Since the beginning, Star Trek has been credited with an uncanny ability to predict the future through the writers and artists looking ahead, creating stories about what might happen, and seeing many of those guesses come true. The most popular of these predictions have been technological advances, foreseeing early versions of mobile computers, teleconferencing, medical scanning and more. But Star Trek has been shown to anticipate social and political developments as well. Science fiction writers have been able to look at the current events of the day and write episodes describing how governments will change, how cultures will shift, and even how economies might rise and fall. As it turns out, Star Trek made some key predictions about 2024, and the accuracy rate is surprising.
Sanctuary districts
In Deep Space Nine’s “Past Tense, Part I” Sisko and Bashir find themselves transported back to 2024 and forced to stay in a “Sanctuary District,” which was a section of an urban area built to contain homeless people, keeping them out of the rest of the city. As Sisko explains, the homelessness problem had grown so large that every major city had such an area.
Bashir and Sisko tour a 2024 San Francisco “Sanctuary District” From DS9’s “Past Tense, Part I” (Paramount)
The scenarios outlined on DS9 and reality are distressingly similar. Homeless populations have been on a continual rise in the USA. Reality mirrored Star Trek in 2021 when San Francisco tested the idea of city-sanctioned homeless encampments. In the DS9 episode, O’Brien noted that a huge contributing factor to the homelessness problem is a widespread lack of mental health care, a situation which is not only clearly reflected in 2024 but is a trend that has expanded notably since 1995, when the episode first aired. As of this writing, all studies of homeless populations note very high percentages (as much as 47%) in need of mental health care. Most distressingly, the solution of essentially imprisoning people simply for being homeless has been tried in various ways, notably in New York City where Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan to allow police to involuntarily commit homeless people to hospitals. California is looking to a more promising effort with a new bond proposal that would build new mental health treatment facilities. Hopefully, it won’t take something like the Bell Riots to spark the changes needed for a solution to this crisis.
Homeless camp in San Francisco in 2023 (KRON)
Ireland unifies
While Star Trek foresaw social conditions worsening in the United States, the franchise also gave reason to be optimistic about some countries bringing an end to long-standing hostilities. A very brief line of dialogue by Data in The Next Generation’s “The High Ground” suggests that the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland will again be a single nation sometime in 2024. At the time that episode was written, late 1989, terrorist violence in Ireland was at a peak, characterized by a series of strategic bombings and military assaults. Nothing in world news at the time could suggest that level of conflict would end. The idea of Irish unification was so controversial that “The Higher Ground” was cut from the schedule in both the UK and Ireland.
Data discusses the history of armed rebellion and Irish unification with Picard in TNG’s “The Higher Ground” (Paramount)
Nine years after “The High Ground” aired, Northern Ireland voted on (and passed) the Good Friday Agreement, ending the bulk of violence between the British and Irish factions of the nation. The biggest controversy about “The High Ground” was how Data argued it was a successful example of the effect of rebellion and terrorism, but it cannot be denied ending the “the troubles” was a major factor. Security barriers and checkpoints were removed on the border, a number of north/south institutions were established and the future potential unification was left in the hands of the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Under the European Union, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom shared many elements of a common governing system, but the UK’s 2016 “Brexit” vote to withdraw from the EU made the Northern Ireland border a key issue. In 2021 the Northern Ireland Protocol was negotiated, allowing for a continued open border but a study last year showed Brexit may have accelerated support for formal unification. Some political leaders in Northern Ireland see a potential referendum by the end of the decade. So Star Trek didn’t exactly get Irish unification right, but things are a long way from where the were when “The High Ground” aired in 1989.
The open border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (BBC)
Europe in conflict
Unfortunately, the Star Trek timeline also reveals social problems in Europe at the same time. Another prediction from DS9’s “Past Tense, Part I” is that France experiences a great deal of civil unrest, particularly in the form of student protests. The government is shaken when a political faction known as the “Gaullists” are ousted by another faction “Neo-Trotskyists.” Current events seem to follow the same pattern with the groups identified by Trek mirroring modern ideologies. In 2023, there was a notable increase in student protests on several issues, particularly those surrounding police violence. Heading into 2024, the country’s agricultural policy is being protested by farmers using their tractors to block access to major highways.
Paris anti-police violence protest September 23, 2023 (Bertrand Guay, AFP)
In the same DS9 episode, it’s noted that not only is France struggling with unity, but “all of Europe is falling apart.” While this is a small line that doesn’t list specifics, events in the Europe of today back it up. Several real-world crises have painted a similar picture in the era leading up to 2024. In addition to Brexit, there was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 with that war continuing to this day with ripple effects throughout the continent, moving proverbially peaceful countries like Sweden and Germany to prepare for possible conflict. Even in nations where borders remain constant and armies haven’t invaded, average citizens are reporting that their respective countries are more divided by class and ideology than they were ten years ago. In a 2020 NPR interview, Patrick Stewart noted his distress at a Europe that seemed to be falling apart:
“The European Union always made me feel, well, we are heading towards our own Federation of Planets somewhere down the line that will come about. And I am angry, disappointed and embarrassed by our decision to leave the Union.”
Firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a destroyed apartment building after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, January 3 (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)
Still to Come, Beyond Our World
To be fair, there are some 2024 events predicted by Star Trek which have clearly not come to pass. Solar-system-wide baseball leagues are nowhere close to being a reality, nor does London even have a team. The Internet of 2024 continues to be something accessed through any PC or smartphone, and the world has resisted efforts to restrict it to “Interface” consoles controlled by a dystopian oligarchy, as described in “Past Tense.”
London Kings player Buck Bokai from DS9’s “If Wishes Were Horses” (Paramount)
There are currently no crewed spaceflights to Jupiter (or its moons) scheduled for 2024, like the “Europa Mission” in season 2 of Picard. However, NASA is planning on launching the Europa Clipper robotic mission in November 2024. Paralleling the international space exploration cooperation seen in Picard is the ESA robotic Hera mission scheduled to launch in October of 2024, which will study the Didymos binary asteroid system, following up on the DART mission originally launched by NASA in 2021.
The Europa mission is a fair comparison to modern space travel in design, if not capability.
As of this writing, there is still quite a bit of 2024 left, and there is still time for the real world to catch up to “Past Tense” in some ways. Pop culture still has the opportunity to adopt “dims” and “gimmes” into their slang of choice. That could be accomplished with a single TikTok video.
