Why isn't the Federation filled with holograms?

[Voss]

The EMH is experimental, and Starfleet doesn't know how the experiment's going because Voyager is across the galaxy in the Delta Quadrant.

Not in the later seasons of Voyager. (Which makes me sad that I know that, but I apparently had a masochistic streak in my 20s).

They beamed the EMH back in later seasons- once so he could cure his original programmer, and once to save a magic transforming ship that had been taken over by Romulans. They established that the EMH mark II, III and IV (who was a different actor... the goofy guy from News Radio, Andy? Dick), had been propagated and spread throughout the fleet as standard issue on all ships.

As by the ST pseudo-science, a living being could survive off of holographic food, but it would be like fairy food; leave the "holoemitter field" and your molecules, now substituted with light held within force fields, vanish.
You turn to dust.

Ah, but what if you've already metabolized it? There is a lot of shit they do with that damn holodeck that just Doesn't Make Sense. I could never figure out, from Next Gen Ep 1, how the hell they didn't walk into the damn walls, which were really, actually there.

Other holographic issues- it was implied from, well, Next Gen on (and just shy of explicit in DS:9) that the Federation and others use holograms as literal fuck toys, to the point of actual, stupidly complex, emotionally invested relationships with, essentially, a high tech vibrator. Maybe thats why they want to keep them 'down'.

[Talisman]

My question is really more along the lines of why are these writers so afraid of taking these technologies to a practical outcome?

This is related to gaming in the fact that I see similar behaviors from on of my DMs who has a problem with his players messing with the status quo of his world.

For a GM, it's probably because the GM has some adventure ideas and wants to be able to share in the storytelling, as opposed to either (1) just reacting to what the players do, or (2) accepting that the PCs are invincible and ending the campaign.

The case for ST and other series is similiar...they can't take things to their logical extreme without muddying the waters for future writers. It'd be different for a move or a tightly-controlled series, but ST in particular is too big and corporate for such actions.

Why? Can anyone name me one series/book/whatever where the people in that world wholly took advantage of the power in their hands? Wouldn't that in of itself make that series/book/whatever very unique and compelling?

It could be interesting if done right, but it could also be very boring. Drama is created through challenges, and a story about a wizard who chain-binds efreeti until he has wished himself into being immortal, unkillable, invincible, etc, etc sounds very boring to me*. I realize you may not have meant that specifically, but you see my point, I trust.

Good writers - and even lesser writers who avoid this pit trap - either exclude all such uberpowered nonsense from their stories in the first place, or explain why no one has used it to make Utopia yet. The One Ring would grant its wielder terrific power, but at the price of corrupting them into the very thing they fought - thus, only the evil people tried to use it. In the Shannara series, magic is wild and freaky and will literally change the wielder permanently. Allanon the Druid (wizard) might have enough power, knowledge and savvy to accomplish any given task, but doing so would likely either age him to death or leave him totally unhuman by the time he had accomplished it. There's at least one account of a man using a magical item excessively and having it alter his DNA.

*Actually, this sounds a lot like The Man Who Could Do Miracles, which was pretty decent.

[JonSetanta]

Ah, but what if you've already metabolized it? There is a lot of shit they do with that damn holodeck that just Doesn't Make Sense. I could never figure out, from Next Gen Ep 1, how the hell they didn't walk into the damn walls, which were really, actually there.

Almost as if.. dundundunnnn... holodecks are impossible!

IMO if a person has metabolized hologram "fake molecules" it doesn't matter; those particles will still only exist as long as photon beams or holo-rays are continually supplied.
Once it's gone, any cell depending on those specific molecules ruptures, dies, mutates, whatever. The person is screwed.
The more their body replaces old (shed, defecated) molecules with holodeck ones, the worse the effects will be when denied that energy.
Eventually they'll become a hologram.

Yep. Impossible.
Right along with time travel. I mean, case in point our continued daily existence is proof that some tard hasn't jumped back in the distant past (Narcissist from the game Continuum?) to remodel the future.
There are no 'time quakes'.
There are no 'alternate realities'.
The buddhist monks just might be right; there is only one reality and only the now.

[virgil]

I believe it's been stated that the holodeck uses replicator technology for food along with forcefields, visual/audial distortions, and 'conveyor belt' like effects to make the room appear bigger than it truly is.

[RandomCasualty2]

Other holographic issues- it was implied from, well, Next Gen on (and just shy of explicit in DS:9) that the Federation and others use holograms as literal fuck toys, to the point of actual, stupidly complex, emotionally invested relationships with, essentially, a high tech vibrator. Maybe thats why they want to keep them 'down'.

I can actually totally see that one. Apparently it's pretty easy to create complex holograms and you can make them based on existing people's appearances, which actually makes it pretty perfect place to live out sexual fantasies.

And despite the fact that holograms disappear when they leave the holofield, they're actually very human like in their actions, so I could see how someone might fall in love with one.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

I blame cheapness, a typical function of modern military/warfare.

