Yes, of course, the UI most often has THE_THING_WE_ARE_TALKING_ABOUT. Sci-fi UI in the 60s was a TV screen showing THE_THING_WE_ARE_TALKING_ABOUT surrounded by

Yes, of course, the UI most often has THE_THING_WE_ARE_TALKING_ABOUT. Sci-fi UI in the 60s was a TV screen showing THE_THING_WE_ARE_TALKING_ABOUT surrounded by hundreds of randomly blinking lamps with switches (all of them with no labels). Today it's a virtual screen showing THE_THING_WE_ARE_TALKING_ABOUT surrounded by dozens of concentric circles, squares and random icons, lines and tiny unreadable text. Frankly things haven't changed much. That's really not what real UI is in most cases, but that's fine. As for the holograms. I get it, holograms are convenient. They're especially convenient because you can show the character's face and body as they work with a hologram BEHIND the hologram. Otherwise you have to awkwardly show a TV screen covering most of your own TV screen, and it makes for boring framing, and a boring show. But that's the thing. They're convenient for framing the shots, and for looking conventionally "futuristic". But otherwise such stuff pulls me out of whatever I'm watching rather quickly. Because a magical holographic display that produces image just like that, in the air, with no projection target, is frankly silly. I give Star Wars a pass, because it's a western/fantasy, not actually sci-fi. But for a sci-fi that's trying to be gritty and realistic, it kinda bothers me, because it's kinda lazy and uninspired. Even if we could, no one would design a UI where you're waving your hands in front of your face all day in empty air with dimly lit thin lines that're supposed to show you whatever you're working on. Also holograms look distinctly added in, because while they light up themselves, their light doesn't reflect from anything around them. Sometimes they try to correct for this by adding some blue or red fill lights in front of an actor's face, but it still looks quite fake. I don't know where the balance is, because as I said, a show can't really be like reality. Reality of using computer UI is rather boring, and will be boring for centuries to come. But also a lot of what we see in the Expanse UI effects are old, established, somewhat tired UI tropes, and while I respect the work of everyone involved, they're merely "does the job" level. There's no attempt to rethink anything, or try something new. In that sense, BTW, Battlestar Galactica was a breath of fresh air, because it chose to go simple and retro. And it looked fine.