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by TylerE 900 days ago
Kind of funny how for decades people were wishing for some sort of Star Trek device that put the world's knowledge literally in your pocket. Now that we have it...
6 comments

The trouble is that, in addition to all the world's knowledge, our devices put all the world's opinions in our pockets too....
> World's knowledge

During my ventures into public space it is impossible not to notice this "knowledge", and that so much as to even note the character of it.

I would personally use another word. Perhaps "pastime", "mindless entertainment", that sort of thing. What I observe is generally people browsing through photo stacks, video stacks, audio tracks, or comment stacks. Always browsing, never resting, as if even the concept of reflection is non-existant. So how, I must ask rhetorically, should any "knowledge" enter into the scene?

I never, ever see anything resembling "knowledge work" except for those fellow commuters who use their laptops. Or the extreme minority who read non-fiction books (those are not observed every week -- not even every month -- as students who are the only class of people who are both numerous and have to read non-fiction now read this stuff off-screen on their laptop in stead).

We have a substantial portion of the worlds knowledge available via smartphones, but it's obscured by a bunch of dishonesty, misinfo, attempts at manipulation, etc. In aggregate it's more like a battleground of thought than a utopian collection of knowledge. I'd say that's pretty far off from what Roddenberry imagined.
It reminds me more of the TNG episode "The Game" where Wesley Crusher brings back that addictive game device: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Game_(episode)
If Star Trek had what we did, it wouldn't look quite as desirable.
We're one step away from being constantly connected to the hive like the Borg.