I've told many stories about my time working on the first "Star Trek" film ("Star Trek: The Motion Picture" aka ST:TMP) - 1979. One of the more amusing ones was when I was chatting with a fairly high-level co-worker (far higher than me!) and I argued that in the time-frame of the film, star ships wouldn't be piloted like WWII battleships. Everything would be fully computerized. He stood thinking about this for a bit, and then replied, "Lauren, you're absolutely right. But if we did it your way, we wouldn't have a movie." And he was correct, of course.
@lauren Related: In 2008 I interviewed the commander of the actual USS Enterprise, VADM (Ret.) John Morgan. When I asked about how computer technology changed in the Navy we had this conversation: Dan: [5:35] And have you seen changes, how is it different doing something now than it was, lets say, back 30 years ago? John: [5:44] ...I brought the Enterprise Battle Group south through the Straights of Hormuth on the night of the 10th of September, and on the 11th of September we watched the events unfold in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania and the reaction around the world and we pressed up off the coast of Pakistan. [6:05] But, when we launched the first strike in Afghanistan we did so by firing Tomahawk cruise missiles. And here's the technology example: We directed all those Tomahawk cruise missiles by means of a chat room. It's staggering... Dan: [6:24] Chat John: [6:25] Yeah, by chat. Dan: [6:26] You, running the aircraft Enterprise and all that were using chat rooms? John: [6:33] We were using a chat room for the Tomahawk cruise missiles... [Much later from John:] [28:14] If you were to ask me Dan, "John, what things could disrupt the global system?" One of the things that I would tell you is one causation for breakage would be a global pandemic. And in the global transpiration today something can spread from Africa to London in 12 hours.
Transcript: http://www.peapodcast.com/danbcast/VADMMorgan-2008-09-25.html, Podcast info: http://danbricklin.com/podcast.html#danbcast-2008-09-26-03-54-45
