“Mr Data, disable AdBlock.”
“Are you certain, Captain? I advise against it.”
“Proceed, Mr Data.”
“Very well, Sir…”HOT LONELY SINGLES NEAR YOU IN >DELTA QUADRANT< ARE WAITING RIGHT NOW TO HEAR FROM YOU!
excited Riker noises
Mr Worf scoffing in disgust at the screen
Confused Wesley noises
Scotty letting out a long whistle as he unscrews the cap off his phaser-shaped whisky flask
Reminds me of that crazy scene from Picard where they get holographic popup ads on their ship.
It might just be my crazy conspiracy theory brain, but I feel like they’re trying to normalize advertising in a supposedly idyllic and utopian future society to make us see them as more of a necessity than they actually are. Same thing with Raffi living in poverty and Picard having private ownership of the means of production (his vineyard) with employees. So much for that “money-free socialist utopia.”
I never even thought about Picard’s vineyard like that. It is odd that a society that seems largely modeled off of libertarian values would include generational estates. The concept of usufruct may have been unknown by the writers of TNG when they were fleshing our Picard’s past. Or it was just a bit of our cultural bias bleeding into this “utopian” setting.
Raffis story doesn’t get a pass though. It seems like they were going for gritty and edgy in a way that was straight up contradictory to the federations ethos when they came up with that bs. The whole first season of Picard was pretty backwards in its portrayal of the federation imo. Haven’t watched the 2nd or 3rd season yet so idk if they unfucked any of the worst stuff
I mostly agree with you except the libertarian part. Is that a misspeech or something? The Federation is pretty far from being (economically) Libertarian.
Libertarian in the OG sense, more commonly called libertarian socialism or anarchism. Didn’t realize I left the socialism bit out. I hesitate to call the federation anarchist because there’s still plenty of hierarchy but it seems to be modeled after a vaguely left-libertarian ideology of some sort
The original Liberals were actually a bunch of mill owners in 19th Century Manchester (at the time the most technologically advanced city in the world) who got together to ask challenging questions like “why should we have to pay taxes?” and “what if we basically owned our employees? And their children”.
Marx and Engels lived there for a time and witnessed the conditions the working people lived in first-hand.
Libertarians aren’t liberals
Libertarianism is explicitly based on the ideas of Manchester School Liberalism. The British Liberal Party of the 19th Century was all about free market ideology, in contrast to the (theoretically) more centrist modern party. In Victorian Britain, Liberal own you.
Broader socialism has its roots in the French revolution and liberalism too. But you don’t see anyone making a case that Marxists are liberals due to their common ideological heritage. Because it’s silly. It’s almost like divergent ideologies have to originate from somewhere and within a particular historical context. It’s unproductive and pointless to say “z came from y and y from x so z is the same as x”
The “utopian future” for Star Trek has always been pretty vague. They almost never showed civilian life in the Federation, so we didn’t see much of it. Mostly it served as an excuse for a bunch of people in a heavily-armed ship to travel around and preach their own superiority to the primitives they came across while adhering strictly to a military chain of command that’s held up as the highest ideal.
People wonder why there are so many fascists in the Star Trek fandom. I always thought it was pretty obvious.
Yes, all of that! If anything, Chateau Picard should be a collective of equal volunteers who just really love squashing grapes with their feet in rural France. Iain M Banks novels deal with this aspect of Utopianism much better.
Why do they need vineyards? Can’t they make any wine using replicators?
Why do people cook themselves? Can’t they just microwave something?
Probably because some people enjoy the little imperfections that but being replicated brings
Honestly I think it’s a bit of cope from the writers not wanting to deal with the ultimate consequences of the world building decisions (which is fine). I’m sure people want to make stuff in real ways but industrial size vineyards? Eh, why not replace it with a lush biologically diverse forest with some wine bushes spread about and little drones harvesting in a smart way.
Tng s4e2 shows us that the replecator doesn’t give them real booze and replicated liquor is garbage
I believe that is only on Starfleet vessels.
