Channel News and Analysis: Why Star Trek Needs Tech Support
Star Trek’s Captain Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise take to the silver screen this week in the latest warp-speed adventure set in the 23rd century. For the last 43 years, Star Trek has inspired scientists and engineers with technological visions of the future. But, how advanced is Star Trek’s technology? There are many 21st century solutions that VARs could implement to make the Enterprise more efficient and secure.
Star Trek’s Captain Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise take to the silver screen this week in the latest warp-speed adventure set in the 23rd century. For the last 43 years, Star Trek has inspired scientists and engineers with technological visions of the future. But, how advanced is Star Trek’s technology? There are many 21st century solutions that VARs could implement to make the Enterprise more efficient and secure.
Sure, Captain Kirk’s communicator inspired the flip cellphone, and Captain Picard’s badge moved voice communications to a new form-factor, but neither of these devices stand up to the Apple iPhone or Blackberry Curve. Star Trek’s communicators have no e-mail or Web access. What gives?
In every Star Trek movie or television show, there’s always been some communications officer routing calls. How many times did we see Uhura tell Captain Kirk that he had a message from some other party? Star Trek could greatly benefit from Cisco’s or Avaya’s “find me” technology that would put Uhura out of business.
People in the 23rd century must really be open, since the voice technologies of the day broadcast conversations to anyone within hearing distance. So what if they can make galaxy-to-galaxy calls; a handset or even a Polycom Bluetooth headset would afford just a little call privacy.
The Starship Enterprise’s primary computer core is 10 decks tall (about 120 feet) and is surrounded by a subspace warp that enables the nanoprocessors to perform faster-than-light calculations. The computer core is designed to run every aspect of the ship’s operations, but it seems as though a little VMware or Citrix virtualization could reduce the data center footprint.
Despite the advanced technologies and security, aliens that make their way onboard the Enterprise are far too often able to gain access to even the most critical systems. How many times have we seen a hostile visitor take over engineering? Yes, they have iris and retinal scanners, but they’re rarely used. The Enterprise definitely needs some advanced multifactor control measures; starting with RSA SecurID tokens would be a good start.
And aliens don’t necessarily need to get on board the Enterprise to gain access to critical systems. Star Trek stories are replete with incidents where Klingons, Romulans and The Borg are able to wirelessly tap into computer systems and incapacitate the crew. Isn’t this the same vulnerability that allowed hackers to steal 100 million credit card numbers from TJX?
Yes, Star Trek uses something called “fractal encryption,” which is next to impossible to crack unless you’re an android with a positronic matrix for a brain. Alas, as cryptographers of our century can attest, encryption is not a cure-all for security threats. Star Trek has many incidents where encryption is used only after a compromise has occurred.
Star Trek’s Library Computer Access/Retrieval System (LCARS) is the graphical user interface that allows any workstation to manage systems and retrieve data. This is a great example of thin clients and streaming apps, but why so many displays and workstations? If you can call up systems from any terminal, shouldn’t there be fewer access points?
Star Trek ships are standardized on isolinear chips for data processing and storage. These crystal chips can store 2.15 killoquads of data and their nanoprocessors can perform calculations at speeds many factors above the speed of light. But why do they need so many chips? Remember, the data center is the size of a 10-story building. It seems like some of our multicore processors and virtualized storage arrays still beat Star Trek.
Even though Star Trek appears to lack some of our “advanced technology,” Kirk, Spock and the rest of the Enterprise crew still has things we can still only dream of. Warp drive, a cure for cancer and phasers. What we wouldn’t give to avoid airports in favor of a transporter beam! The lesson here: every technology implementation has its tradeoffs.
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