Star Trek Isn't a Paperless Future
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- Опубліковано 14 жов 2024
- It's easy to forget that the high-tech world of Star Trek actually features paper in fairly everyday uses, even hundreds of years in the future.
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During my 20 years in the Navy we went from not using computers to doing a lot of stuff with them. One of the first things we were told was it would be less paper. That never happen.
Earnest Brown so paper will be staying for a while then.
Same here in the Army. At least we don’t have to deal with carbon paper anymore.
Kind of hard to hack a piece of paper I wonder why !
@Gareth Fairclough but it would be missing! Come on now you can't hack paper!
You can't steal a paper database anywhere nearly as easily as you could steal a computer database.
Paper will never go away. We didn't stop building wooden houses when we discovered concrete and steel. Paper is also immune to EMPs, mechanical failure, and hacking. Wherever these things are a concern, especially in military applications which favor security and redundancy, paper will be ubiquitous for a long time to come, barring some sort of post-Singularity future in which our everyday world Itself is some sort of digital reality or construct, but that is definitely not the "Trek" future, which is more humanist, traditional, and (dare I say) enjoyable than such future scenarios.
Paper is not immune to being burned though. Anything triggers sparks in for file room and you could be left with a lot of ashes and no information.
@@daniels7907 thats also a benefit. You try to destroy a usb or other data storage device (think the data rod from that DS9 episode, that survived a ship exploding) and might leave some digital traces if wiped. While burned paper will turn to ashes and no one can read what was on it. Your secret files would be more safely destroyed if they were paper!
I think it’s important to note that we did stop building wooden houses, we started building houses with wooden elements, using concrete or steel or bricks and mortar, whatever have you. We mixed technologies and we innovated.
Keep paper as phisical data storage instead of computer hard drives for everything
You can replicate paper with ink on it so that it never decomposes significantly
Infinite Data storage
@@jack1701e thats why the ds9 episode where they find the sec 31 hedquarters, everything is in paper files.
In "Encounter at Farpoint," Picard, out of secrecy, orders a "printout" sent to all decks regarding his plan to separate the ship. "Printout" could have meant non-paper, I suppose, but I always pictured these futuristic fax machines stationed throughout the ship, and it always made me smile.
That's what I thought too.
The Pentagon and other similar institutions still use digital typewriters due to just how incredibly secure they are in the internet age. Paper is a fantastic thing.
Government budgets have often not allowed many government offices to keep pace with the communications and record management technologies that even small businesses take for granted today.
Part of the problem is the scale of purchasing and the need to use technologies that are compatible if not consistent across the government at all levels. There is basically nothing in the private sector that operates at the scale of the US government.
It can become a political issue only when the failure to 'modernize' results in unacceptably low levels of productivity. if not outright failures.
I find that really hard to believe. Anyone within line of sight of the building could tell what they were typing. Just bounce an IR laser off a nearby window to capture the audio of all that keyboard clacking, and decode the audio to text based on cadence.
alden zenko Which is something that only the top criminals are going to have the capability to do.
Or pretty much any computer security analyst, audio engineer, amateur cryptographer, or sufficiently bored teenager
@@alakani That sounds interesting! Got any links of this being used in real life?
Okay, this has got to be the best video on an aspect of Star Trek minutia that I have ever heard. EC Henry, you are a Pro!
Modern aircraft are still issued with paper flight manuals and the Soyuz space vehicle uses paper manuals and checklists (they may actually be plastic sheets now).
Paper also appears in the TNG episode, "Elementary, Dear Data" where it was written on in the holodeck by the holographic Prof. Moriarty, but it was carried off the holodeck by Data without vanishing or dematerilising -- suggesting that it was indeed real paper.
In that Episode Data was still in the holodeck AS moriarty did controll the holodeck at the time
But Geordi and Data exited the holodeck with a piece of paper that Moriarty had drawn a crude profile of the Enterprise on. :-O
The holodeck can replicate simple objects so that people can eat, drink and throw snowballs at captain Picard when he's walking the hallway. If you take something out of the holodeck, it will try to replicate it. More complex objects are just incredibly unstable and will vanish within a few moments.
That was a goof.
Exactly. The holodeck is essentially I giant replicator that produces holograms and forcefields. Simple things such as water in a fishing program would be replicated, but a person obviously can't be. Even if the hologram is aware of it, like Vic in DS9. It's one thing to create water, another to make a person. Just like if you made a program of a beach, the water on your wet body wouldn't just disappear the moment you left the holodeck.
I'm an archivist, so preserving documentary history is my thing, and one thing that most people don't seem to understand is that digital storage is nowhere near as permanent as paper. Think about it, Tape Drives, Hard Disk Drives, Solid State Drives, the best of them last at best a decade. Not only will the devices themselves not last, we are constantly upgrading and improving these devices, but every time data is transferred, the data degrades, keeping digital data in the best condition involves keeping original hardware in the best condition possible, and maintaining the original software.
A highly acidic piece of paper, the worst for preservation, can easily last 50 years in terrible conditions. In good conditions, that same sheet can last 100 years. Good paper in good conditions can last centuries, even millennia under extraordinarily perfect conditions (like Egyptian tombs). Other media, like polyester microfilm can theoretically last 500 years.
And, despite popular thought, the majority of human knowledge is still on paper, and digitization efforts are not going to fully digitize for years, if ever.
Spot on! I'm currently working on an MLIS degree, and archival preservation and the problems of technological obsolescence (abetted by its complexity--needing to preserve both software and hardware) are current interests.
Well first of all, there are plenty of tapes almost 100 years old that are still perfectly playable, quite a bit more than a decade. Modern tapes will last a lot longer than that. But for real archival, you would want something made of an inert metal like gold. Like the phonograph records containing not only text but also encoded photos, audio, and video that were made 40 years ago and will last billions more. They recently passed the edge of our entire solar system, aliens might find them some day. We included a record player and simple instructions on how to play them. No paper needed.
You are right about the golden record, but that's also a situation where there are a bunch of caveats. First, anything mechanical is likely to fail the more you use it, or the longer it has gone without maintenance, and without anyone to fix it, the golden record is useless. Also, one micrometeoroid and the whole thing is toast, space is not an archival environment. The vacuum of space is great for some things, but there are many other dangers to anything that needs preserved.
