Trekno-Positivism

It's the 40th anniversary of the original Star Trek. Prodigious amounts of opinion have been generated about the influence of this pop sci-fi phenomenon on society at large. But the latest example can be seen in Patrick West's post at the UK's Sunday Times, who assumes a sniffy, predictable tone:

Thanks to a process of osmosis from perennial reruns, Star Trek has propagated the belief that it is proper to interfere in other societies, that it is America’s duty to assume the role of (inter-)world policeman, and to correct the errant ways of other cultures — for their own good. And Spock was to Kirk what Blair is to Bush, a lackey willing to assist his master in his curious mission that seemingly has no specific objective.

One suspects that this type of invective has an audience among the more virulent strains of anti-American Europeans, and a similar tirade could have been prompted by soda pop, women's fashion, or any other topic at hand. Simply everything boils down to spittle-flying anger about Topic A.

I'm not a big fan of Star Trek. (I prefer the gritty, people-are-flawed vision of shows like the new and still-criminally-underrated Battlestar Galactica series, for example.) But it hardly seems fair to apply a contemporary overlay of politics and social values to a show that was, by almost universal account, one of the trailblazers of 1960s TV.

The obvious legacy of the show can be felt in a generation of science-minded entrepreneurs and engineers who were partially inspired by it's fantastic notion of technological positivism. We don't have warp drives and transporters - but we do have a culture that has attained the informational equivalent of a nervous system with the advent of the Internet, to cite the most obvious example. Bright minds from technical schools read and watch a lot of sci-fi. And the Baby Boomers geeks, in particular, came of age in the 60s and helped give rise to the biggest companies in technology.

Witness this CNN news story about the new 'Microsoft High School' in Pennsylvania. It's emblematic of this kind of thinking to assume that the problems we're having with education can be solved, in part, by smartboards, laptops, and "digital lockers". It's a seductive vision, one that aligns perfectly with the Trek view of the future, and one that I think offers some partial answers. But I'm old-fashioned enough to think that active, involved parents, dinner with the family and books are a better answer when it comes to education. Make the people strong first, and then give them the impressive technology.

Related Linkage: An interview with Shatner at Wired on the occasion of the anniversary, and the Slashdot post about the Microsoft school, featuring predictably funny snark from the engineering-dorm crowd.