Why don't we proxy-fly all of our planes? Robot assassination droids? Hell, robot soldiers.

Real soldiers are cheap. A soldier costs about $1245/month, and taxes (buhuahahaha!) knock that back down to $1000. Really, you can pay a guy $12000/year, rent him a gun, buy him a uniform and make him sleep in a tent (also rented to him), and feed him (what, another 2K?). The cost to proxy-fly a plane or the sheer amount of material for a droid will cost more than this.

I'm not down on the military, but people are cheap and "continuously operating holographic technology" ain't.

[tzor]

Also note that in Data's case he was a prototpye (#2) so he had a number of fail safe deactivation systems. Those were heavily exploited as plot points in the early epsiodes.

[Voss]

I blame cheapness, a typical function of modern military/warfare.

Why don't we proxy-fly all of our planes? Robot assassination droids? Hell, robot soldiers.

Real soldiers are cheap. A soldier costs about $1245/month, and taxes (buhuahahaha!) knock that back down to $1000. Really, you can pay a guy $12000/year, rent him a gun, buy him a uniform and make him sleep in a tent (also rented to him), and feed him (what, another 2K?). The cost to proxy-fly a plane or the sheer amount of material for a droid will cost more than this.

I'm not down on the military, but people are cheap and "continuously operating holographic technology" ain't.

Costs aside, they're seriously working on that sort of shit. There has been a definite movement toward spending money rather than lives (dating from bodybags being on TV in Vietnam), The economic issues may reverse that in a 'get rid of the surplus population' sort of way, but robot soldiers in the 2050s won't be much of a surprise.

[Gelare]

Costs aside, they're seriously working on that sort of shit. There has been a definite movement toward spending money rather than lives (dating from bodybags being on TV in Vietnam), The economic issues may reverse that in a 'get rid of the surplus population' sort of way, but robot soldiers in the 2050s won't be much of a surprise.

I keep seeing these air force commercials about how proud the technicians are to be remotely piloting this drone aircraft called (I think) the Predator, and how they save lives, and so on, so they're not just moving in that direction, they've been moving in that direction in their R&D efforts for quite a long while.

[Voss]

Oh yeah, 20 years or so. I can remember talk of the Army After Next back when my father retired, with (essentially) stormtrooper armor, hovertanks (with lightning cannons), and all sorts of other weird ass shit. Remote piloting was in the 'actually sane idea' category. The lightning cannon hover tanks actually weren't, since to get the power for an electrical discharge (which in tests, actually shredded conventional armor), they needed a nuclear engine, which weighed too much for the hover systems.

The biggest problem they had was a mindset that said the rest of the world was a bunch of backwards, sand-grubbing monkeys that couldn't possibly develop countermeasures of any sort, and high tech would rule all, regardless of environmental conditions.

[tzor]

Why don't we proxy-fly all of our planes? Robot assassination droids? Hell, robot soldiers.

The fact is that we haven't been in a "real" war in decades ... in fact we haven't been in a "real" war since WWII, all the wars we have been in are with an enemy of at least one or at best one half tech level below our own.

Remote control planes are a great thing when your enemy is a tech level or so below your own. But when the enemy is the same tech level as you are then you have to deal with jamming technology.

We still lack the AI to really do the robot soldier thing. On the other hand, robot trash (er bomb) collectors and robot medivacs are already common military hardware, even if still on the rare side.

It's going to be a long time until robots can take over. In fact even humans have been on the loosing side of the learning curve in terms of adapting to the ever complex (almost viral) nature of modern conflicts.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

For those of us in pursuit of a MS in AI, I don't think the technology will be "too expensive" forever, it just is right now.

There is usually a "this is too expensive" option (cell phones and satellite communications not too long ago) that eventually makes it's way into the military and then the populace.

[tzor]

The current problem with AI in terms of the full combat situation is that it has to deal with human inteligence which is actively looking for ways to confuse it. On the other hand the potential for AI to be behind the lines where it is not in direct contact with advanced adapting intelligences opposed to its function is a definite posibility in the years ahead.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Apparently it's pretty easy to create complex holograms and you can make them based on existing people's appearances, which actually makes it pretty perfect place to live out sexual fantasies.

http://hijinksensue.com/2008/04/25/late ... -holodeck/

The commentary's better than the comic, really.

[Surgo]

Costs aside, they're seriously working on that sort of shit. There has been a definite movement toward spending money rather than lives (dating from bodybags being on TV in Vietnam), The economic issues may reverse that in a 'get rid of the surplus population' sort of way, but robot soldiers in the 2050s won't be much of a surprise.

I keep seeing these air force commercials about how proud the technicians are to be remotely piloting this drone aircraft called (I think) the Predator, and how they save lives, and so on, so they're not just moving in that direction, they've been moving in that direction in their R&D efforts for quite a long while.

Drones are an old idea with a new implementation. The Air Force was incredibly resistant to the idea of drones for a very long time, for no other reason than they didn't want to cut out the human element (seriously). Somewhat more recently (90s) the top brass realized how retarded they were being and changed the policy.