Real archival material relies on the simplest solution for preserving material, the more complicated it becomes, the more likely it is to decay. Electronic media like tape drives, yes, they CAN last for longer than a decade, but WILL they last longer than a decade? You must always assume the shortest lifespan for a media, not the longest. The factors against them are many: basic things like protecting the cassette from damage externally or internally, or the ease by which the data can be erased, or even the how likely it is to be mislabeled and ignored because of that. Further, if I handed you a ZIP disk, how difficult would it be to find out what's on that disk? You would need to find a ZIP Drive which would hopefully come with the proper software drivers, then you would need to make sure your computer was compatible with both the drive and the software (we often have to preserve old hardware specifically for this purpose).
When I talked about paper in the original comment, I used the shortest lifespan as my base assumption. 50 years is a good estimate for cheap acidic paper that's been stored in an attic, but that point it's probably yellow, brittle, and one step away from turning to dust. Storing that paper in a steady temperature and humidity controlled environment from day 1, and that lifespan jumps significantly, but I cannot ever assume that. And it's the same with electronics, I will start with an assumption of 5 years, because that's the pace of technological obsolescence, and move up from there if I have everything I need to make sure it stays in perfect condition.
RE: Well first of all, there are plenty of tapes almost 100 years old that are still perfectly playable
Yes, but this also very much depends on whether or not we have the technological hardware to play the tapes on. If lacking that while the tapes are pristine, then you still lack a retrievable record. The National Archives in DC has this issue in spades in having older media like this, like recordings on thin steel wire, for example, while the devices needed for playback don't seemingly exist any longer, as they have obsolesced in our technological advance. NPR's Fresh Air program is having difficulty retrieving their old reel to reel episodes because of this. Think about the much of recent computer technology that may not be retrievable because no one can find an A drive to play the older 1.44 MB disks on, etc.
Is that really a thing? I would be stoked to recover those recordings for NPR and the national archives. You don't need the original equipment to read magnetic media - especially analog formats. Any magnetometer will do, and the data can be reconstructed in software. This is also used to recover data from floppy disks, zip disks, hard drive platters with proprietary encodings - using a 'sector reader.' One thing that would be really nice is if makers of digital formats used standards for sector layouts and standard encoding methods - reverse engineering proprietary formats can be a pain in the butt sometimes, but it's still possible. But anything analog like those audio recordings on tape and wire should be super easy, even if they got wet. Recovering a piece of paper that got wet is a lot harder. I would be more worried about things getting wet than hit by a meteorite, although that is a concern too. But those space probes are still transmitting digital data over radio after all this time, I'm sure the offline storage is still ok for now. Laser etching in mineral crystal lattices like quartz is another good achival method - rocks are simpler than paper and last a really long time
Papyrus was used 4000 years ago, so it is really not unimaginable that it may be in use 350 years in the future. Especially as quite a few materials can serve as paper. (It is not difficult to imagine picture writing replacing writing with letters, either.)
yeah, even if it's not "smart paper," your every day use paper would probably be completely synthetic. It's possible that Jake had used synthetic paper, but had never used "real" paper before.
Problem in the TNG era is the Federation went the whole we are technologically advanced and perfect route up until the Borg (thanks to Q) came for a visit. Interestingly Paper should be still common even as a luxury item given the high number of colonies the federation would have had many which would take decades to establish themselves as self-sufficient I would think Paper would have been a mandatory requirement for data collection of the population, taxes and even business or treaties given the likely hood of power failures computer data loss etc. Then again the socialist society of the Federation after the TOS movie era could have eliminated paper as mandatory up until the Dominion war when such items would have started circulating in use as rules were tossed aside in favor of dealing with bigger issues.
We have smart phones and tablets that we use with electronic pens as writing instruments. So the idea of him able to write naturally shouldn't be a issue too much and it does appear that the TNG era did you writing instruments on pads I believe for formal signatures and notes
I'm not easily imagining paper-thin displays in the same setting which has such massively bulky PADDs and tricorders and such. If they could indeed make (flexible or inflexible) paper-thin displays - and cheaply enough that they could consume or waste it like normal paper! - then why aren't such displays used on all their other tech (instead of bulky monitors, scopes, light bulbs, and old-school LEDs)?
"(It is not difficult to imagine picture writing replacing writing with letters, either.)"
I prospect I dread, thank you. There is little that disempowers people as much as taking away the ability to read - see _The Handmaid's Tale_ for one particularly _apropos_ example. Pictures are NOT the same thing as reading at all.
It's good to have hard copies of stuff, in case somthing goes wrong with the data storage, that's why people still buy DVD's, Blu-ray's, games and books even though they could get the same content digitally.
Applying the same logic to Star Trek, paperwork would serve as a hard back up in the unlikely event of all electronic devices such as computers losing power, or if the data was destroyed.
Or perhaps some people prefer "analogue" writing like clocks, or vinyl records in our time.
HouseholdWheel good point. It makes sense with how Starfleet runs things. I believe there was an episode of Deep Space Nine called “Destiny” where three Cardassian scientists come to the station. One of them scoffs O’Brien for Starfleet having so many redundancies in their engineering protocols (something about secondary and tertiary backups). So an organization like that would probably think it was a good idea to have paper backups in the event of a catastrophic failure in the computer’s memory storage. Even though it doesn’t happen that often... like once every 10 episodes. Lol jk
What are you talking about Joseph Raffurty, that station falls apart in a few days if O'Brien is not around.
As a matter of fact, I do believe they may have had one or two episodes dedicated to exactly that! "Oh my gosh, the Bad Guys nuked all our electronics! Data, do something! Data? UH oh ..."
I like to buy videos on physical media because when Amazon or Apple fail, I'll have no access to my purchases. I have alot of books through Amazon and Barnes and Noble e-readers, but only when it's cheaper than the real thing. When B&N finally disappears, I won't be able to read the books that I have with them.
