In 1966 Captain James T. Kirk and the Starship Enterprise began to boldly go where nobody has gone before. The show was groundbreaking. Not only was it a rare case where a Hollywood studio asked for a second pilot but its cast broke racial and gender barriers. Key to what the crew of the Enterprise could do was the technology that they used as they sought out new worlds and new civilizations. In 1966 it seemed so far ahead of its time but now 50+ years later how close are we to using what Mr. Spock or Dr. McCoy used?
LeVar Burton’s character Geordi LaForge in Star Trek: The Next Generation was blind and yet he was able to function as a valuable member of the crew. This was thanks to his VISOR (Visual Instrument and Sensory Organ Replacement) device. It allowed him to see through the electromagnetic spectrum. In 1987 that seemed so far off but it may be closer than we all think. In 2005 Stanford scientists placed a microchip behind the retina of blind rats and the rats were able to pass visual recognition tests. These bionic eyes work exactly the way the VISOR does. A pair of glasses are fitted with a video camera and a small computer processes the video and broadcasts the video as an LED image inside of the glasses which then reflects back into the retina and stimulates the chip sending the nerve signals to the brain. As of right now it is possible to achieve 20/80 vision for someone who has 20/400 vision.
For the crew of the Enterprise to fly safely (and for dramatic effect for the audience) a window to the outside was necessary and the ship’s viewscreen took care of that. Not only was the outside world seen but it also allowed for video messages to be displayed in real time. It was a telepresence, or the ability to interact with someone while being separated by the void of space and this was not necessarily something dreamed up by Star Trek since it seemed like every Bond villain had one. In 2008 AT&T and Cisco teamed up and created the TelePresence kit. The technology can change the ambient light in the room so that the surroundings of the other person can be mimicked and allowed for ambient sound to be equalized. It can make it seem as if people that are hundreds or thousands of miles away are sitting across the table from you. Of course the resolution and size of the viewscreen was amazing for our intrepid heroes. We too enjoy such a thing today. Just head down to your local stadium and bask in the video board’s greatness.
On a long mission people have to eat. On Jean-Luc Picard’s Enterprise-D the food replicator allowed a crewman to order just about anything that they wanted to eat and it would materialize in front of them. Later versions of the show featured replicators that could manufacture goods as well. That is not a far-fetched dream anymore. 3-D printers are capable of manufacturing nearly anything today from plastic and while they are not able to make food out of thin air that day may come too.
A long mission will also require time to relax and unwind and that is where the holodeck came in. Projectors allowed for anything to be displayed around a user and a moving floor theoretically allowed the user to feel as though there was no end to the world that they were immersed in. It sounds so futuristic but University of Southern California students working as a part of the aptly-named Project Holodeck have used virtual reality goggles to basically do the same thing.