Despite living in a world of conflict, we have reason to be hopeful. We are growing as a people, but growth is painful. Star Trek gave us the confidence that war and social strife would push us to leave those injustices behind, but offscreen life offers no such reassurance. Science fiction predicted the future, but illustrated clearly that the path to get there would offer the same difficulties we’d always known. It’s going to be up to us to make sure that the sacrifices we make now will be seen as worthwhile by future generations.
Find more Star Trek history at TrekMovie.
Not a crewed mission, but NASA’s Europa Clipper is scheduled for launch this October.
Sanctuary Districts, not Cities.
Good notes, thanks
Unfortunately, I don’t think the reaction to something like the Bell Riots would play out as it did in Trek history…one media mogul giving access to the Sanctuary District for residents to share their stories, and a unanimous reaction of sympathy and horror that leads to real social change. With our polarized media landscape, some outlets would portray it as a tragedy and a call for change, while others would (wrongly) paint the residents as ungrateful hooligans that bit the hand that fed them.
Heck, we’ve already seen it happen with the 2020 George Floyd protests.
The mostly peaceful protests, you surely mean.
Except since the George Floyd protests, followed by those convictions, we’ve seen a number of cases like that across the nation now where the police are having to take accountability with the bad apples going to jail, and there has been lot of push and some successes in many police Departments modifying their screening techniques. So things have changed a bit for the better.
Portland Oregon Police in the last decade have been caught getting OTT violent and those who do the most have gotten absolutely no penalty, was just hearing update on this on local public radio channel. Be it police unions or other forces, there is no accountability in place — and one thing the story mentioned is that the repeat offenders on the cops were all guys who had undergone special training for dealing with rioters and situations like that, so the special training is either a joke or just plays out like one to them. And this is a city and a state where we’re supposed to be enlightened / leftist /decent (pick any two), but clearly the cops aren’t, so what they choose to enforce has only tangential relation to justice unless it is cop justice (and I don’t mean the ‘good’ kind like Dirty Harry.)
PAST TENSE is the only DS9 my wife won’t rewatch because it plays too real for her, and that’s been true since first airing. Gets me every time I watch it (alone) when Smitrovitch’s character dies.
Yeah, I’ve heard about that in Portland — It’s a head scratcher given it supposed to be a progressive city, I agree
That’s why I give did not make a generalization — and specifically said “some successes”. There’s of course a ton of work to do across the nation still
I felt terrible about not marching, but my ill wife, who used to be very fearless and active with marches and suchlike when she lived in SanFran decades back — was really freaked out about the possibility of me getting my head cracked open and then us having no income.
Not having means is a curse all its own, and with the way the cost of living has gone through the roof in the last few years, it’s just insane to be working so hard just to tread a rising tide of water. Except for one very old lady I used to work with and my vile father-in-law who hasn’t held a job since 1962, I don’t even known anybody in my real life who is a homeowner, and yet when I was a kid it seemed like a reasonable and attainable goal.
Sorry to hear that brother.
I’m sorry to hear that and I feel you from an economic perspective. I live in the Bay Area on a single person income. I don’t make amazing amounts of Tech money but I do OK. Still, I still think about dumping my apartment and just buying an RV to live on a $1000/lot from time to time. The cost of living here is ABSURD!
About ten years ago I was up for an 80K/year job in SF, which sounded pretty good until I realized what a modest apartment would rent for in the city even then. After my interview I met a retired teacher who laughed when I asked him if he could afford to buy his modest condo today on the same salary. Much as I liked the Bay Area, I fled back to San Diego with a great sense of relief.
Starter houses even in the Eastbay are now like $1.5M. Just nuts!
You would think that SF eventually is going to have a housing price meltdown though given the quality of living is getting so bad, and also given migrated of quite of the few of the companies there to Austin.
I have a house elsewhere in the US worth 400k. If it was in the Bay Area it would be 8 mil easily.
Thank you for sharing and I don’t blame you. Believe it or not, at times SF can be more expensive than NYC. And when I say NYC, I mean Manhattan specifically. That is just nuts.
Several years back, maybe 2016 or so, an associate or assistant editor job at AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER — which I’d written several articles for — got posted, and the ICG mag editor I’ve written for since he took over in 08 said he’d give me a great reference even if it meant losing me as a freelancer. My wife and I seriously talked about it … then I found out it paid 42 grand a year. Geez, I was making 36 as a staff writer in Riverside at the turn of the century and barely getting by. (plus 2016 was my last good year as a freelancer, where I made more than I did from my day job, whereas now I gross less than a third of that.) We concluded that AmCin must have been intending to attract new college grads or else somebody sharing an apartment locally, as I have no idea how much of a gap there’d be between that salary and rent in SoCal.
My two quatloos as a Bay Area resident.
As a single guy making a bit above the median income for the County it was difficult at best to merely save enough for a down payment on a Condo. When I got married our combined income made it possible budgeting it over about 6 years. 8 years and a kid later the we were looking at condos. At that time we discovered we could actually afford the mortgage for a home as I had just gotten a promotion. So that’s what we did. It was the only single family home neighborhood in the County we could afford. When we moved in there were a lot of renters. Over the years that # has gone down and the neighborhood improved as a result.
There are really two large impediments to home purchase in this area. The home value makes attaining the suggested 20% down far more difficult. But the thing that makes the big difference between owning & renting is the property tax. Which is significant considering the current values. Paying that was the hardest part in the early years. We gave up so very much just to get by. Fortunately prop 13 limits how much it can increase.
I’d say for most, dual incomes are a necessity for home ownership here. But it can be done as I know someone who made it work with one. But in his case he physically built his own home himself over the course of a year.
I joined the ranks of homeowners only recently in my life, due to the good fortune of having a parent in the position to leave me one when she passed. This in spite having worked my entire adult life and actually earning a fairly decent wage during a fair chunk of that time. When my parents moved out here from the East Coast in ‘63 they were able to secure a home loan based entirely on my father’s sales route selling Coors to convenience stores. A generation or so ago, something went drastically wrong in this country.
I get a new report of a San Jose, CA hit and run EVERY SINGLE DAY on my news feed. The police either don’t know what to do or they don’t care. And that, believe me, is the least of our crime problems, So I hear you.
People drive effing nuts in San Jose. I go up to the Bay area a lot on business, and I hate it when I have to drive through or into San Jose because it’s like the freaking wild west on the roads there. The rest of the Bay Area is not like that.