You don’t want drunk people performing their jobs during a crisis.
Characters on the show also mention on multiple occasions that certain foods don’t taste as good when replicated.
Which is complete BS, since it’s supposed to be the same on a molecular level.
I think of it like a homemade carrot cake versus a store bought individually wrapped slice.
Technically that factory made carrot cake is perfect every time. It is the same recipe, color, and quality as the one next to it and the one you bought last year. That said I would nearly always prefer a homemade or bakery made carrot cake more. Nothing wrong with grabbing the “perfect” one in a pinch, but it is missing something that I can’t quite describe. Maybe it is a more generic recipe, or maybe it is the preservatives, but there is a difference.
It’s probably just cheap ingredients. Not an issue for replicators.
Factory made food is created differently than homemade. Replicators can, well, replicate anything perfectly.
That can be attributed to the placebo effect.
Which episode is that? I can’t remember seeing it.
Sorry, I don’t remember which episode. I’m pretty sure it was in season 1.
It shows up more than once, but I think the first time is shortly after the girl goes to see Picard. Probably episode 2 or 3. There were workers and machines in the fields and I remember thinking, why even have the people if the machines beam the grapes right off the vines?
No, I mean the one of the holographic pop-ups, or is that the same one?
Because it’s a hobby for them?
It sounds to me like they we were going for more of a realistic future than a utopia. The money free utopia thing never seemed that important, I suspect it’s only used in later shows for consistency with TOS. It’s far more important to trek to criticize and reflect modern society, which is a lot harder to do if your characters are living in a utopia. I haven’t seen Picard yet though, so I’m just extrapolating from your description.
A big part of the Trek universe is that it’s supposed to represent a society that has overcome the limitations imposed upon it by greed, oppression, and hate.
It’s far more important to trek to criticize and reflect modern society, which is a lot harder to do if your characters are living in a utopia.
I disagree… if anything, the opposite is true! Having “Federation utopia” makes it incredibly easy to critique modern society. Just introduce planets which have whatever element of modern society you want to comment on, and then draw a painfully obvious comparison to the perfection that is humanity in the 24th century, and boom, it’s done! Heck, you could even make an entire alien race to critique an element of modern society like capitalism, not that anybody would do something that obvious :P
I feel like TOS and TNG lived on this a little too much, especially in early TNG seasons. It was what made DS9 so interesting when the writers flipped the script. Instead of spoon feeding you the critique of modern society in the form of planet-of-the week, they throw in stuff that makes you question whether the federation utopia approach is actually right, or if it’s too naive.
The money free utopia thing never seemed that important
uh. i think you might have missed like, everything.
This just made me think about the early episode where they encounter a planet that was wiped out by, essentially, a used car salesman AI and the product it was selling.
Why did nobody call tech support? 🤷🏻♂️
Tech support? That sounds like a cost centre.
A most excellent meme
Your FTL subscription has expired…
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One thing that would probably work for news sites that I haven’t seen would be to give subscribers access to articles a day or so earlier than non-subscribers. No article limit or anything like that, decent freedom of information, and minimal incentive to make clickbait bullshit that nobody will subscribe to.
Well the challenge with that is avoiding making the articles stale for the wider public, given that the news typically focuses on current events. An article about, say, the negotiations to avoid the impending US government shutdown would be stale by the time it gets to the general public under such a model, so then we’re effectively back to the hated paywall to get the information in a useful timeframe.
I think it could work. People who need timely US government shutdown news will pay for it. And the rest of us will wait for Carol to tell us about it at the microwave in the break room, anyway.
I would be down with that
earning profit should not be the center of society. i feel like star trek itself is a great example as to why
Rule of Acquisition #345 Never let silly hooman ad blockers stand in the way of profitable opportunity.
I would look at the ad if they didn’t insert 12 ads for a 15 minute video.
Merde
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Million dollar idea: Install adblock for your ship’s communications, track everyone who contacts you through ad analytics, profit