Dude, DVD's, Blu-rays's, games and e-books ARE digital already. You may think they're secure, but they are anything BUT. Several times in the last few years I've picked up one of my DVDs to find it completely useless - they DO NOT LAST. This is what people refuse to understand - NOTHING that is produced digitally will last even a fraction of the time that REAL hard copies will last.
Great video!
And the explanation you give for why it would come back makes perfect sense, especially since that would have been during the height of the cold war with the Klingon Empire.
And there's also a few other reason to continue to use paper which contribute to why the real world military hasn't gone paperless.
1. If your orders are on paper and their shot, only a small portion of the data is lost rather than all of it. Meaning that it's easy to reconstruct.
2. It's a lot easier to completely destroy paper orders when desired and make sure that none of the information is recoverable. For an electronic device, it's possible to recover data even if it's been deleted unless you completely wipe the device and destroy it.
Paper on the other hand? A little fire, a good amount of water, or even eating it will work. The latter is a particular favorite which is why there is edible paper on the market with edible ink.
Not just the cold war with the Klingons, after Enterprise and Before ToS was the Earth-Romulan war, which saw the heavy use of nuclear weapons. And as we know, nukes cause EMPs, and the Federation computer systems may have been unable to be fully shielded, so the habit of physical backups on paper would have been a way around this. It also has the added benefit of if your ship is destroyed, then paper will most likely be destroyed or lost to space, where as a large computer unit could be salvaged and the data captured by the enemy.
You made me think of Mac on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" when he kept eating copies of a contract
Hello there
When he said data security, I thought he was going to Segway to a VPN sponsorship
In DS9 ‘Necessary Evil’ a list of names on paper written by a Bajoran has been hidden for years on the station.
Later in ‘Way of the Warrior’ Rom leaves a hand written note to Quark explaining he’s dismantled Quark’s disrupter to repair the replicators.
I will kill him! With what?
A few things come to mind when the Federation is still using paper. It's data secure, it doesn't need a power supply, lightweight (to a degree) and easy to modify with a marker or just a pencil. That said, I do like the idea that paper could just be a highly advanced form of E-paper we have now. Something that you could write on, and then just feed into a computer to be digitised, stored for records where the paper is wiped and saved for being used again at a later date.
There's also the fact that humans are a deeply nostalgic race. We can't let go of aesthetics from 10 years ago, so I think it's fairly easy to imagine humans holding onto using paper all the way into the 23rd century and beyond. I'm never big on the "Never seen paper before" as a trope because it feels kind of clunky. I doubt any species is going to fully give up the ability to just note something down on a slip of paper, or doodle something in a notebook. Even as someone who uses their tablet and laptop for writing, I still manage to fill my bags and my room with notebooks and slips of paper with important reminders all over them.
In the TOS novelisations paper being easier to secure is mentioned.
Actually James Blish wrote a, non ST, short story where a guy is hired to steal plans that were only committed to paper to prevent cyber theft. So he was ahead of the curve.
I disagree with the assessment that Jake Sisko knowing how to write points to semi-common paper usage for writing. It just shows that people write directly onto PADDs and thus know how to write.
We see people read digital books from PADDs, Jake Sisko writes using a stylus more often than not (such as in DS9: Explorers), and there is a throwaway line in Voyager about Icheb's handwriting on reports which are stored on PADDs(VOY: Q2).
That was my thought as well, skill with a pen does not necessarily imply paper was involved. They can probably hand-write straight onto those workstation desks, of they want to. We just don't see anyone in TNG doing freewriting.
monokhem Those skills are transferable. If somebody has never written on either and only typed, they'd hardly be able to write by hand. Now, are you telling me that somebody using a pad for the first time would be just as bad at writing as someone who never wrote by hand before?
Agreed, with the caveat that someone could totally also figure out how to write even if they'd only ever typed before. It would just be like, oh this thing marks lines on that thing, I'll just draw the same letters that I usually type. Sure it would be sloppy and slow but I don't think future people would completely lack manual dexterity.
@@alakani handwriting is a pretty hard cognitive process, which is best developed young, right when the person is developing their fine motor skills. We can easily assume this happens in Star Trek the same way we do it, as children are seen using crayons and pencils all the time, with similar efficacy by age to their modern counterparts.
True, but not _that_ hard. Probably would be easier for someone to learn how to physically use a writing implement, when they're already familiar with the language and character set from digital screens, and have fine motor control skills from working with microcircuitry, than it is for me trying to learn kanji even though I already have experience with pencils. But this is all hypothetical since I agree with you that they would still probably learn with crayons and stuff.
As an artist it seems to me that no matter how much technology and mediums change paper will always be part of our daily life. Its obvious that in a future where citizens are encouraged the persuit of cultural, art and knowledge growth paper will still be the soul and spirit of it. Its also obvious that replicators will solve the dilemma of the use of trees, making it accessible for anyone. I also believe that some kind of "smart paper" will be also available. I have a tablet, a computer that I love using for drawing a designing digitally but sometimes there's no replacement to the simplicity of a piece of paper and pencil.
Paper can be created with a number of material. So long as the basic requirements are meant you can easily create paper from virtually anything. Replicators are not really magic creation from nothing. They still require a base stock of material to make things
I think real paper would be more appreciated in Star Trek's future as an artistic medium. Like how real wine are still produced.
Artist might even make their own paper as part of their process. There might even be paper specialists that go to different planets to collect plant materials to make different kind of paper for different types of artwork.
An author may desire their books to be published on real paper made with a certain plant from a certain planet that gives off a unique smell and texture as part of the story telling technique or cultural significance.
I don't think it's that unusual for civilisation in the time of Star Trek to still be using paper. Digital data and the means to store it are actually fairly fragile. We've only had computer technology for half a century, so who knows how long early computer tech can really last, but anyone who's tried to load an old floppy disk or data cassette will tell you, some of this data is already being lost forever. Meanwhile, books 500 years old and counting still continue to exist and be readable. Data is now the primary means of communication for many reasons, but longevity isn't one of them.
@Herbert N I googled that. Can't wait til that's mainstream
Paper lasts nowhere near as long as stone tablets.
