Not a bad article. It is worth noting that TNG was super soft-sci-fi not "real" sci fi and as such reflects its era's social commentary, nothing more, no alter

Not a bad article. It is worth noting that TNG was super soft-sci-fi not "real" sci fi and as such reflects its era's social commentary, nothing more, no alternative universe type of effect which is so interesting about hard sci fi. Don't have to limit consideration solely to Trek series to see a growing pessimism about the future from a cultural perspective. A smooth drift across all cultural properties from utopian to dystopian futures. If you do want to have a tech talk about Trek, specifically TNG, its fun to recall tech of that era. I had an old XT class PC and watched it on a Sony Japanese made 12 inch SD TV, and for the TNG premiere, they simulcasted the audio on a local FM radio station in stereo, which sounded pretty awesome. Then after an episode I'd dial into a local BBS and discuss, of course a BBS being a BBS that means a good discussion takes about a week, which is just about right... About two years into the series I got access to usenet and eventually a SLIP account on the internet (SLIP being kinda like a static configured by hand networking parameters with out-of-band authentication, but otherwise kinda like PPP, of course in this post-modem era maybe PPP is becoming unknown?).