True. But San Francisco is only better cause the roads are so small. The rest of the Bay Area is much more suburban. Not a lot of people know this but San Jose is actually a much larger city than San Fran despite which is more famous.
There is a definite difference below in bad behaving driving and freeway racing dangerous hijinks in the San Jose region versus the Eastbay and Marin regions.
Exactly. 280 and ESP 101 are death traps. Literally because I hear reports of fatal crashes there everyday too
Oh, please. Bay Area drivers are quite good, on the whole. Try Virginia/DC or, even worse, Boston.
That’s before we even get to assorted foreign cities…
Where did amirami actually write that quote of his that you have there?
You are right though — Boston drivers are nuts. DC drivers though seem to drive too slow for my tastes — and like patsies they always let me cut in at the last minute…lol
I love San Diego — people drive fast, but not dangerously so — it’s still fun to drive there.
🖖
That was meant to quote the bit about 280 and 101 being “death traps.” I must have somehow quoted something I wrote and then edited a bit before posting. Sorry!
Don’t get me wrong, I grew up on the east coast and whether it is Boston or NYC I know what a nightmare RTE 95 can be. But living here in the bay area currently and subscribing to news feeds, you see a death crash on 101 at least 3 times a week between SF and San Jose and that is not an eggageration.
I’m sorry, are you replying to the correct person?
I’ll give you one example. In Boston and NYC (where I grew up driving) a motorcycle has to obey the same traffic laws as every car. In CA, a motorcycle can drive straight through cars even in dead stop traffic and even if they might hit you. No tickets.
I drive 101 nearly every day. I’m not seeing or even hearing that. Nor back when I used 280 on a regular basis. Most of the issues seem to be in Alameda County hearing the road reports.
True. SJ is the 3rd largest city in CA but it also must be said that SJ has nearly 4X the acreage of SF. I believe SF is also the 2nd most densely populated city in the US after NYC.
BTW I HATE driving in the City. Over the years I’ve found myself going up there less and less.
I also find drivers in SoCal to be far more aggressive on the whole that up this way.
I spent my first 38 years living in San Jose area, including Los Gatos, Sunnyvale and Mountain View, so I know exactly what you mean. I got hit by a sleepy or drunk driver one morning when I came off graveshift and was driving home in 1991 and I still don’t remember it happening, but apparently I went across two lanes of expressway traffic, off the road, through a fence and wound up going backwards for 40 yards into an office building. Amazingly, nobody got killed and I just wound up with a leg gash and some serious whiplash, but the cops seemed to be trying to blame me for the accident for the first couple hours I was awake, wanting me to sign stuff even though the paramedics were trying to take care of business and make sure I didn’t have anything life-threatening. There must be good cops out there, but I’ve only ever encountered ones who don’t seem to get the ‘protect and serve’ part in their DNA.
True story, no lie. I was walking on the SIDEWALK! And crossing a drive way. A car pulled in and hit me at like 5 – 10 mph. I fell and was like WTF, he was like, get out of the way next time a-hole! Like that’s not a hit and run between two cars, dude LITERALLY intentionally hit me with his car. I was so dazed I didn’t get the plate. Again, true story.
You know what I really think is the problem? Why does bail exist? Let’s say we arrested everyone who is guilty. $10,000 bail. Oh, I have it so I can flee or I can commit a crime again. Or I am innocent and I have no money so I go to jail and get stabbed.
Believe me my friend, the idea that things are getting better is just an illusion. The police, even if they were getting better (they’re not) are only the very first stage in a very long process of governmental abuse. And that is what Past Tense is all about.
Brushing all the policing in the nation as bad and not improving is just as bad as the Red Staters who want police crackdowns and tougher law enforcement. What is actually going on is much more complex, with quite a few mid-size and small communities having success with community policing — in fact, many of those communities were doing it in advance of the George Floyd tragedy. Additionally, there are many police who do their job correctly, don’t have anger management issues, and have integrity.
I get that living in places like San Jose, or with kmart in Portland, how it might seem though that it’s all tainted and there is not much hope. I totally get why you guys would think that way.
See that’s kinda my point. I don’t think the police by and large are the issue. I have met plenty of kind police officers. One helps me walk my dog across the street.
The issue is larger. 1) the Internet exploding every single story, whether big or small, and making it a black and white (sometimes literally) issue. 2) I STILL say it’s the regulations. The regs in the country are just built wrong.
We are build on a nation of money. I get that. But when you are guilty of a crime and you can buy your way out of it and commit more, that is ISSUE #1!!!!
I don’t disagree with any of that.
Your internet comment reminds of automated vehicles. 50,000 people die in the US in “normal vehicles” every year, but if there is one accident where an AV is involved, the internet and social media treat it like its’s a freaking national tragedy, and people get afraid of AV’s.
LOL OMIGOSH don’t even get me started. I have no authority on whether Tesla FSD (full self driving) is safe or not and I would bet the latter. But I hear in the news all the time, “person X died in a Tesla, we don’t know if FSD was on”. Yeah exactly, you don’t know! Bias much? I don’t remember the last time I saw a headline that said someone in a Chevy died in a fatal car crash (they have their own self driving system and people have died). At the very least the NHTSA is HUGELY biased against Tesla. And I don’t even like Elon Musk personally.
Yep. Nobody in the media, and I am including the media I like that I think is reasonably trustworthy, seems to understand about statistical bias and statistical relevance of any of the things they report on.
Exactly. Whether it is Fox News or MSNBC, you are always going to find bias there and people know that, even if they are on that organizations side and think they preach the truth. The only honest media left, if there is any (there isn’t) is like the hour long nightly news. Jeff Daniels said it best in the HBO series the newsroom. Networks failed way back when when they didn’t insist that the news be exempt from advertising budgets and ratings.
That’s pretty much the gist of what drives everything in the movie NETWORK, which was eerily prophetic in a lot of ways. By turning the news aspect of the network into what was essentially a takes-all-comers whore, they make it profitable — but at what cost?
Exactly. Put simply, news for money is no news at all.
My main beef with SJPD has been there simply aren’t enough of them. They have been stretched thin as long as I’ve lived in the area. In my limited experience they do what they can but are handcuffed by their #’s. The City of SJ really needs to beef it up at the expense of some really wasteful spending elsewhere. To their credit the department has done what they can with with they have. One thing they’ve done is create “community officers” who deal with small time time issues. Leaving the bigger and perhaps even more dangerous parts of policing to the fully trained officers. That has helped but they really do need more people on patrol.
