The Computers of Star Trek (23 page)

This is standard practice for engineers and programmers. To create hardware, we start with a general design, and draw our vision as a high-level engineering schematic. Then we break the schematic into components, and draw a more detailed blueprint for each one. We continue to subdivide the design into smaller components and to draw more detailed blueprints. Eventually, we have a roadmap to the entire system, from the outer skins and the chassis to the circuits. To create software, we do the same thing. First we write a general design that defines the main software modules (for example, one for financial accounting, another for accounts payable, and so forth). Then we break each module into components and describe such items as input, output, pointers, public or private, main tasks, required files, relationships among modules. The detailed design explicitly states how records are created, sorted, archived, deleted, and shipped over the network. It defines how each software function will be coded.

Not a great use of dual processors, but for now, we're keeping things simple. The dual processors come in handy during 3D graphics rendering.

A phoneme is an individual speech sound, for example the “p” in “pat.” Although the correspondence isn't exact, phonemes are, roughly speaking, the “atoms” of speech.

The Lego company, in conjunction with MIT, introduced a Robotics Invention System in October of 1998. Children can now build fully functional robots equipped with sight, touch, temperature, and light sensors.

To isolate the problems, Geordi and Data crawl through a Jeffries tube and use a device resembling an old AM radio with blinking lights, plus a miniscreen. But even more fun is the movie,
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
, in which the ship has a huge kitchen complete with dozens of cooks, all making turkeys, biscuits, and mashed potatoes.
Using pots and pans!
Where are the replicators?

This also implies that each chip supplies 4,375 kiloquads of memory (630,000 kiloquads per module) / (144 chips/module).

Actually, these security problems are just one system of a general ineptitude. Considering how many times landing parties are infected by exotic diseases that they then bring back to the
Enterprise
, it's amazing the crew has survived at all. No more astonishing than the fact that many off-world colonies suffer from plagues that always require serums stored on far-distant planets. We won't even ask why the colonies in peril never send a subspace message asking for the replicator data necessary for the needed serum!

Pretty Good Privacy, discussed later in this chapter.

If for each kilometer, we are one millimeter off, then we're off approximately 4 x 10
¹⁰
meters, or 4 x 10
⁷
kilometers—in very approximate terms, 40 million kilometers.

This raises the interesting question of why a ship capable of warp speed would need a cloaking device. If the signals detected by sensors travel at the speed of light, you'd never detect a ship approaching at warp speed until it was well past. FTL speed serves as its own cloak. Most ships wisely use cloaking devices when traveling at impulse speed, well below light speed.

A digital signal has two discrete voltage levels. An analog signal varies continuously between minimum and maximum voltages.

Actually, if you think trig is fun when you first learn it, you'll probably remember trig forever. It's not practice that makes us perfect, it's enjoyment. This factor makes us wonder how our neural pathways are really strengthened. If we like a particular subject—say, organic chemistry—we tend to remember the material easily without intense study and repetition. So how do our neural pathways strengthen and become accustomed to excitement patterns? And how could we possibly reproduce such an occurrence (such as feeling that organic chemistry is fun but calculus is not) in a creature such as Data?

In our near-future technothriller
The Termination Node
(Del Rey Books, January 1999), genetically constructed digital alife creatures steal fifty billion dollars through the Internet.

We can't think of Shakey as an “it” any more than we can think of Data as an “it.” A bias of computer people, perhaps. The monster machine on which this chapter's being typed began its shaky life as a “he,” a computer version of Frankenstein (with Wolfie, based on The Wolfman, sitting by the opposite wall). As the monster calmed down and behaved in a more appropriate manner, it somehow became a “she.” Go figure. ‘According to traditional science fiction, Data isn't really an android but a sentient robot. Androids are generally considered to be artificial biological beings created in growth vats, much like clones. A number of 1950s science fiction novels deal with the dilemma of whether androids deserve to be considered human. The late SF writer Philip K. Dick used the terms android and robot interchangeably, and the scriptwriters of TNG seem to have followed his lead. “The term
positronic brain
is a tribute to Isaac Asimov, who first used the term in a series of short stories about robots written in the early 1940s. Asimov freely admitted in numerous interviews that he used the term
positronic
because it sounded good.

Oddly enough, when Data's “mother” visits him, nobody notices that she's also an android. Even Data is fooled for a long time. Unlike Data, his android mother has a feedback processor that sends out a false biosignal, fooling everyone into believing she's human. Even more strange is that she never knew she was an android. Soong designed her to shut down if she ever learned the truth.

In the original series, Kirk and crew encounter androids in such adventures as “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” and “I, Mudd.” But these androids are always the results of alien super-science, and they lack independent intelligence. They are robotic drones, controlled by central computers. “To function as they do,” Spock tells us, “each android mind must be one component of a mass brain linked to a central locus.” In the Kirk episodes, of course, the androids have perfect human female anatomy and wear harem-type outfits. They obey male orders and often express fascination when Captain Kirk attempts to seduce them.

All the androids, except of course Juliana, were built in Dr. Soong's image. ‘Data initially establishes contact with the nanites using the ship's computer. On Data's computer screen, we see the nanite's language as pink and yellow binary. It's interesting that the nanites easily penetrate Data's body, enter his “nerve circuitry,” and interface with his verbal program—that is, speak English through Data's lips. Amazing! And certainly in return for the gift of an entire planet on which to live and flourish, we'd think the nanites might easily be persuaded to give Data the blueprints of his own brain.

Estimates vary about the number of neurons in our brain. But we have a lot. A slug brain, by contrast, has approximately 20,000 neurons, yet is a sufficiently interesting neural net for major computer-science research studies.

There are also spectacular interactive rides at amusement parks, which rely on motion machines and synthetic actors to create an illusion of reality (such as the Star Tours ride at Disneyworld and the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios). ‘Even the recreation of Seska who plagues Tom Paris and Tuvok in “Worst Case Scenario” (VGR), is merely a holodeck simulation of the real person, and basically follows a narrow set of commands—torment then kill the two crewmembers. “It's possible to beam real guns and weapons into the holodeck, but that doesn't seem to happen in this episode. (In any case, it's unlikely that the
Enterprise
weapons locker would have a few 1930s Tommy guns and perhaps a musket or two stashed behind the phaser rifles.)