From starring in multiple TV shows, to being one of the most famous Canadians alive today, William Shatner has had plenty of things to take credit for, but did you know “How William Shatner Changed The World”? William Shatner hosted this documentary produced by History and co-produced by Discovery Canada in 2005. This light hearted documentary tells us about how the television series “Star Trek” is the reason that we have the technology we have today as it had inspired the people who made such things as the cell phone, the computer and digital music.
The original Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry and first hit televisions in 1966. The original series depicted a perfect world where there was no hate, this included racism. In the 1960s black people were mostly considered equal, but were not given lead roles in television shows this was not the case with Star Trek as Nichelle Nichols had a leading role, her role was even praised by Martin Luther King Jr. There was also George Takei who mentioned in the documentary that he was so happy that he was finally in a television show where he didn’t have to act like a stereotypical Japanese man. Star Trek had the most racial diversity of a television show for its time.
Star Trek is an extremely geeky show, but it is because of how geeky the show is that we have such things as computers and cell phones. Most people probably don’t know it but the people who made things like computers and cell phones were inspired by Star Trek. The creator of the cell phone, Martin Cooper, was inspired by the communicator of the original series. He wanted to be able to talk to the other person whenever, wherever like they did in Star Trek. Ed Roberts was also inspired by Star Trek but he created what is probably the second most used piece of technology, (after the cell phone), the personal computer. The first PC was a big blue box called the Altair 8800, named after a solar system in Star Trek it didn’t have a screen and no one had any idea how to use it.
The topic that was discussed in the documentary that I would like to explore further is the dark side of technology. Website www.rferl.org says that 75% of the population on Earth have a cell phone, 75%! That’s 5,250,000,000 people even though according to www.globalissues.org 80% of people in the world live off of $10 a day. This shows just how much we all rely on technology, and just how much trouble we could be in if the dark side of technology emerged. If you’ve ever watched movies like “I, Robot” or the “Terminator” series, you have seen what our not too distant future could look like. I think that we are getting ahead of ourselves with technology, not thinking about the consequences should this technology backfire. Like the Great Depression, everyone started using credit cards without thinking about what could happen I think that we could have a similar outcome with the amount of technology we have today, should one person somehow manage to hack into a particular network and crash most of the worlds technology, no one would know what to do, the world would fall into anarchy. I like all of my technology ,but should continue to develop new technology without thinking about the “what ifs”. Technology could quickly become the end of us.
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