Crime in SJ has increased some but not nearly as much as in other, higher profile locations like SF & Oakland. My impression is it’s reside or a side effect of what is happening elsewhere.
Regardless, while the South Bay seems to be the best part of the Bay Area to live I still am looking to get the hell out of here upon retirement. Which is sad because physically this place is still great.
“Let’s say we arrested everyone who is guilty.”
I mean, before we get to the rest of it, what does this even mean and/or good luck?
When I say “guilty” I mean those that the police and the judge who decides whether someone is guilty before assigning a monetary amount to their freedom.
But lets say you are guilty. Have the money? Great flee or go commit a crime again. Don’t? Rot in jail and possibly be killed.
Innocent? Great go free or suffer the same fate in jail.
The point is, that MONETARY VALUE being put on your life is determined even before you have had a fair trial.
Maybe no one informed the government but people are not property and putting a monetary value on freedom for ANY REASON is not ok. If you think they are safe tobe freed? do so. If not, jail them. But leave F*ING MONEY out of it! Because all you are doing is making the class system in this country, and we DO HAVE a class system, 10 times worse. And people like certain Presidents can buy their way into doing whatever they want with no consequences.
Also, I’m not what you are referring to by “good luck”? My OG post didn’t have that in there?
Past Tense was, in retrospect, *wildly* optimistic.
I must have missed the riot police mowing down peaceful protesters locked in ghettoes.
They mean that it is incredibly optimistic to believe that one riot was all it took to fix such a massive and politically driven problem
Well IMHO it depends on how impactful on the international media the riot was. I mean we live in the age where NOTHING goes unnoticed because everything is to be found on the Internet somewhere. And whatever side of the coin you are on, ONE instance, January 6th, is already having a huge impact in the politics of the United States and to be sure our national history.
The flaw in the episode was Sisko’s line that, after the Bell Riots, “the United States got serious about solving its social problems.” There is no shortage, none whatsoever, of people who study these issues in the DC policymaking community. As with much of the policymaking process, the problem is that there is no consensus on the cause and, thus, the solution. The idea that “it’s all because no one caaaaaares” always struck me as ridiculous.
It’s probably not a coincidence that Trek has been been pretty vague about how we got from the Earth we have today to the Federation utopia we see on the shows. Heck, they have only shown in very broad strokes how society supposedly works on Earth during their time.
Can we blame them? A writers room that’s expected to churn out >25 episodes per year (or even 10 these days) doesn’t seem like the place to come up with a workable plan to reach that utopia.
Totally agreed. How do you answer a seemingly unanswerable question. At least one in our time. Trek may come from the 23rd century but its writers are in the 20th/21st century. If we knew how to get rid of money and war and racial hate surely we would have done so by now.
Having said that, I do have a theory. Matter/Energy conversion. The basis of not just transporters but replicators. Our world is based on greed. And that is because it is based on a world where resources are finite and you either have to pay or fight for them. In the Trek future, you can just take literal crap and break it down to its most basic elements and convert it into food or gold or whatever.
The economics of today would cease to exist as we know it. As would many (but not all) of the reasons to fight.
Once you take things like monetization and capitalization of everything out of the picture, you are left with hate. Star Trek First Contact addressed this quite nicely. Why are humans who look different but are still different going to fight when the day comes when we know there are others in the galaxy even more different than all of us which in turn gives us a reason to unite as a species?
But the problem is that:
1. Replicators did not exist at the time of Zephram Cochrane.
2. Even if they did, replicators are themselves scarce.
3. Clearly, there are some goods that the 24th century Federation cannot replicate, starships being the prime example. We clearly see physical assembly of starships taking place at Utopia Planetia (“Booby Trap,” throughout Picard S1).
True. But I don’t think what Deanna said in First Contact was meant to mean literally humanity stopped fighting the next day after we met the Vulcans. As we saw in Enterprise, it took a 100 years of working with them for humanity to evolve.
RE: Starships, maybe they are just to big in size for a replicator? But their parts certainly can be replicated.
The real problem is this. true scarcity will always exist. Matter (whether physical or energy) can neither be created not destroyed. That is a founding principal of physics. So there will always be a finite amount of resource in the Universe.
But that is why recycling exists. The point I was trying to make is that in the Trek future they do it way WAY WAY better than we do and can use up almost 100% of waste and recycle it into useable materal.
Also as a side note, I am guessing Latinum can’t be replicated either for *reasons*. Otherwise the Ferengi wouldn’t value it as they do.
As I just said… They were up to episodes like Past Tense. Let’s just say they rarely went there rather than they were shown in “broad strokes”. That episode showcases a specific event. One that is simplistic on a ridiculous level.
The real problem with episodes like that is they decide they need to explain how humanity got from present to the one in the Trek universe. To this day I feel attempting that is a mistake. It is foolish to be specific about things. The whole thing just works much better when being vague and ambiguous about the transition. Just as it’s best to be vague and ambiguous about exactly how the UFP operates. Those are just cans of worms that simply aren’t worth opening. And in all honesty, aren’t important to the Trek world we are watching. Just knowing we somehow got from A to B is enough. It’s why that episode was one of the really bad DS9 episodes.
I think there’s merit in being vague, symbolic and allegorical, so I agree, but I don’t agree that makes an episode bad. Preachy and inaccurate with the details, yes, but even with minimal accuracy, it can give a story an added layer making it relevant, powerful and effective.
That’s fair.
I love my DS9 But I still found that two parter to be among the weaker entries of the series..
Well, that and the Federal Employment Act being a thing that they wanted reinstated, implying that it was a thing of the past.
Tell me how your (and I’m assuming facts not in evidence here) representative or Senator voted on the Federal Employment Act.
I’m one of those dinosaurs who thinks that legislation very rarely helps solve problems.
And here in is the problem and the arguably “stupid” idea of updating the Eugenic wars from the 90s to the 2030s/40s. Star Trek while set in what the producers say is our current world is clearly not. As time passes more and more of these situations don’t exist. Do we just then keep pushing these further out to get a little more time? Eventually it will prove too much effort and work to go with this revisionist strategy.
Still, that line “This was all supposed to have happened in 1996!” is one of the best lines ever on Star Trek.
(Although my all-time favorite remains, “Hey, Migleemo! Read the f***in’ sign!”)
With all due respect to your opinion, i’m going to say no effing way! From it’s inception, Star Trek has always been and must always be a possible future for us to aspire to. I don’t need any alternate universe BS. Just update the history as we move forward — If I am forced to accept animated crossover and musical eps then those fans who like that need to accept that we need to make some history updates as we go along.