This was a neat topic to consider talking about. In many ways, it makes you wonder how paper will remain relevant in our own world. Your hypothesis on paper being used as a security function seemed to have merit as well. Right now, people can sign mortgages, leases, insurance, and other documents electronically, but often times someone might prefer to use paper so there is not an electronic version that could be duplicated and used for illegal purposes.
In the late 1990s/early 2000s I worked for a company that made software for laser printers, and my cubicle was usually piled with stacks of paper that could literally be feet high. Every so often I'd have to sort of shovel them out into the recycling bins. I remember having a laugh about computers bringing the paperless office now and then.
The funny thing is that in the years since then, the offices where I've worked really have used much less paper, mostly by pulling a lot of form-filling functions into web pages on the company intranet. So I suppose it's arrived to some degree. But there are still printers around.
My current job as a software developer is almost entirely paperless. It's also almost 100% remote so that's probably why. I can't think of the last time I had to fill out a physical form for work. I think the only paper documents that get mailed to me are my W2's and medical insurance information.
The same goes for my apartment lease. Everything is paperless and digitally signed.
Honestly there still being paper is pretty feasable. according to some of my graphic design teachers (modern) paper in the right conditions will lasts longer than most hard-drives.
in any conditions, any type of paper will last much longer than the best hard drives (under regular use)
For some reason I really super enjoyed you discussing paper. Good job
You notice obscure details and share your findings in a manner most delightful. Thanks dude.
I'm an old school Star Trek fan, and I've read how the Star Trek TOS introduced us all to touchscreen devices and communicator-like flip-phones. But there's something uniquely satisfying about holding a book or writing on parchment paper with a fountain pen, even in this age of ebooks and Dragon Dictate.
I have worked in IT or software development my entire adult life. Almost from day one people and businesses have talked about going paperless, so that is about 30 years of talk and almost no action in that direction. Oh, we have found ways to store the paper documents in our databases and in places like SharePoint, but if you went to ANY person in accounting in a company and talk about getting rid of paper and they will blanch before your very eyes. For me I don't think Mankind will ever stop using paper, we may find ways to make it last longer or make it out of other materials, but we love our paper so much. Thinking about it in those terms for Star Trek makes laugh that they may get rid of paper or only use it for a select few things. Security and Accounts live by the printed document.
Paper is a wonderful thing. Digital storage isn’t as great as people assume data can be corrupted or deleted having a physical document as a backup is a valuable tool
Not only had paper not disappeared, but neither had cursive handwriting.
It's also not even really even speculation anymore that during TOS, the security was super tight because of all the evidence we have. The Enterprise is FULL of encoded technology: the bubble-like buttons with no words on them, the screens with practically unreadable data. It was a time where everything had to be secure enough so only trained crew members could access the systems, and only by pressing physical buttons which couldn't be hacked into. I can see that being a time where a huge advancement was made in hacking technology (maybe a quantum computing breakthrough like the one's we currently theorize could allow instant password description) and all ships were refitted with basically outdated technology until new securities were created which allowed for a TNG style of tech.
I honestly love your talent for coming up with esoteric but fascinating topics relating to Trek that seem obvious in hindsight but most people have never thought of looking at. Keep up the great work!
It would be interesting if this was Incorporated as a minor plot point in Discovery. Like they discovered that an enemy is eavesdropping on their electronics and so they begin using paper for everything. And then later in the series after that threat is gone someone is still using paper and is questioned on it, maybe gives the reason that he doesn't want to take any chances, or maybe he's feeling nostalgic.
Of all the things that each series has done that Discovery had some the least, is incorporate an appreciation for our time in the form of nostalgia, TOS visited primitive Earth like world's and remarked in what life was like way back when, TNG used the holodeck as well as Picard's family, Voyager used Tom Paris's passion for the 50s. I don't remember if anything like this was in ds9 or Enterprise
I imagine a lot of otherwise replicatable products have become premium goods by the 24th century like Chateau Picard, produced with old fashioned methods without modern technology.
Considering Replicated food has the Exact Same Consistency every single time I'd wager skills often thought of as arcaic like cooking and crop growing would come into vogue after people realize it really is those subtle imperfections that make a meal.
I could imagine like banana flavoring based on an extinct species some recipes are off due to using a variation of an ingredient not specified.
Obviously in this utopian and egalitarian Earth without money and therefore property, some families are more equal than others. How do the Piquards keep a vast family estate to themselves in likely overpopulated France, and work it only with hand tools. His brother and nephew do not possess the manpower to maintain such a plantation unless they use robots (they don't) or they use lower caste farm labor (not shown but you know logic dictates it)
One of the many little script logic problems with stated Earth politics and economics in TNG and DS9.
Star Trek is set in a post-scarcity economy where all the basic needs are met for the people without the need for money. Antique and modern handmade items would still have special value and there would have to be some kind of trade, barter, or credit system in place for their exchange. Perhaps at Chateau Picard, wine connoisseurs would trade their labor at tending and harvesting the vines in exchange for receiving the finished wine.
@@FlintIronstag23. The Picards are a special elite, if I compared it to a 20th century society that aspired to the economic model touted in post TOS iterations of Star Trek, the Socialist Generation. The Picards are like Porsche or The Rommels in 1938 Germany, since Star Trek TNG and DS9 hints at a Fascist economy. There is still private business, but profit is no longer sought and business decisions must serve the needs of The State, thus any decision must be cleared by governmental committee. The characters in the show rise with their talents and abilities to be military (oh *sorry* forgot the newspeak, NON military) officers. You don't see much of the Betas, Gammas and Epsilon Semi Morons. However someone replaces all the blown fuses and picks up the mess that the A Team makes of the ship every fifth show. Someone must do janitorial duty. Therefore some don't rise to their excellence. Nobody is paid (though Riker gambles with Quark and has winnings, thus he must have had latinum to start with (which can't be magically Xeroxed).
You do see The Government every now and again in TOS, TNG and DS9. BOY are they SCARY. Most are mean tempered. All are totalarian bossy so they must be much more "equal" than even the A Team. The Earth and Federation government has secret police, a plagiarized PsiCorp, and various dirty Gestapos. One ambassador in TOS threatened to have Scotty sent to a Penal Colony (so they have Gulags and no due process if you cross The State).
