Star Trek: What its taught us and how its predicted the future
I’ve been watching Star Trek the original series or tos as it’s abbreviated.
Through out the viewing I have learnt and noticed a few things that are interesting mostly how it helped change the world as we know it and predicted future inventions.
Lets start with how it changed our world.
Racism
Star Trek showed that in the future racism in the human race was abolished and its a very touching notion one I wish we were at in this point of time in our existence.
It did show racism in the show but it was with races other than man kind which still had this notion.
One was an alien race where half of their body was black and the other white. They showed that there was hatred for their own race because some where born white with the other half black.
Now this is very important cause at the time of viewing it was when the civil rights movement was happening and showing these parallels to what was happening was an interesting way to display the message.
Now of course this was just a tv show it didn’t really play a part of the civil movement as far as I’m aware (I could be wrong) but to have it showing what someone has envisioned the future where everyone was equal it showed the way the future is heading.
In the real world it was doing more than just entertaining it was breaking social norms for tv at the time.
They showed minorities who weren’t in small roles we had a mix of races on the show and each character was important.
I think the mix of races on the enterprise not only helps show the idea of everyone is equal as they said in the show but they are also ambassadors of human kind. They said that racism was a thing of the past and it helped show that man kind has embraced everyone’s differences and is offering a hand of friendship to other alien races.
One huge leap on tv at least was that minorities at the time had small roles but Star Trek showed a different side.
We had Sulu who was played by George Takei. Not only did his character show he was an equal he was shown to have control of the enterprise and the crews life when fighting Klingons which I believe was a huge step forward on tv.
We also had Uhura who was played by Nichelle Nichols. Not only did the character have an important position she was seen as an equal and vital to the crew.
The sad part is both actors had to fight for their characters.
The studio censors not only where cutting down their lines but the writers were cutting them down to simple lines of very little value like patching him to you now captain.
They had fought and we now have two very strong and lovable characters we know today I don’t think anyone can imagine Star Trek without them.
There was also a television first which wasnt the norm and that was an interracial kiss.
Kirk and Uhura shared an on screen kiss which was controversial for the time and hadn’t been attempted before.
It was luckily passed by the censors and aired for all to view and helped change the norm for tv and helped even if it was a small way to show that everyone was equal.
Technology
Star Trek showed a lot of tech that not only inspired individuals and companies to come true but also predicted the future.
The communicator was really a walkie talkie when you think about the time period yet you can not deny that mobiles of today and even years ago seem to be based of that design and hey the communicator did have speaker phone capability.
We also have Uhura’s ear piece which could be seen as a prelude to a Bluetooth ear piece.
There was also the disk they used for their computers. Now at that point memory was expensive and huge and this reminds me more of flash drives or sd cards than floppy disks and shows how we now use external memory for every device we have almost.
I know there is a lot more items Star Trek was inspiration for but these are the few main ones I’ve noticed while watching some of the episodes.
I think Star Trek has done a lot of good for the general public compared to other tv shows and you can see why it has become a cultural icon.
