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Star Trek's transporters would be excellent. We could recover all that land that's covered in paving, no longer care about location, eliminate the pollution of
by delinka 13y ago
Star Trek's transporters would be excellent. We could recover all that land that's covered in paving, no longer care about location, eliminate the pollution of today's internal combustion engines...
The sad thing is that if this could happen in the next decade, I fear it would quickly become a target of the entire transportation industry as they scramble to lobby for laws to prevent its use. And the same thing would happen for Trek's matter replicators.
But if I've learned anything comparing science fiction and the real world, it's that our scientific understanding of the universe comes slowly enough that society adapts. The only notable exception is the near-instant communication provided by the internet and its effects on "intellectual property" hoarders.
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- magic_haze 13y ago_If_ we manage to create transporters at all (never mind the next decade), the impact on religion and legislation would be far greater than on the transportation industry. If your body is destroyed and reconstructed, are you still the same person? What if you could make copies? It's just information, after all. And so on... Do any of the Star Trek episodes investigate this aspect of the transporters?
- delinka 13y agoI do not recall any real attention paid to such aspects of the transporter. I do recall, however, the inventor of the device showing up in an episode of Enterprise[1] and referring to all the dialog that came up when the device was new; his comment? "Metaphysical nonsense." [1] - Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Daedalus" - Dr. Emory Erickson according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_(Star_Trek) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_(Star_Trek)
- nijk 13y agoSpock Must Die, the first novel, was about transporter duplication. Mirror Mirror was a wackier plot.