Scotty and several more.
Spock’s complete loyalty is with
logic that is trusted as well as hated at times; Captain Kirk’s accessibility
as a friend, bold, clear judgments also sometime border on high risk and
vulnerable close calls. There is diversity in color, ethnicity and country.
You will find an Indian judge in one
of the episodes on an investigation panel.
The complex and entertaining
interplay of such diverse characters make you think about the necessity of
differing voices in any group with common purpose.
Going into Space
The story of Star Trek is
incomplete without its creator Gene Roddenberry. He was awarded Distinguished
Public Service Medal by NASA for inspiring people around the world including
generation of astronauts.
Gene’s bios includes flying
bombers during World War II, being awarded Distinguished Flying Cross and Air
Medal, survived an air crash, served as police sergeant and dived into his
interest in writing to eventually produce TV series and movies.
He dreamed through his series
voyages that were beyond our solar system and possibilities in interplanetary
life long before it became a subject of space tourism in the early 2000s.
Space is what we see in a clear
night sky. It continues to challenge human mind and engineering, forcing to
collaborate among countries, to push the limits of knowledge and to boldly go
where no man has gone before.
Interested for more:
NASA and Star
Trek Overview | NASA
Book read – The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku
Excellent effort Anand!! Indeed intriguing how the bold imagination several years ago may become a reality tomorrow and one of us may be a part of this... Clearly shows what human mind is capable of doing!!
ReplyDeleteYou make me want to watch the series. I have very faint memories of Star Trek from my childhood. "Big Bang Theory " kept some of it alive...and now you are forcing me to watch it😊
ReplyDeleteGene Roddenberry has created something that has stood the test of time and is in fact thriving today. So many spin offs. An idea that was bold and visionary.
ReplyDeleteVery entertaining and thought provoking. Leads one to wonder as to what it would take to concoct a blueprint for the next revolutionary idea that would be relevant, not just in the next decade but possibly in the next century as well.
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