Star Trek's legacy built on enduring vision

“Star Trek” turned 50 earlier this month, an event that was heralded with enthusiasm among fans and nerds (often one and the same) alike.

Of course, I’m speaking specifically of the original series, often referred to as TOS by fans, which premiered on CBS on Sept. 8, 1966 — a Thursday according to my smartphone.

Considering it launched 11 years before I was born, I really don’t know how it was received at the time of its initial airing. Even if I was alive, I doubt I would have been able to watch it. I grew up near Hardy after all, and the only channels that were available were KAIT, an ABC affiliate, and AETN (a PBS affiliate).

I do know the show had made quite an impression on a lot of people at the time of its initial airing and syndicated run through the 1970s.

Me, I can't really call myself a super fan of the show. No matter which series you speak of, whether it be the original one or any of its followups, there were lots of terrible episodes. Look at the first season of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” If one were to watch the full first season, which I don't recommend, a person would scratch their head wondering “how on earth did it get a second?” I think anyone that even calls themselves a super fan will tell you what the bad episodes are … then recommend you watch them anyway.

Another thing that always bothered me about “Star Trek” in pretty much all of its incarnations, but especially the original, was the sheer amount of supposed aliens that were identical to humans. Of course, in the 1960s TV budgets were limited and make-up was still underdeveloped as a craft. Other series that dealt with humans traveling to (actually more like getting stuck on) alien worlds like “Land of the Giants” and “Lost in Space” was dominated by rather human-looking aliens too. So I can understand the why, but it is still one of those things that bothers me when I watch Star Trek and other old-school sci-fi shows.

Those other two shows I mentioned also saw several years of syndication after their initial runs too. Even when we first got cable TV at my house when I was a kid, it seemed like “Lost in Space” was on somewhere at any hour of the day.

But unlike “Star Trek,” those other shows didn’t endure in the public’s imagination. While “Star Trek” launched not one, but two, movie franchises and many different TV shows, its contemporaries faded away, living on in the land of digital sub channels.

So why did “Star Trek” endure?

Well, probably first and foremost is because it really connected with its fans. Or maybe a better word would be that it made an impression. An impression that would stick.

How did it do that? How about with its vision of the future. Instead of largely white male cast with one woman cast for eye candy, which was the norm for most science fiction until then, “Star Trek” had a crew of many men and women of several races holding a variety of positions and ranks based on neither physical trait. That was pretty revolutionary to some people.

Something like that can make an impression on people. Just ask actress Whoopi Goldberg, who said “When I was 9 years old, ‘Star Trek’ came on. I looked at it and went screaming through the house, ‘Come here, Mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on TV, and she ain’t no maid!’ I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.”

Goldberg would go on to play a recurring character named Guinan, who was a bartender, and sometimes counselor, on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

It also made an impression in other ways, like how we perceive technology.

Want proof? Check out your cellphone.

Although not exactly a kid at the time “Star Trek” first aired, he was 28 in 1966, Martin Cooper, who led the Motorola team that developed the first handheld mobile phone said that watching Captain Kirk using his communicator on the television show “Star Trek” inspired him to develop a handheld mobile phone. The mobile phone eventually evolved to the smartphone, which is likely years beyond those initial Star Trek communicators, save the teleportation part.

Other technology that showed up in “Star Trek” first: Tablets, smart watches, Bluetooth devices … just to name a few. Some other technologies featured on the show, like the food replicator, is on the verge of becoming reality by combining 3-D printing and knowledge of amnio acids and other building blocks of life. The USS Enterprise’s mission launched in 2245, but by the time the real 2245 gets here, its technology might be considered archaic.

But what is probably “Star Trek”’s most enduring legacy is that it helped make science fiction respectable. Sure, it still took time for the movies to catch up — studios still didn’t have faith that science fiction could be box office gold until Star Wars beat all expectations — but we can say “Star Trek” helped pave the way. It’s partially thanks to Star Trek that science fiction can be taken seriously now.

With “Star Trek: Discovery” premiering next year, we can't really expect it to take us where no one has gone before, but we can look forward to the ride.

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Happy belated birthday WWW

As many of you have probably heard the World Wide Web turned 25 years in August and for something so young, it feels like it’s been around forever and it’s something that’s hard to picture society functioning without.

It all started with CERN, which is the English name of the European Organization for Nuclear Research. CERN currently operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world.

It wasn’t a very exciting beginning. The few visitors outside of the government, higher education and private tech spheres in August 1991 would be greeted by black text on a white background which stated “The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.”

There were several hyperlinks and a lot of text. But unlike what came before, it was easily navigable by people who weren’t technologically disposed.

What was the Internet like before the Web? Well, not very exciting. There were several of the building blocks we take for granted now in existence. Local area networks and wide-area networks existing since the 1950s. People had been capable of sharing files since the 1970s. The first online bulletin board came into existence in 1978. But they were not easily navigable and without the WWW there wasn’t the wide berth of connectivity we see now.

The creators of the World Wide Web used the concept of hypertext and had the goals to use the it to facilitate the sharing of information among researchers.

CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone on April 30, 1993. This is what truly opened the floodgates. You can actually see a copy of the original first webpage at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.

