I know this is how people in the 80s and 90 imagined the future and a lot of concepts were probably too far fetched for them.

BUT… why arent they using drones to explore planets? why are there not more drone-spaceships? why does enterprise need a crew to begin with? Why is there so little automation? Why so few uses of AI in general?

I am saying this as a star trek the next generation person. I’d also expect them to have full video and sensory streams of any surface mission teams.

    • BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      I mean i just watch a the next gen episode where some science guy had created a rift in spacetime and instead of sending in a drone/probe they almost got Lieutenant Data killed. Another thing I was wondering why aren’t they backing up Lieutenant Data?

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Having also recently seen that episode, they send Data in because he’s the only one who wasn’t confused by the time weirdness. Picard even tells him sending others would only slow Data down and if they should get hurt it would make the time sensitive mission even more difficult.

        As for why they don’t have more Datas: They don’t even know how he works. The dude who made him and Lore died without sharing his research.

        • BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          Oh I didn’t get that far, I do remember Data’s whole exploring his roots/dad episode from back in the 90s when I watched at the time. But haven’t gotten that far in rewatches yet. That would explain why they can’t back him up to hdd. They probably wouldn’t get all the permissions for all the folders right so a restore from backup would probably not work.

          • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Actually… That kind of backup may be possible… 🤔

            I mean, if they can accidentally backup real humans (second Riker, Scotty in the transport buffer, Broccoli turning himself into a super computer, etc), surely they could purposely backup the android. lol

            • Eccitaze@yiffit.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              The one time they purposely “backed up” a human via the transporter it took up so much space they had to dump the backup into the holosuite and it still nearly brought the entire station’s computer to its knees.

      • kamenLady.@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        One thing to remember, is that the concept of drones and AI, how we are currently developing and improving those, was not something people back then had on the radar.