It is just fantasy Sci Fi and it is episodic, so many individual writers insert plot holes over and over, despite the Socialist Utopia that post TOS Gene Roddenberry preached.
Paper in TOS fits with the theory that the Romulan war revealed Starfleet computer security to be woefully inadequate. This caused research to branch into less hackable mechanical linkages for controlling starships (to defend against their telepresence technology seen on ENT) and, as you say here, paper for data security.
Happened as well in Voyager (4x01 @ the end of episodes) that Janeway writes the captain's log on paper: in this case (compared to the more practical reason from Chakotay) she wants to keep distance from technology to avoid overthinking of Borg implants and species 8472. Actually in VOY the day-to-day routine is paperless, but, as you pointed in the video, there are still habits that rely on paper: children painting, leisure reading on books... even if VOY is set in 2371-2378.
I love how people's theories reflect their interests. As a film nerd, I can't ignore that this was made in a time before anyone even considered personal computing devices a possibility. Paper was the only possible record while this was being filmed, but we always try to rewrite history to fit our own perspectives.
In terms of data security one of the easiest ways to steal information is to take pages laying in a printer tray. You can also copy/photograph papers laying on someone's desk, in a drawer, filing cabinet, etc.
Presumably, also the ship's computer is watching everything you write on paper.
I was thinking about the scene with jake and his start with writing on paper. just because he's good with his handwriting doesn't actually mean he's been using paper before. actually I think the fact that his penmanship is so neat would almost imply he wasn't using it before. think about this even now we got screens where you can take a stylus and write on them and have it translate that to text, and having a rather neat consistent handwriting would make the conversion work way better. so this really could be an alternative to keyboard or voice entry. which professional writers probably did want to keep as an option. as it would give them the ability to write out their notes, scripts or what have you as if they had paper. but then be able to go back an edit. Granted not all the writers would like this but I'd bet there would still be plenty who would want to keep that at least as an option.
With the end of Discovery season 2, and Pike ordering all the holographic displays/interfaces be replaced with physical system (accounting for the differences between Discovery and TOS) it's entirely likely Star Fleet increased their use of paper, especially for sensitive information, to prevent another situation where an AI could just download all of a ship's information.
It would also explain why the use of paper becomes less common in TNG and later, as the danger of rogue AI never really resurfaced and the closest analogue being the Borg. Who can pick up paper and read it anyway.
Many people dislike Discovery, which I understand, but they did at least do their best to tie up any inconsistencies and transition into the TOS era with a level of believability. While also (probably unintentionally) giving a reason for the tech level shown in TOS, it's much more security focused than the eras around it.
It’s super interesting to watch TOS and see all of the technology that the writers in the 1960s predicted, and all the technology we have now that they couldn’t have imagined in their wildest dreams (hence, the use of paper and computer printouts). Data security plays a big role in today’s context, but at the time, the use of paper for that purpose couldn’t have possibly been anticipated. But in my mind, that’s why it’s so fun to watch/read sci-fi. Writers in the 60s dreamed up technology that seemed well beyond anything feasible, and in those writers’ and actors’ lifetimes, we’ve surpassed some of them. By the time I was born, most people had computers. Cell phones were becoming mainstream, and they looked exactly like the communicators in TOS, but with more functionality. In 40 years, humanity surpassed the technology that was predicted to be 200 years away. That absolutely blows my mind. Maybe in another 40 years we’ll have Warp Speeds and functional space travel. It’s impossible to tell.
Data security is an interesting angle, I probably wouldn't have thought of that. You can't hack or scan a paper printout.
So far I've been really enjoying your looks at the tech in these older episodes, even though I personally just think, "ideas of what was futuristic change from the 60s to the 90s and into the 2010s, the show reflects that, it's not a perfect historical record". The far end of the every-second-is-immutable-canon road has you tying yourself in knots trying to work out why starfleet refitted so-and-so ship this way and then changed it back 5 years later (I like them a lot, but Trekyards fall into this trap a lot).
I think I disagree with that. Star trek should be looked at as a period piece, otherwise we'll just constantly end up chasing our tails with reboot after reboot. Star Trek isn't our future and it never has been. We should stop trying to make it be our future and let it be what it is.
I agree paper is far more secure, especially considering the complete lack of password complexity and obscurity in the star trek Universe.
Self Destruct codes pi110 or 000Destruct0
blog.agilebits.com/2013/05/08/star-trek-worst-passwords-self-destruct/
You can scan a paper printout, not to mention taking photos of anything on it, or of course copying it with a photocopier.
I'm in season one of a TOS rewatch and have noticed all the paper too. Glad to hear your thoughts on the prevalence of it elsewhere!
I made a big effort in the past year to go paperless. Got a Surface with One Note to take all my notes on for work, do all my bills online, etc.
And yet....There is still something enjoyable about physically writing something out and being able to skim through 5 different pages at the same time.
When data security was mentioned, I thought for sure we were going to transition into a paid promotion for a VPN.
I would argue that the sheet music paper might be generated on the holodeck along with the piano. Though at the same time we find out Picard was keeping a complete horse saddle in his room for the moment he would get shore leave on a planet with horses to ride so sometime it was bizarre what crewmen felt were important items to keep on the ship.
I was a kid when Star Trek premiered, and ever since then I have imagined that the "paper" would actually be some sort of liquid wax (not from trees) that was squeezed out by machine into paper-thin sheets and instantly hardened, which could be written on by a special stylus.
Who knows?
As for the existence of paper in the Star Trek Universe, I never questioned why it still exists as we've seen books in the backgrounds of some scenes. As for how it's made in the future, the process in which it is made could have been refined so there was a way to make paper without the use of toxic chemicals like paper is made here in the present. I also thought that paper could simply be produced by a replicator like all the other objects we see on board starships.
"Half-Vulcan science officer Spock"....Gotta love the 60s....
