> The Star Trek dream emerged before computing technology was very far advanced, and well before the idea of constantly mobile wireless communication. We thought our AIs would be small and physical, easy for a single person to entirely own and unable to remember more details than a human; instead we got unfamiliar algorithms run on machines far away.
Which is kind of funny, because even if it might be accessed by personal mobile devices, the Star Trek "library computer" AI was never "small and physical, easy for a single person to entirely own and unable to remember more details than a human", it was an aspect of a large server (or networked cluster, the actual architecture is somewhat vague) that was part of a capital ship or base, had access in the server/cluster to a library of very nearly all generally available knowledge and extensive personal information about both its users and about people with little direct connection (and could reach out across a galactic network to access additional remote information sources to handle requests).
"Unfamiliar algorithms run on machines far away" is much more like the source of the "Star Trek dream" than "small and physical, easy for a single person to entirely own and unable to remember more details than a human".
I think Star Trek was very prescient here as well: Security is terrible in the Star Trek universe. Nearly every antagonist is able to break into the computer within about a minute.
True! I suppose I was thinking of earlier space-age fantasy more than TNG. It was rather odd how easily people could look up details on crewmembers aboard the Enterprise, but I suppose the situation's different on an organized ship.
> It was rather odd how easily people could look up details on crewmembers aboard the Enterprise, but I suppose the situation's different on an organized ship.
Not just crewmembers: TNG showed some of the broader implications (both useful and creepy) of the convenience-oriented panopticon, e.g., when Geordi used the Enterprise library computer to construct a simulation from data (including personality profiles) of Dr. Leah Brahms, who later meets him (and encounters the simulation.) (S306 "Booby Trap", S416 "Galaxy's Child")
That was a substantial plot hole where she had no idea someone was simulating her.
I suspect a huge part of the panopticon culture would be / is being informed that you're being peeped at. 99% of the time someone asking "Computer locate commander Riker" involved commander Riker knowing all about who's looking for him and why and having a substantial conversation with the requester.
I don't recall any plot along the lines of Deanna getting jealous and spamming the computer all night asking where Riker is and he better not be in that cute ensign's bedroom... Because it seems logical the computer would inform him each time and he would eventually tire of the interruption and nature would take its course, WRT his relationship with Deanna.
A better analogy would be technically I could walk up to the company president's office and stalk him, but culturally that is so not going to fly and I would have a lot of explaining to do. Merely using the computer instead of walking there in flesh isn't a major cultural shift.
However, every single "holodeck creeper" plot line involved the simulated attractive real world woman not knowing she's being simulated until the plot reached maximum spaghetti spilling cringe, which is one of the few Trek panopticon situations where people being spied on did NOT know they were being spied on, which seems very un-trek, although it made for some entertaining stories.
An alternative interpretation is I believe over the course of the series every attractive woman on the ship was simulated on the holodeck at least once by at least one lonely guy, and its possible that culturally they just got used to it, although I find that unlikely. People do get conditioned to become used to the weirdest things, so its not out of the realm of possibility. Possibly a culture of what happens in vegas stays in vegas develops and its just the sexism of the TV show that they never showed the women turning the tables on their fellow male crewmen on the holodeck.
Which is kind of funny, because even if it might be accessed by personal mobile devices, the Star Trek "library computer" AI was never "small and physical, easy for a single person to entirely own and unable to remember more details than a human", it was an aspect of a large server (or networked cluster, the actual architecture is somewhat vague) that was part of a capital ship or base, had access in the server/cluster to a library of very nearly all generally available knowledge and extensive personal information about both its users and about people with little direct connection (and could reach out across a galactic network to access additional remote information sources to handle requests).
"Unfamiliar algorithms run on machines far away" is much more like the source of the "Star Trek dream" than "small and physical, easy for a single person to entirely own and unable to remember more details than a human".