I am 100% against this. This would open up the door for even more and more lazy fantasy and cartoon crap in Star Trek versus sf, since fans will just be able to say “oh it’s an alternate universe don’t worry about it not having any even slight basis in science reality.’
If Paramount were to stipulate this as part of the canon, that’s the day I am done with Star Trek forever. This would be a total giving in to all the people who want Star Wars- and cartoon-like like Star Trek,
Fully agreed.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 had the best advice on this sort of thing. It’s just a tv show.
It’s only as hard as you make it.
Yeah. And it’s crazy to me how some of the same fans who have no issues with wack stuff like the crew of the Enterprise breaking into song and dance numbers, or animated sitcom characters “Trolling Armus” and having their entire starship shake in space because of a band playing in the crew lounge — suddenly get all hot and bothered about some minor updates to the current/recent history to keep the timeline relevant? That’s total hypocricy!
I do get your point. But it also goes both ways. SNW incorporated January 6th into Trek canon. Without changing past Trek canon. And sure we pushed Khan back by some decades. But frankly Khan was always problematic. The Eugenics wars even in the 60’s (when we had the space race) was NEVER going to happen by the 90’s. There was never going to be a sub light ship capable of interstellar travel or a tiny group of augments that could just take over the world. Also, even before ST Picard and SNW, the Eugenics Wars and WWIII seriously contradict themselves. So that part I am ok with being retconned a bit because even within canon and it not being our universe, it still makes no sense. OTOH, “losing records of the time because of a global war” makes perfect sense to me. Just my $0.02
Or Wesley’s line about how he once changed a hundred years of history by accident explains it all. No wars, no disasters, we all just kind of trundle along and slowly get better and better until Cochrane invents warp drive and the Vulcans show up in, oh, 2100?
I hated that Wesley bit. But if you look at what he is saying without the “oops” part, he has a point. That is exactly what humanity does. We DO just kind of trundle along and slowly get better. By better I mean slowly our humanity evolves. Somewhat in part because we grow when we learn to communicate with one another such as the days when we could first call the other side of the world without having to wait months for a letter or later the invention of the Internet where we as a society could see not just the best but more importantly the worst in ourselves. But also because as technology advanced, frankly, it’s easier to be a better human being. “It’s easy to be a saint in Paradise”, Benjamin Sisko.
One thing I’ve always liked about Star Trek, as opposed to some other sci-fi, is that it isn’t really as dependent on “and then something really, really awful happened” as backstory. Sure, it mentions these horrible events of the 1990’s and 2020’s and 2030’s every now and then- and bear in mind that in the 1960’s and maybe even in 1987 it was sort of taken for granted that everything would blow up at some point- but it’s not a major requirement for the story (except I guess for the Khan part) and you can even gloss over it. Maybe Cochrane was off in Montana because he was a loner who didn’t want government interference. It doesn’t really make a difference. (And certainly much of Earth seems to have survived unscathed.)
Well I agree there. I don’t think it was the Eugenics Wars or WWIII that changed humanity. I think it was Cochrane’s flight. But I will say that, as depicted in First Contact, Concrane was not trying to better humanity, he was trying to make a few billion bucks. Sure, maybe alt universe Zephram would have done it anyways. But the way they showed it, humanity was living in a world that was worn apart by war and they eluded to the idea that this in some way had an affect on him trying to pursue this.
Now of course this can just be my interpretation, I can not be sure. And TOS certainly didn’t go into his background. So I guess it is up to each of us to fill in the gaps for ourselves :)
Well, we live in a world where someone *has* made more than a few billion bucks essentially privatizing space travel. When Elon Musk sets up a secret lab in Montana, I’ll know something’s up. :-)
That was another thing that TNG did that bugged me. As you said, other Sci-Fi was often dependent on some sort of nuclear apocalypse. I get it but even as a kid in the ’70’s I felt it was an overused trope. Then came Star Trek where there was no nuclear war. I found that hopeful and different. They did mention a 3rd World War, which presumable were the Eugenics Wars as they said Khan was the last of the tyrants to be overthrown. Further there was no reason to think nukes were used in the Eugenics Wars either. Which I also found hopeful. Then in the pilot of TNG they made reference to some post apocalyptic horror. Which was a real downer. To me, TNG turned a hopeful Star Trek into just another future post nuclear holocaust sci-fi.
The famous german dubbed version got it right on that one and placed the eugenic wars into the 2090s.
That works better with the ‘two centuries’ answer Kirk gives in SEED and the ‘200 years ago’ line in TWOK, though TWOK also is set in the 23rd century and presumably late in that era, given the ‘2283’ line about the RomAle.
Forced to concede to that. Original Trek wasn’t without it’s own inconsistencies. So I guess it just comes down to one’s personal gauge of what to buy into more so than others.
“Star Trek while set in what the producers say is our current world is clearly not.”
Even in the Original Series this wasn’t actually the case, though.
Truth. Trek is all fiction. It’s not a documentary. Trek history is not our history. At best one could say it is “what might have been if”. Most viewers are well aware that just because the Eugenics Wars never happened in real life doesn’t mean they didn’t happen in the fictional Trek universe.
Because of that, it was quite obvious the episode that moved them down the line was more an attempt to differentiate that show, and by extension all the other SH shows as they have all linked to each other it seems, from the prime timeline. Similar to how the KU films are an alternate version as well.
And you know what? There is nothing wrong with redoing it. It’s fiction. Especially if you don’t want to abide by the set rules the prime time requires be followed.
It’s always fun to see people sort of kind of getting it but having that final ideological block that keeps them from making that final connection. Yup, a relatively small number of homeless people are genuine hard luck cases. The vast majority are mentally ill or addicts, and some are happy hobo types. This is something the politically incorrect have been saying for *decades*, along with pointing out that the problem was caused by mass forced deinstitutionalization, and have been told to shut up about, that all that was needed was to throw money at it.
And now suddenly we’re told that, yeah, it’s mental illness. But let’s not think that institutionalization is the answer! Oh no, the mentally ill on the streets will all get a personal psychologist to come out and visit them, and a personal psychiatrist to prescribe medication, and they will diligently keep to their regimen, and all will be well!
Really, the fantasy and disconnect is remarkable, and all the more so when people start half-realizing the truth but can’t quite get to it. Orwell said, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” Indeed. Example: All those farmers in Europe are not protesting “agricultural policy.” You could look up what they’re protesting.