Also IIRC, in Peter David's novel 'The RIft', they address the paper feed on the bridge. Something about being do for an upgrade. I rather prefer the security idea (Ala the BSG reboot series)
Interesting video, even if I think it takes some liberties in what we think of in the future as a paperless society. This has typically meant not using paper in terms of utilitarian forms of communication (documentation, printouts, letters, mail and the like) in an office culture. I've never heard a futurist sense of the "paperless society" that excluded all paper types esp. for things like artwork and more expressive activities (incl. wrapping presents). With that said, IMO, Star Trek, beginning with TOS is by and large a paperless society as paper was so very rarely seen in the equivalent office culture context.
In the two noted episodes where it does appear in TOS ("Court Martial" and "Conscience of the King") it might have been rethought where Kirk could be writing on one of those black wedge-shaped writing tablets he's often seen signing, the paperless, computer-functioning clipboard (The Menagerie doesn't quite count as that was really from the 1st pilot, the Cage--where we even see paper clipboards used, but never seen otherwise in TOS). Otherwise paper was rare in terms of the Enterprise's day to day operations--the office culture of the future--and we never saw the equivalent of the 20th and 21st-century modern office culture featuring stacks and clutterings of paper strewn about or heaped upon consoles or having to search for info through the 23rd century equivalent of rummaging through a file cabinet--what the very notion of a paperless society is getting at: better efficiency by getting rid of all the clutter. We never saw such clutter in Star Trek.
I think (to speculate) that Roddenberry really wanted to show a paperless society since the archaic things seen in the first pilot (computers printing paper, the paper-based clipboard) were never seen again afterward. And while the communicator and tricorder were great props, in the 1960s it might have been more challenging to figure out how you might show a more portable electronic form of a book--if even that was something people were futuristically envisioning--though perhaps they could have faked it with the black writing tablets as Starfleet variants of iPads but in the 1960s were seen simply as futuristic paperless clipboards (and the 1960s still thought in terms of analog technology rather than digital too). So it's hard to imagine the future, esp. when judging that imagining 50 plus years on, but ST: TOS did a marvelous job of it for its time.
Apologies on length.
The Enterprise novels suggested that the Romulans developed a weapon during the Romulan War that could take control of a ship's computer, and that it led to Starfleet designing their ships to use as much analogue technology as possible and decentralise a lot of ship's functions
If we think about it for a bit, it makes sense. While we use a lot less paper for mundane stuff (paying bills, sending messages etc) for important stuff it never left. (Legal documents, mortages, laws, official military files).
I think this is because once something is printed on paper, changing it is incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible (without making a straight up duplicate with the changes) therefore its more secure.
Also you can just burn paper if its a sensitive document and there's no saving whats on it, as compared to a memory chip.
I don't recall if we ever see the printouts, but in "Encounter at Farpoint" Captain Picard orders that, in order to prevent Q from listening in on their communications, all orders would be hard-copy only. Cue Worf being sent as a runner down to Engineering to pass an order to whoever the Chief Engineer was in that episode. Supposedly that whole sequence was just to justify the expense of building the Engineering set for the pilot (it would later see extensive use in the show proper).
Even in a post paper world, I imagine that someone could still pick up a pen and paper and write without issue. Digital pens and pads/tablets are common even today. We have handwriting to text tools that work pretty well, but in the future they would get writing recognition to nearly 100%.
Just saying that perhaps in the 60s when TOS came out they couldn’t really imagine word documents?
The word 'paper' is uttered quite a lot in this video about the usage of paper in Star Trek. I decided to determine how many times the word 'paper' is pronounced, so I grabbed a small piece of paper, rewatched the video a few times, and made a note on my paper roughly every minute or thirty seconds based on how many times 'paper' had been spoken. In fact, the number of times that 'paper' is used in the video is 34 times! Note that variances on the word 'paper,' such as 'paperless,' were included in the total number of times that 'paper' had been said.
Happy to see this get the attention it deserves. Excellent work, as always.
Obviously it's synthetic paper made using transporter technology, the same tech that lead afterwards to the replicators. Kirk told me himself. True story.
Another thing about paper, you can draw whatever you want, format it however you want, cut and paste and fold it. A screen makes it much harder to do this. Even now, I still use paper for notes and things despite the prevalence of technology in my life. It's just easier to have a flow of consciousness thing go on on paper. Especially for maths.
The Klingon Proclamation on paper (or similar) makes perfect sense in a world that "appear" to have no serious technology, Kirk signing a legal document on paper makes a degree of sense too - as it means it can't get wiped by a computer failure.
Some people have wondered if books would be replicated and recycled or bought as an object to keep.
In a lot of government and business environments; certain things are being more and more kept in a paper backup; or never put into a linked computer for that reason. Security. It's a lot harder to steal a glimpse of a sheet of paper in a file cabinet than it is to hack a computer from a continent away. Or even to accidentally share confidential info in an email to the wrong person.
you forgot to show all the times Picard and Data were painting on paper.
also strangely in Star Trek Discovery people seem surprised to see a real paper book , Tilly reacted to seeing a book as if she's never seen one before
Discovery isn't Star Trek, so it's irrelevant.
When a new tech comes along that can do something better than its predecessor we usually don’t just stop using the predecessor. It’s rare for a technology to be completely abandoned. More often than not it stays in use but just fills a smaller niche.
1:35 notice how the Talos IV report refers to “Half Vulcan Science Officer Spock” but not “Human Captain Christopher Pike”.
I think paper is still important in the 24th century, we at least see people reading paper books, Janeway for example, several times (“Night” and “Latent Image” I think). The Doctor even uses holographic paper tissues in one episode!
At least Kor was thoughtful enough to have printed the declarations in Earth standard English for the Organians-not Klingonese. Sulu had no problem handling the Air Force microfilm in 1969. Gary Seven had a sweet, pre-Google typewriter in 1968. And Kirk told President Lincoln the music playing was "(cassette)taped."
It's good to see you back, EC.
Lets also remember, what we "think of" as paper may not be that either. Klingons for example may not use paper but Vellum parchment. PDA's, Tablets, Computers, all require power, so for field operations, maps and such are often better used on paper. In truth i can see ship "schematics" on paper in certain parts of the ship such that during a full power outage or system failure, crew can look at a paper map and decide courses of action such as where to set up repairs and such.
