I grew up watching “Mission Impossible” and the original “Star Trek” with my dad. I was always fascinated by all the gadgets they used.
As an adult, I have seen some of those “gadgets” become reality.
Man, did Gene Roddenberry have some kind of imagination!!!
But as someone who does not drive, one of the coolest things was the transporter in “Star Trek” and the portal in “Earth Final Conflict”.
Although, I might go a little Dr. McCoy on having my molecules scrambled until I fully understood the process.
In “Earth Final Conflict” (another Roddenberry series), the aliens come to Earth. Appearing to be benevolent, but…not so much. They called themselves Taelons.
The Taelons built a portal system that could send people hundreds, even thousands, of miles but unlike the transporter, the portal was between two distinct places – like New York to Los angeles.
Still, getting there in 10 minutes as opposed to six hours sounds like a pretty good deal.
I am sure that at some point in the future …distant future…the people on Earth will be winging their way all across the planet and beyond via portals and transporters.
I’m not so sure about those flying cars and such; the FAA appears to be having enough trouble keeping the skies safe for commercial aircraft. Considering the way some people drive on the streets, I certainly would not trust them through the air!
In “Star Trek”, especially when “The Next Generation” came along, computers did a great deal of the work. Like that speech to text thing, if only I could get my computer to type what I say and not whatever it wants. But humans still had to do the thinking to create.
It appeared that some serious brainiacs will be needed to create a portal or transporter system in the future.
Guess we better work on improving that education system if we want to bring to life the ideas that ran around in Gene Roddenberry’s incredible head.