Yeah, it’s delusional, but trek sometimes uses delusional as aspirational. Edith Keeler telling starving people about how building spaceships will help feed the poor and solve their ills sounds pretty crackers (and yeah, it’s an oversimplification but since it was first stated by a brilliant mind, I’ll let it stand.)
Certainly. Of course, bear in mind that the message there was that Keeler was so aspirational as to ultimately be dangerous.
Star Trek was created by people who’d fought the Nazis. They were idealists, but at the same time didn’t have illusions about reality. If anything, it was DS9 where this came out most clearly.
It’s nuts on the face of it but if you think about it a different way you can consider Edith Keller the OG story of the butterfly effect in time travel. I mean who would think stepping on one butterfly, who in turn would not create offspring to eat other insects, who then in turn would not get a virus and infect a population, in turn bla bla bla, could be true. But who knows?
IMHO here is the problem with what you propose. There is no physical test a doctor can perform for mental illness. They best we can do is go by the experts and see if there are signs. It’s almost as if you can feel a hard lump in someone’s body but you can’t do a CT or MRI or Blood work to determine if it is benign or actually cancer. But that does not mean we can just ignore it. On the one hand those that are conflicted with an illness should be OFFERED treatment. But they are still people and under the Constitution of the United States, people have the right to refuse treatment. Conversely, if you just *assume* someone who is on the streets or his a *hobo* is mentally ill, then you could be subjecting them to potentially life threatening drugs to treat them. Google SSRI and MAOI drugs. They literally affect the neurotransmitter levels in your brain. In other words, they literally have the ability to change how you think. And if you didn’t have that issue in the first place, that is a PROBLEM.
Given what I am about to say I want to state that my politics are well to left. OK, I think at some point we are going to have to consider legally forceable relocation of the homeless out of the big cities and into structured communities where they can get free rooms, healthcare, conservation core-like jobs, etc. Obviously a legal basis would be needed to do this, but I really don’t see anything else working today. Rigorous use of new curfew laws might do the trick — if you violate curfew (i.e. found in the streets camping at 4 AM) in a city 3 times, you get convicted, and you have options of paying a large fine, going to jail, or agreeing to live for one-year in one of these communities. Then that would give the leaders/workers in these communities a year to actually help these people get on their feet, off of drugs, reconnect with family members, give then and actual address, and get the ones with mental health issues the help they need.
To be sure what we are doing is not working today. But I am going to put this in a much larger and much more “left” context. This is not an unsolvable problem IMHO if we are willing to work at it.
This is an exaggerated example but hear me out. The way our Government spends money is absurd. We spend billions of dollars to build an underwater sub to fight a war on terror in the dessert FFS. We destroy the economy because the left and the right are more busy picking on who “broke the law and needs to be impeached first” before they sit down and DO SOMETHING.
I know, I know, It’s an idealistic way of looking at it that things should change. But we are on a Star Trek forum right?
In the end, it’s not going to change till certain reforms are in place. For example, kill the electoral college with FIRE! This is not 1780 where all the cities and population are in the north and there are no votes in the south. Under the electoral college, citizens do not even technically elect the president. Case in point, Hillary Clinton was elected by popular vote. Trump was elected by the electoral college. And now we are on the verge of a second civil war.
Fun fact. Trump was the first president to have never held a previous elected office or service in the military. And it SHOWS.
I wonder if that would make as big of a difference as you think, but yes, I am totally behind getting rid of the bogus Electoral College.
Sure, I’m not saying it is an end all, be all solution. But I think that it would be a start and more importantly a change in the way we think for more changes to come down the line.
Going back to the Military example, we already have the world’s strongest military. By a HUGE degree. Why do we keep funding it?
Here is why as I eluded to in a comment above. It’s not about war, it is about budgets and economics. If you are allotted say 1 mil for your project and you only spect 500 K, next year, you are only likely to get 600 K at best for your budget because you proved you can do it. If however you are allotted the same 1 mil and over spend by 1 mil, they are more likely to give you more next time to meet the books.
That and if course instilling terror in the population as an ends to a means to reach that goal of MORE MONEY! It’s about money. It’s ALWAYS about money!
Until this world rethinks the way we handle our economic policies and structures, this will just keep happening. We are on the brink of it now, unfortunately. Thanks Banks.
That…was not the case even in1789.
Well the south got to count 3/5 of the slave population as part of their total population…yes, that actually was law in the United States of America. :-(
*sigh*
To a much higher degree it was. Obv I was exaggerating NO VOTES in the south. But the point was cities like NYC and Boston had at times larger populations than entire states in the south so the votes per geographic and personal interests were skewed. That’s is no longer the case.
This sounds…remarkably like a Sanctuary District. (Not that I am disagreeing.)
Good point, but yeah, that’s not what I had in mind.
I don’t agree. But free healthcare alone sounds nothing like the sanctuary districts. And while they promised job creation, they never delivered. That’s the difference between the proposal and the implemented solution
We’re 33, live with the body’s mother and are on Medicaid (took us years to get on it due to beliefs that mental illnesses and disabilities aren’t real, etc.) I (an introject [definition: a system member that is based off of someone else, real or fictional] of Optimus Prime) am trying to get us into a new psychiatrist because the father’s death stirred up a lot of memories of things he did to us that I had repressed for a reason. (Getting sexually harassed and more than that by your own father is a -100000/10 experience, do not recommend it. I am a traumagenic [definition: formed because of trauma] headmate for that very reason.) I’m having to jump through a ton of hoops to even get an appointment and we have insurance.
I’m trying to get us back onto medication for our bipolar 1 (medications that the government can and have changed on us before just because they wanted to) and to further pursue a dissociative identity disorder diagnosis. If I succeed and we get that diagnosis, it means that we are blocked from transitioning by the government (a right we’re going to lose anyway) because we have DID specifically.
Things absolutely need to change here. If the Bell Riots have to occur to bring that change, then they must. It would be nice if they changed regardless. To clarify I don’t think they will ever actually happen, none of us do, and things may not ever change. But we should not have our rights to do things like transition taken away from us because we have DID. We should not be sitting here subject to constant bias and stigmas about bipolar and DID because those hurt more than we allow ourselves to show.
We can do something for the population that have mental illnesses and etc, nobody wants to because then they’d have to learn that they’re wrong.
I’m truly sorry to hear about the past pain you have suffered and wish you a better life moving forward.