Don’t forget pass secret notes. Small, light, and flexible, you can carry anywhere on you.
If you send messages through digital devices, there would cases of being hacked or altered.
And even if you discard a paper message and don’t want anyone to know, your best way is to burn it. Though having ashes in your waste bin is suspicious enough.
funny, this never occurd to me. Never noticed either way. Oh, note. When computers really took off, late 1980's(?), it was thought that paper would go out of style or used less. Turns out comptuers were a boom to the paper industry.
Paper has never been this interesting. Good work.
1:47 - yes, and they were in English, and in the same episode Kirk had a line saying "The Federation has invested much money in our training." Should we conclude from that, that the Federation isn't a post-scarcity society without money? No, the conclusion here is that the writing is not consistent. At. All. And paper is absolutely insignificant.
Also someone with good penmanship saying they've never WORKED on paper before doesn't mean they've never WRITTEN before. Ever heard of handwriting recognition? Your phone has it too, their pads could have them just as well. Evidence to that is Bashir in the episode Inquisition who dropped a pen in his quarters, but no paper was in sight, only pads as far as I remember.
Data's behavior doesn't prove paper's value. It just proves that he's an android and unwrapping actually meant unwrapping for him, until they made him aware of what humans actually do with the wrapping.
money ie credits ie used to order or do things that cannot be easily replicated.
The paper is made of people! it's people! (Soylent White, SNL, RIP Chris Farley and Phil Hartman)
Paper, as we know it, is made from (more or less) recycled wood-pulp. I think it was pointed out in one of the ST novels that it was one of the 'universal' items that many of the races of the Alpha Quadrant had in common.
Actual wood-pulp paper from a specific planet (such as Earth) is still available even into the TOS era, just seen as a hardly-used novelty, like a modern day writer using a classic non-electric typewriter instead of a word-processor program on a laptop.
Books are still in use, even well into the 24th & 25th century due to the rarity of the information that survived from WWIII & the Eugenics Wars. One can replicate a book or manual with all the aging effects available, but to actually have a first printing Collected Works of Shakespeare is like a family heirloom. Likewise, many documents that were saved & preserved at places such as the Museums of Natural History around the world, the Vatican Archives, and the US Smithsonian (among others that survived the wars) only added their historical value.
With replicator technology, recreating paper in those eras is beyond easy, consuming little time & effort. Having the basic molecular pattern for paper, ink, size, shape, ect. is barely a touch-point away. Besides, it's more dramatic flipping a page than tapping a beeping icon.
But, speaking in a production value for TOS, they saved a LOT of money by using those props & saying that paper was still being used in the 23rd century, just easier to make without sacrificing thousands of Earth tress from simple documents. Many of the hard-copy items seen from TOS, after the show was cancelled, either were stored & eventually destroyed, or fell into the hands of collectors. One of the most prized items is the Talos IV File (see at 1:33 in this video) is one of the most sought after. There are quite a few impressive fakes out there of this one.
Paper preserves a beings individuality. Everyone's handwriting is different even if we're all using the same style. Just look at each person's signature. Clicking on a computer screen makes it impersonal. With everything becoming so technological in the future, maybe using paper is a way of preserving individuality.
Data security is a very fair point for the TOS era because starfleet at the time was on the brink of war with klingons and had experienced one of its most tenuous relationships with the romulans of its history.
May favourite little paper factoid (you’ll have to excuse it’s inaccuracy but it’s been a good 5 year at least since I learned it
“In the 80s it was predicted that but the year 2000 there would be no paper used in offices, however in 2007 there was more paper used in officers than there was in the 60s”
It’ll always be around to some extent
I'd like to imagine that famous artist would go to different planets to search for a good paper texture made with native plant life as part of their creative process.
Also, I can still imagine legal document like house deed and contract to be printed and signed on paper for more or less tradition.
You bet your butt any savvy trader will insists on signing any contract with a ferengi on both digital format and paper. Multiple copies for all parties and one or two to store in a neutral third parties' vault as a 'true' document to compare to. When dealing with a ferengi, it is never too safe to make sure a contract can't be altered.
I think in Encounter at Farpoint, Picard makes mention of using printouts for intraship communications
I believe Matt Jeffries is on record stating that they WANTED a paperless future in TOS, but various directors either weren't aware or didn't agree.
increased "data" security... ;-)
I must say your ST lore videos are very good.
There is this issue that the majority of reasons we want to go paperless now is down to 2 things: usage causing lumber to be used to manufacture paper, and garbage / recycling costs both in money, energy AND in possible side effects of a pollutive nature.
In Star trek, even before TNG, there were various forms of matter conversion. I don't think common use of paper in 22nd to 24th centuries are using paper made by killing trees or processing wood. They likely use some form of matter converter to produce paper from chains of molecules. Even if not in the 22nd century, DEFINITELY Highly likely in the 24th century. In fact in TNG, I never see paper that isn't produced by a replicator
As far as recycling paper: they live in a society that doesn't waste. They live in excess, but all their dishes , uneaten food, drinks, cups, trash, fecal matter, urine, unused products that might go bad .. they put it into the replicator to absorb that matter for future re-structuring to other purposes in the future. See replicator use in the series Voyager: they are so far from home and in a lower capacity starship not meant for loooong journeys without support, and so , they have to recycle what they don't use more often, and are on rationing for replicator use, as well as rely on foods aquired without replication as much as they can, because they are worried about over use of matter conversion, both in energy consumption , but also in concern for depletion of matter supplies. I'm not saying it's a perfect argument, but I think recycling waste would be prudent in these societies, even if they have various methods of matter conversion / etc. I don't think Data caring about recycling etc is a sign of the paper being any more special than anything else.
More paper is sold today, and more printers are sold than ever before, despite our current "paperless" society. Something to ponder over.
0:53 Yoda in Star Trek. I bet that's a production nudge, like the Doctor Who references in an early TNG episode.