[Arcane-surge]

Yep. Impossible.
Right along with time travel. I mean, case in point our continued daily existence is proof that some tard hasn't jumped back in the distant past (Narcissist from the game Continuum?) to remodel the future.
There are no 'time quakes'.
There are no 'alternate realities'.
The buddhist monks just might be right; there is only one reality and only the now.

I dunno about that. If someone DID remodel the past, how would you know? Wouldn't things have always been that way? I like Arthur Clarke's rationale better, there's no time travel because shit happens. We know there isn't, because archaeologists would be finding tons of evidence of it, laptops left behind in ancient Egypt, an mp3 player stocked with crazy future tunes dated to some time during the French Revolution...With a finite amount of history and a hypothetically very lengthy future, it's bound to happen a lot.

That said, on the topic at hand, it probably has a lot to do with accessibility. Writing for a mass medium like tv, you want a show to be accessible to some kind of lowest common denominator of people. People need to be able to tune into an episode for a few minutes, understand what's going on, and relate to it. Ship full of holograms? They might as well be Ewoks. Cool idea for a little while, but try doing ten seasons of that shit, let alone five different shows and eleven movies. Huge advances get included because they're exciting, and a draw, but most shows have to return to the status quo because they don't want things to continuously ramp up. If they gain a piece of super-tech every month, you're not gonna recognize the show in two years.

Star Trek does this with poor writing usually, just ignoring whatever happened in the last episode in favour of the new crisis of the week. Shows like Stargate SG-1 do it a little more overtly, because for the most part you know that if they find a shiny new toy in an episode, it's gonna be slag by the end. Writers giveth and taketh away. Some shows ignore it, like Babylon 5, where the tech doesn't advance that much, and there's more of a focus on characters (and the like three cgi sequences they shelled out for and therefore must include in every episode).

[tzor]

Actually I have something cooler than a hologram and it's low tech to boot (but low tech made to a high tech percision).

Absolutely incredible device! The Mirage®, a precision optical instrument, creates three-dimensional images of objects of your choice where there is nothing. Drop pennies, keys or similar small objects (your sister won't fit) into the 2-3/8" dia opening of this 9" dia x 3" high flying-saucer-shaped disc, and a perfect image of the object will appear floating above it. The image is so real friends will try to grasp it, but their fingers will close on thin air! Use it as a high-tech centerpiece with a flower as the object! A booklet (included) explains the magic. New coating provides protection for the mirror surfaces. Highly recommended. Made in the USA.

Of course gven the size I can only put my smallest minis in it, like my penguins. I think my little children and furnature might fit as well, but most minis are a tad too tall and the image doesn't appear right as a result.

[JonSetanta]

I dunno about that. If someone DID remodel the past, how would you know? Wouldn't things have always been that way?

I wouldn't. No one would.

Nothing would be changed for us or the individual involved as they would return to their own unaltered timeline, since that's the only universe that could integrate their very existence. Any alterations would not bring about the occurence of that individual in their current state.

And since nothing is changed, there's no point in time travel even if it did work.
I accept that there are limitations on time just as the speed of light is a universal constant (under ideal conditions in a void).

[Surgo]

Sigma, you are totally awesome at talking out of your ass. Seeing as how you've never actually traveled through time, nor do you know anyone who has traveled through time, nor is the concept of time travel workable at all, I'm not sure how you can make any claims with a straight face.

[the_taken]

... I'm not sure how you can make any claims with a straight face.

He isn't:

[JonSetanta]

It's my mind manifest.

Also, anyone making solid as fact statements about a pseudo-science television series is taking theirself far too seriously.
We're losers on a gaming forum. For fucks sake, go join a real scientific community if you want genuine doctorate-clogged research-backed scientific debates.

[Bigode]

We're losers on a gaming forum.

Talk solely about yourself, please.

[TOZ]

We're losers on a gaming forum.

Talk solely about yourself, please.

We'd run out of material if we did that.

[Bigode]

You know what I mean.

[Shoggoth]

The reason why writers on these Sci-Fi shows never take the technology to it's logical conclusions is because these stories are fundamentally about humans as we know them.

It's patently ridiculous, with what we have technologically now and where the trends are going, that we will be fully human normal people in giant high-tech spaceships flying around the galaxy.

With tech like the EMH, you're talking about Strong AI, actually sentient non-organic life. It makes much more sense to take intelligent software, put it on a ship which is just a warp drive, some emitters, a computer core, and replicator technology, and send it on it's way. Need a body? Make one. Need to manipulate something? Emitters. But that's not Human like we know Human, so it's useless in the context.

So they have to scale it back. The copy the EMH to other ships, but don't use the same kind of tech to make Emergency Engineers, or Emergency Pilots, or Emergency Captains. Hell, it makes more sense to automate the medical bed and give you a readout. But the hologram creates a human user interface that we can relate to on a TV show, so they can't do that.