I was thinking about the social environment of Star Trek today while working on a volunteer project for EIFL. The path to the pseudo-utopia of Gene Roddenbury’s future finally clicked in my mind. Until this morning, I believed that people would never be able to reach beyond the self, family, or clan structure mentality to see us as one people. The tools for collaborative problem solving are quickly being brought to developing nations. These developing nations are becoming very adept at innovative ways to solve social, educational, and infrastructure challenges.
In this global approach to creating innovative solutions those who have the need are truly becoming the mother’s of an invention that will stand outside the global marketplace. There have been open source/open license solutions for a long time but the use of these has been limited due to the learning curve of developing these tools. As more open source frameworks are created allowing the common user to create their own solutions and ask for volunteer support, the process of problem solving becomes less about finance and more about social reach.
On a separate note, our technology is getting close to being able to do the functions of the Roddenbury marvels of the screen. Inventions like the MS Kinect allow computers to build virtual environments that react to our movements. With facial recognition software computers could tell whether students using this virtual environment are confident or confused to allow for educational scaffolding. Holodeck 1.0 is born.
Final note… I don’t think the United States will be involved in this push into the future. Our market will cling tightly to their intellectual property until the technology is obsolete while Nigeria will work collaboratively to develop the next leap in space technology.
Some links to go with this:
http://www.itedgenews.com/NigeriaSatX_is_great.shtml