Actually the TOS era use of paper as a form of security would make perfect sense given the Federation was expanding and in a cold war with the Klingon Empire and the Remergence of the Romulans and the various races they encountered would encourage the use of a low tech form of data collection and process especially on Star Ships far out from home territory who may encounter situations where paper is neccessary such as during power issues or peace accords or treaties.
Thing is I could see it being useful to have hard copies of important documents, Such as repair and service manuals, in case of computer damage or power loss, I could totally see Scotty or Gordie tacking a somatic or somatics of the enterprise on the wall. if the ship were badly damaged, though I could see that laminated or pretend on plastic so that notations could be made on it with a grease pencil and wiped away. I could also see highly sensitive or classified documents ether being stored on a islated computer with no romote access. or even on hard copy so they cant not be hacked
I agree that certain information was so classified that it would be delivered in person on some form of paper like material.
I can see paper being used centuries from now. Once matured, technologies tend to stick around. They change, become more specialized, or even just trundle on in academic circles, but are rarely lost.
Someday paper as we know it will probably be gone. Instead we'll end up with biodegradeable polymers or some other non-wood medium. I look at a lot of those things that look like paper and think about how these kinds of polymers would be used for more than just writing mediums. We've had access to those kinds of materials since the 90's but they've always been more expensive than paper products. Costs have gone down substantially since then and the gap has closed thanks to technology so we're already seeing them used in some packaging. Some are even edible which would be great for espionage or quick destruction of printed data. For those wondering, the most common stuff used is PLA which is popular for hobby 3d printing..
"That's not paper. That's some form of metal."
0:55 in the same episode, T'Pol's mother handed her an envelope with a letter from her fiancé. I just watched it an hour ago (what a coincidence!).
If you have a bin spewing out paper on the bridge, you're going to have to deal with it physicaly, you will need a filing system for the good stuff, and a bin (or an instant disposal slot) for stuff you're not keeping, otherwise the bridge will fill up with paper. Does it get pulped on deck 23 and remade into slightly poorer paper? Do they have antimatter paper in various sizes, to power the ship by annihilating with regular paper...? The printout in 'The Cage / The Menagerie' is just a printout of the distress signal they picked up on the radio.. It's not Top Secret.
EC Henry - the Malkorians were a Pre-Warp Alien Race, similar to the 1980's Level of Development.
they had Medical Devices and Advanced Sensors and even Artifical Satelites, so its Reasonable that the Malkorians are still using Paper.
I think this is more of a limitation than something they wanted. If they could or had the technology they would have something in it's place. Even digital can be stored securely if it's not connected to some sort of network, like a pen drive, but those concepts where not common back when they shot Star Trek, so I think there is no real meaning in the use of paper.
It seems to me that physical media, such as paper documents are valuable simply due to their different nature from digital documents. Even in the case of materials that have been thoroughly backed up, a catastrophic, system-wide failure or viral attack following backup connections can wipe every copy of digital media out. It would take two separate events to wipe out both the digital form and physical backups, and even more if multiple copies of the physical form were kept in different places.
Paper will always have a spot no matter how advanced we get. Some papers are even used in electronics for insulation.
I prefer Subzero
I'm sure paper can be replicated just as easily as anything else. It's use is discouraged, but sometimes it's just more convenient to read and/or write something on a piece of paper than go through the motions of typing and searching for documents on a computer. And very small children, of course, you almost have no choice but to let them draw on paper rather than a computer or tablet-like device.
In a post-scarcity society, where they can instantly replicate whole forests of paper without any true cost, combined with advances in technology for scanning and storing anything on paper, (which is easy to speculate could be done faster than the blink of an eye,) I think switching back to use of paper would actually be the more efficient route for society to go. (Well that, and of course, audio logs.)
Think of how keyboards would work in a multi-planet society, especially when you are explicitly searching for new civilizations. Each planet would have its own keyboard layout, based on different languages. Any time a new person uses a terminal, you'd need to generate a new keyboard layout for that user. If you hand over a PADD for someone to review, if you needed to make changes to the document you'd need to revise the input method first.
But if everything worked with paper, or at least used a stylus input in the computer, then everything would be universal. Everyone knows how to use a pen. They work the same in every culture, every planet, and every language.
(Well, they write different languages, but the universal translator tends to take care of that.)
The rules of Acquisition is a firangi book. In one episode of ds9 a new version of book is shown & quark even licks it - by the end of the episode they get rid of the new book.
In Voyager copiers of the the original book get get replicated.
I think some engineering firms have a point to keep their engineering notebook purely on paper for security and patent reasons. They lock the book away, and obviously anyone amending it has to sign off on what they changed and probably have a witness sign off too. Lot of security with paper.
As a books reader, I prefer to read and draw on real paper than do it on a screen. I do think those are replicated paper. Giving forests a break. I think humanity have learned from their mistakes from the industrial age when we used to destroy entire forests. I Love real paper books, but when I see devastated forest, the concept of fake paper with the texture and smell identical to the real thing is a very appealing concept to me. Finally reading a paper books without having trees get killed, Yes Please!
100% agree. I love paper books. But we waste a lot more paper on bills, receipts, letters, envelopes, news papers, magazines etc. All of that could be eliminated.
Actually a demand for paper increases the amount of trees as the land is used for sustainable tree farms instead of real estate expansion. A reduction in paper products would hurt forests
Extremely flawed reasoning.
High demand for whale oil and elephant ivory almost drove those species to extinction.
Need I go on?
I do agree with you. But the subject of this topic was paper. And I would never buy whale oil nor elephant ivory.
It’s a lot harder to grow whales and elephants then it is to grow trees. The main point of my comment is you should not feel guilty for enjoying paper products as the majority in developed countries comes from sustainable forests that economically promote the use of land for trees. I also am not denying the role the paper industry has had in the past, but in modern times has not been a significant factor in deforestation.
If anything, computers have led to more paper use in the modern era. Mistakes that used to be covered with correction fluid and typed over, now often aren't seen until after the print-out. And it's too easy to make the necessary corrections on the computer and reprint the document.
Treaty of Bajor. Was signed on paper. By a founder too.
I feel like this has more to do with the writers in the '60s and '90s not realizing how quickly everything would become digitized.
Realistically, 99% of the currencty in the future would be digital.