this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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I always find the occurrences of paper in TOS hilarious, here we are in 2024 and paper for official communications is already starting to fade away. I have no doubt that by the 2300s paper will be nothing more than a novelty lol
Considering how often ships, Starfleet, or the entire Federation are taken over by evil computers, maybe they should use more paper.
Frakin' toasters!
Sure, and yet in government they will still use paper files for everything, with their most advanced tech being fax machines. I can definitely seeing them still use paper in a few hundred years because of red tape reasons.
That said, having seen The Cage recently, I'm with you with it being an old fashioned novelty mostly because Pike is a weirdly out of touch captain. He ultimately starts the episode with "Women, on the bridge?! Whoa, not used to that."
The Cage... uh, aged worse than TOS, even though Paramount+ made it official by putting it as a first episode to TOS (which I guess is kind of true). If it gets to be canon, than Pike being a 1960s conservative gets to be canon too.
What? Are you in the US? A LOT has been digitized government wise, we can even file for our passports entirely online now, the DMV (depending on state) has a lot of online services now, you've been able to file taxes entirely digitally for years now, FOIA requests (and other random paperwork) can be sent via email and even our most Top Secret classified stuff is transmitted digitally (Through SIPR and SCIFs).
Admittedly, a lot of it is printed for interoffice stuff, but nearly all of it exists digitally and is more of an ease of use "pretty" thing (For example, printing something out for the President to review)
It just doesn't feel like it because there is just SO MUCH that's on paper and there's a lot of volume for comparatively little info, but if you teleported someone from the 1940s gov office to one of today, guarantee theyd be like "How TF is there so little paper‽"
I think it'll depend a lot on where we're talking. I was working for a community college that had just barely digitized a couple years ago, and a fair amount was still on paper because it required funding and approval to do it, neither of which were easy to come by. Granted it took them nearly two years to hire me, so they don't exactly work fast.
The VA got into some trouble a couple years ago for relying on paper and falling behind in supporting veterans; it's probably the most egregious case. It's generally a funding issue, though.
OH well yea that's a whole different thing and now I know exactly what you're talking about LMAO. Yea, old CCs are allergic to anything requiring funding unless it makes more money (I worked IT for a CC too, never again.)
We've had the "paperless" office for fifty years now, and are still relying on tons of paper - and you think the military is gonna catch up?
We'll be done with paper after we've made trees extinct. But then we'll just have sheets of plastic.
I was in the military years ago, even then a lot has been digitized, this would have been definitely transmitted digitally. Though it probably would have been sent over SIPR or something because it would be something classified to COs or maybe XO
I got tons of orders sent to my military email, PCS orders, directive changes, DoD notifications etc. and even an online portal where you could pull up your historical transmittals with your CAC card
Though a lot of internal command business is done with a mix of paper and digital, just about any communications between an individual command and DoD or "Big Air Force/Navy/Army/Marines" was done digitally
Clearly my mind is stuck in the '90s.
We literally just signed an EO to transition certain military systems away from 5.25" floppies.
It kinda makes sense that if there's any paper, it's the super top secret order book.
Ya, "air gapped"
There will always be that one history nerd weirdo that writes on historic media. It's like the people who write on parchment with feather quills nowadays.
There was also an episode in VOY where Chakotay does his log in pen and paper, Neelix even says something like "What are you doing with those antiquated things LOLOL"
It was the episode with the aliens that like to stay hidden and secrete a pheromone that inhibits peoples long term memories of them and uses a computer virus for everything digital
I still want that really bulbous pen he uses lmao
Leaving in TNG the use of technology is odd. They give each other their tablet computers, they wander over and give the commanding officer a bunch of tablets, which they then awkwardly hold in a big stack.
The only thing I can think of is that email and shared drives were technologies that were lost in the third world war.
The PADDs/Paper thing actually came up on a thread a while back. It is weird at first glance, but Tablets of today are not as cheap as paper so those kinds of "Drop off in an office across the hall" scenarios have yet to be conquered.
But in Star Trek, PADDs are practically free thanks to replicator technology. People are social creatures, and some people do actually like to do that for other reasons. Maybe they like the periodic walk or they want to talk to someone in that office. Also, I like to think in that "stack of PADDs" scenario each PADD is more on a single subject with possibly hundreds of pages within or a single subject broken up across them for quickly scanning through a ton of data. I know B'Elanna has had a few scenes like that where she's referencing multiple PADDs