RE: Bell Riots. We don’t have those. As you say. And I am not saying this is necessarily good, but we are closer than people think, Here in the SF Bay Area, the homeless are being reshuffled every day. “Oh you stay here because you don’t have a home? Sorry, we don’t want your kind here, go somewhere else or we will do it for you”. That is actually happening right now.
It’s happening here in Little Rock too. Memphis Tennessee (I think it was Memphis, I know some bigger city did because they “ruined the look the city wants to maintain.”) bused all of their homeless here years ago and now those plus all of Little Rock’s might get bused to somewhere else.
Being real, a big reason I’m hoping it doesn’t happen is that I know we’ll get put in one ourselves.
Same here my friend
That last sentence speaks volumes to me. Admitting being wrong seems to be harder for people the higher they go up the success ladder — in jobs, I have always seen higher-ups who would rather the company crash & burn than admit an underling had a better idea. The concept that a person in a position of responsibility can still learn – a la Picard in Q WHO or Kirk in ERRAND OF MERCY or even to some degree the antagonist in THE QUESTOR TAPES — in an awesome one, just something I have rarely seen in real life.
Sometimes even a little change can make a difference. For months my wife has been trying to get a little $1000 one-time grant from some helpful cancer foundation, which she qualified for but it didn’t go forward because her doctors work for an HMO that apparently doesn’t let them sign off on the documentation from this foundation. My wife got hold of a CSR at the foundation who actually cared and somehow forced it through (apparently without a sig from the HMO.) I’m not saying a thousand bucks is going to make some crucial difference in our lives (though it sure won’t hurt), but the fact somebody we’ll never meet still laid it on the line to help is going to resonate with me for a very very long while.
Even if the kind of sweeping change we’ve been discussing is still a ways off (being optimistic!), I really hope you encounter some similar good luck and that it can lift your spirits, even a little bit.
While I agree, I think there is a reason for that. The higher up you go, not only do you have more to lose (obv) but also the more people you ironically answer to. Take for example an entertainment level engineer that missed a line of code. Ok. No biggie, it was in the Beta stage and we’ll correct it. Just learn from your mistakes. Now you have a CEO (whose name I won’t mention) who buys a multi-billion dollar social media company and risks the financial health of his primary company that employs 1000’s and is answerable to the US government. In the right or in the wrong, ya, I’d be more likely to try to avoid responsibility too.
With great power comes great responsibility… and greater consequences from your actions.
Oh, no doubt! Obviously they should be checked and abuses- which certainly took place in the past- should be prevented. The question of course is how to guarantee that…it’s not like anyone in the 1800’s set out to make the hellholes of mental institutions they had then. And of course there are people on the streets who need a hand up and not mental health treatment.
Of course this is true. The system will never be 100% and this will always be a shade of gray. How do we guarantee this? Not sure TBH. But I think we can do better than we can now. Certainly a hospital visit or even a clinic visit with a DR sign off perhaps? Of course that requires money which no one is willing to foot the bill for. And TBH that has been my central thesis on this entire article LOL
Money and also authority to manage the lives of the mentally ill, at least the dangerous ones.
Yep that too of course.
Not so fast on the Ireland thing — in poll after poll, including all the recent ones, only about 30% of the people in the north support it.
Good call though on the homeless situation
Good article! I would like to see more thought-provoking articles like this here.
I’d argue that, if the US is anything to go by, polls and even votes mean nothing, Good or bad, Governments will do what they want.
That’s because everything here now is like 50 to 50 % on both sides, or at best 60% to %40 (like abortion rights, which 60% want in some form). However, when you get to 70% versus 30% kinds of differences, the government almost always go with the “vast majority” case.
See what I said about the electoral college above. I honestly do not believe everything is 50/50. ESP when it comes to abortion. That was a SCOTUS decision that requires no votes.
Quick comment on SCOTUS. It was packed by the GOP. When Obama was finishing up his last term as president he was legally allowed to appoint a judge. McConnell, then the senate majority leader, led a vote to block Obama’s vote for a judge, leading the next president, Trump to appoint.
Then, when Trump was elected out of office (which Obama was NOT) Trump was in the same position in the same time frame and holding the same position he let Trump’s second appointee through.
At that time, 2 out of 3 of our bodies of government were stacked against the DEMS, one AT LEAST of which was robbed.
And remember, SCOTUS judges do not get terms or voted out of office, they are there for life.
Welcome to our new world which has NOTHING to do with voting rights. It has to do with the electoral college and cheating on the part of the GOP.
That’s just history at this point.
Oh, yeah, I am aware of that hypocrisy with the Republicans — Merritt Garland should be on the Supreme Court Today.
Hopefully Clarence Thomas doesn’t last much longer — if he is not the most corrupt Supreme Court Justice in history, I would be shocked.
At the end, the problem is the Colorado vote is in their hands now. Which is like saying, amirami, you are accused of a crime, are are going to ask your parents to judge you.
He’s probably just the most shameless. The fact we’ve got so many ‘people’ on that court now who have demonstrably lied their way there — itself an act that should be punishable by prison and loss of wealth — should alone be grounds for dissolution or starting fresh. The idea that we’re going to be stuck with these last 3 right to choose foes for decades grates on me every single day, and honestly I cannot understand how a third or more of the populace can stand with them and those things (federalist society and ex-president) that put them there.
It SOOO should be. But there in lies the crux of the problem. We have a government that A) can’t prosecute or take a former President off the ballot with out the SCOTUS’ say so and B) we have a SCOTUS that was formed by that same former President.
This country was formed with 3 governing bodies that was meant as a system of checks and balances to prevent just this sort of thing.
Well guess what ladies and Gentleman, we found a loophole.
Time for Judges to have term limits. Get on it Congress.
I wouldn’t count out “interface” devices just yet. Smartglasses are getting more powerful and capable everyday and of course Apple Vision Pro has the possibility to blow the AR world wide open.
Not at that price. It will be the Apple Lisa of the 21st Century… a very good machine for which most of the prospective customer base couldn’t justify paying such a high price.
I totally agree. But just like the iPhone and iPad, apple is better at creating and steering successful markets than it is being always dominate in them.
Edit. Typo on my phone. My name is Amirami.
Yes true and I agree. But as I said below, I believe Apple will be the catalyst for the revolution, not the masters of it. Just like today Android is the largest OS in the world not iOS or even Windows.
Apple likes to keep stuff in house so they will almost never dominate markets. But they sure do know how to ignite them.