Those first visitors who all of a sudden had a gate to the rest of the world open up to them via their computers might not have realized they were also the first to see what would become one of the building blocks of our 2016 world, instant communication between anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Although it would be a few years before the World Wide Web really exploded into the public consciousness, sometime around the mid-90s, Hollywood did not waste anytime jumping on it with movies like “The Lawnmower Man,” “The Net” and “Hackers” — all of which wound up being way off the mark. Hollywood led us to believe that the ‘net would artificially increase intelligence, like Lawnmower Man, and that anyone with a dial-up connection could find their way to top secret government information if they were persistent enough.

But the reality was a bit different. Hollywood, nor the entertainment business in general, didn’t really seem to think about the impact the internet would have on them or how we conduct business, worldwide, in general.

After all, in the wake of the Napster debacle of the early 2000s, when the music companies found out they could make a buck off downloading music the music store died, probably never coming back. Although they weathered it a little better, the bookstore will never quite be the same … being on the most part elaborate coffee shops that sell books on the side.

Even the way we watch movies at home changed. Sure, we’ve been able to watch movies online since the 1990s, but who really wanted to spend the whole day downloading a likely-ill gotten feature length film which would probably have a low-quality picture and spotty as it played? When dial up was finally left largely in the dust in the mid-2000s, that’s when streaming movies finally took off. Of course, the movie rental business went under.

With the onset of smartphones and tablets within the last decade, we can connect with the rest of the world from almost anywhere, given that there’s a wifi connection or a cell tower near by (the latter can lead to huge phone bills though). Now we can enjoy music, movies, TV, radio or books from pretty much anywhere. We can also bank, make sure our homes are secure, shop for groceries and other daily necessities before we even leave work for the day.

But the most important legacy of that first WWW is probably making instant worldwide communication accessible to everyone. It’s changed the way families keep in touch, expanded our social circle beyond the local physical settings and, of course, changed the way many people meet their mate.

Think of it this way. Many of those couples who met on the internet in its early days, the 1990s, now have children who are at an age where they can marry and have children of their own. After all, 22 percent of people meet their partners online now, second only behind mutual friends at 24 percent, according to eHarmony Australia’s 2015 Relationship Study. That’s a big turnaround from the time when meeting people online was considered the domain of rejects and outcasts. Now, it looks like times have changed, and those nerds and outcasts might be the ones who inherit the earth.

Originally printed in the Batesville Daily Guard

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Buffet roulette

Originally printed in the Batesville Daily Guard

Remember those sick days you took off from school as a kid?

I sure do.

I, as well as many of my peers, would often exaggerate our discomfort to get those little breaks to stay home and do other things, usually watch TV and play video games. Those slightly elevated temperatures, red eyes or tight bellies were like the Golden Ticket out of the classroom if we brought them to the school nurse.

Of course, there was a huge difference between being “sick” and being really sick.

Really sick wasn’t much fun. Unlike the occasional cold or too-greasy/spicy food from the night before, one couldn’t simply take a Tylenol or a shot of Pepto Bismol, and feel good enough to watch TV or play video games. Really sick came hand in hand with being really miserable, often not able to get out of bed. 

I experienced “really sick” a few times in my youth. Usually, it’d be from catching one strain of the flu or another at school. The worst was when I caught pneumonia, which caused me to be bedridden for a week, lacking the energy to get up and even eat.

It was different than getting really sick as an adult. Unlike a kid in school, even having to leave work early can have serious repercussions. For many, it could mean that few hours they missed could cause them to be late on a bill or buying fewer groceries. For those that wind up missing days, it could cost them getting that month’s rent or car payment in on time.

Some of us are lucky enough to have understanding employers and the type of job that let us make up those hours we were absent or have adequate sick leave. For that, many of us should feel blessed. But there are still many that don’t have that luxury.

But back to myself, I got really sick last week. Not only was I sick, but so was the rest of my family. We believe that we caught the norovirus; our symptoms fit it, anyway. Norovirus is, and here’s the disgusting part, a disease spread by fecal-oral transmission. We believe we came into contact with it while eating at a buffet in a different city (from my experience, the buffets in Batesville have been great). I wasn’t ignorant of the fact that there was always a chance, it’s just that in the past, my risks have always paid off in a full belly and nothing more.

As they say “you play with fire ...”

Norovirus infection can cause nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhea, abdominal pain and loss of taste. It also causes lethargy, weakness, muscle aches, headaches and low-grade fevers. Luckily it’s not usually dangerous and most people who contract it make a full recovery within two to three days.

Let’s just say it’s a very unpleasant experience.

The norovirus causes 19 million to 21 million illnesses every year, The outbreaks are usually in crowded environments like nursing homes, day care centers and cruise ships. Young children and the elderly tend to suffer the worst effects. The norovirus also causes 570 to 800 deaths each year, according to the CDC.

What’s the best way to prevent it? Sufficient heating, chlorine-based disinfectants and polyquaternary amines, and washing your hands if you’re serving food. There’s also a vaccine, developed by the Japanese, in the human testing phase.

But even with the vaccine, I’d still rather not unknowingly consume fecal matter in the first place.

In my case, things weren’t handled this way, so I got sick. Not only that, but my entire family got sick as well. It was a terrible experience, with both my wife and I feeling so weak that comforting our sick son seemed to take everything we had.

On the bright side, it’s a great way to lose weight if you’re looking to do so. In the span of 24 hours I managed to lose five pounds. Of course, as soon as my appetite returned, I started working on putting those five pounds back on.

So next time you eat out, make sure you pay attention to how your food is being handled. It may save you a few days of misery.

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