Thread: Star Trek Tricorder Simulator: ANNOUNCE
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jdb2 is offline jdb2
2011-09-09 , 14:10
Posts: 51 | Thanked: 63 times | Joined on Jun 2010 @ Klein/Spring, Texas, USA
#48
Sorry to resurrect an old thread but I came across this and just had to respond.

Originally Posted by qole View Post
Cute toy. But it really makes it obvious that Star Trek got it wrong. Your faithful reproduction of the interface makes it clear that, as interfaces go, the tricorder's interface really stinks. Lots of big, unnecessary buttons, a tiny, tiny screen, and a generally poor layout really makes it clear that the tricorder is only useful as a prop in a TV show; it would flop as a real-world device.
I couldn't disagree more. The tricoder was, and still is, ahead of its time. Not only was it a computer millions of times more powerful than anything we have today, but it utilized highly sophisticated AI algorithms to scan for basically any pattern. It was also an information storage device of huge capacity, an information transmission and retrieval device, and an information recording device. It performed passive and *active* scanning where active scanning is the emission of practically any kind of flux of particles or any other type of radiation or energy to see how the environment responds. It had a scanning radius of thousands of miles and due to the aforementioned features, the user could scan for something non-specific, or just anything for that matter, and if it was there it would be recognized. Lastly, it could also function as a communications device and an auxiliary power source as its power cells basically lasted forever.

Strangely, they got it "right" with the on-board computer interfaces (touch-screen LCARS), but the tricorder is all physical buttons and almost no screen!
If you watch Star Trek : The Next Generation, you can see that they got it almost all right as almost everything has a touch-display interface, including the new tricorder which has been upgraded with fewer buttons and a larger touch sensitive display -- ahead of its time for the 80's.

Star Trek should have had pocketable all-in-one devices, like what's happening in the real world.
But that's exactly what a tricorder is! It's your basic pocketable subcompact swiss-army-knife of the 23rd or 24th centuries.

jdb2