Exactly.
Not always. The Apple Lisa and the Apple Newton were both costly failures. Apple went back to the drawing board and the Lisa begot the Mac, which itself was never a huge seller (an order of magnitude more Commodore 64s were sold in that timeframe). Newton led to nothing, but others (mostly Palm) were finally successful in the handheld market. Then Apple returned to the market with the iPod.
Sure that’s true. But let’s remember, you are talking about Apple Computer, Inc, not Apple, Inc which is a vastly different company today. When Steve Jobs came back to the company he completely transformed it and I don’t just mean the name. It went from a computer and OS OEM to a general consumer electronics company with the success of the iPad.
Also, not many people realize this, but the Apple App Store, which is one of Apple’s greatest successes, wasn’t even Apple’s idea. The first iPhones had no App Store and Steve Jobs wanted HTML5 apps only (because Microsoft always ate Apple’s lunch in the app game but HTML5 apps can run on any OS).
But then the jail break community came in. They hacked iOS, then iPhoneOS. They figured out how to install 3rd party apps. But what happens when Apple sends out an update? You have to hack all over again? So the Cydia App Store was created as a portal to download any apps you want even if your phone goes through updates.
Why am I pointing this out? Because the Apple of today is not the Apple of the Lisa days. They learned their lessons (from Microsoft) and learned it well. Innovate where you can but don’t be afraid to stream good ideas and open yourself up to the community.
That’s only because it’s just been introduced and the massive demand for it has not materialized yet. That’s going to happen. These will be $2K in five years from Apple, with competitors having similar, but not as slick offerings for say $1200.
There already are others out there and have been for years. This is a product in search of a market, so far the market has yawned. At $3500, Vision isn’t going to change that.
I disagree. I have followed the other products like the Oculus and they have lots of limitations, while the Apple Product has the user interface and features to make the technology expand.
But, we’ll see.
Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher are having an interesting debate about this on their tech news podcast Pivot. She is an evangelist for the technology and he thinks that it will be a complete failure because people don’t want to wear the equivalent of a laptop on their faces.
I agree with her. But also, I think this is just a first step for multiple reasons.
1) Vision Pro is priced towards developers more than consumers. To show them what the tech can really do for future devices.
2) This is a first gen device. First gen devices are almost always more a promise of the future than they are the future themselves.
3) Smartglasses, which weigh less than even smartphones, are already progressing drastically in tech. For example, at CES 2024 the company Xreal blew everyone away with their Air 2 Ultra glasses. They won’t be out later this year and don’t expect them to work well till several software revisions. But as I said, more of a promise of what is to come than what is here now.
I guess is what I am saying is won’t have to wait for the 2060’s for WARP drive to be invented and meet the Vulcans before we get this tech, it should happen much sooner.
I read a science fiction story years ago where people wore “smartglasses” where everything their glasses saw was streamed wirelessly to a database, and it made crime almost nonexistent since everyone wore them and everything in their field of vision could be played back as a record.
Ohhh I think I remember that one but I don’t remember the name. Also the idea in principal is fairly reminiscent of of Shatner’s TekWars lol.
But I do remember Back to the Future II predicted VR headsets, sunglasses before anyone! If you google the Vision AR glasses, they look practically identical and function the same!
And yet BTF II didn’t predict 16:9 screens which wasn’t that impropable, nor smartphones.
Counterpoint, Self lacing Nike shoes :)
The idea of “Europe falling apart” is a line often pedalled by those who dislike Europe in general. I hear it all that time. It’s only as true as those who believe it ACTUALLY want it to be.
Very 2024, very post-Brexit.
You can thank Ronny Raygun for the homeless problem, when he closed the mental hospitals as a cost saving measure. Everything that happens in California always spreads east eventual.
My wife sez I blame Reagan for everything in the last 45 years, and I’m beginning to think she’s right.
I certainly don’t approve of Reagan’s decision. But I think we should remember that Mental Illness was not regarded even in the medical community the way it is today.
The words dim and gimme sound like slurs when used in the context of that episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
I’m rather surprised Anis K wasn’t mentioned regarding the problems regarding students in France
Considering the young university student tried getting attention and help for students, wrote a letter stating his feelings and eventually lit himself on fire in front of education building
Ended up in a coma
Eventually wakes up in the middle of a plague
His actions also highlighted the difficulties for students of all ages, many of whom attempted suicide or succeeded
Some as young as 12 I believe and others attempting to copy Anis K but not for the same reasons
Also highlighting the disgusting lack of mental health availability, not just the low number of professionals available but abhorrent awareness of how to help anyone, let alone children
My own 16yr old, who’s been suicidal since age 12 (due to his father) is currently in isolation due to lack of help, lack of neutrality by the courts and because France is trying to turn him into a home grown terrorist, pushing him to take the law into his own hands towards stalking down, torturing and eventually murdering his abuser/father and at potential risk of mass homicide should anyone get in his way if he loses control of his nervous system and cptsd
We’re neglected, our legal and human rights horribly violated, and we are legally trapped until he turns 18 in April 2025… IF he can hold on to his sanity that long
He’s running on fumes
But no one pays attention or seems to care
The Bell Riots and many other Star Trek episodes are far too often like Cassandra of Troy, speaking of the future dangers and being worse than ignored
Well, hopefully, the world can avoid the worst aspects of the ‘Trek timeline.
We almost had a sanctuary district built in Chicago. Eventually they will have to do it for all of the illegal migrants. Then come the walls, due to the crime problems. We are just running a few years behind schedule is all, and not exactly as DS9 portrayed.
Filler article.
It’s almost like Star Trek, especially DS9 was influenced by perhaps future humans. Which could be the reason governments around the world are now asking citizens to report every UAV seen.. it’s like a warning against The Dark Enlightenment “ideology” that all tech companies and vulgarly rich subscribe to. It uses a tactic called “accelartionism” to bring about a Fascescapitalis, or Capito-Fascist world. Where everyone but extremely rich white men and some “east Asians” will own the world as a neo-fuedualist slave world. Created by Chris Yarvin and Nick Land. Elon Musk, Bezos, google, ad nauseum. Took control sometime in the near future, and the amazing new finding that time can be observed backwards is even more evidence that “time” is not linear but a measurement of causality. I find it perfectly possible that there was someone warning of what a dystopian world is to come. The U.S space Force insignia is basically the Federation’s. I have literally thought that to a true possibility for years because I kept seeing the signs for years.