Why not spend those half hours you have free, but in front of your keyboard, with learning something new? Being a lifelong learner, educator, Star Trek fan, but also an author and blogger (using the pen name Paddington), the Smithsonian course on the cultural and technological impact of Start Trek really looked interesting.
Star Trek came relative late in my life. It all started with
the Next Generation for me, and I only watched the original series much later.
It was the time of free Sky One via satellite in the late 1980's in Hungary. We
grew up with the Starship Orion rather than Star Trek original series. It is a
German series (Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes
Orion) that premiered in 1966, too, and was clearly an attempt to create a
European contestant to Roddenberry's brilliant idea. When Sky One delivered
Star Trek the Next Generation, I was fascinated by the complex characters,
interesting plotlines and the low level of violence. It was interesting to see
how the creators saw the future of humankind, as well as other species.
When I started digging into the history of the series, I
became really fascinated. Coming from a country that tried and failed to apply
the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on communism, and having heard so
much about the American fight against the idea, I was thrilled to realise that
the Earth of the United Federation of Planets actually lived in a communist
utopia. I had the feeling that premiering such a series in one of the darkest
periods of the Cold War is really something. And I also became interested in
the sociology, psychology, political science behind Star Trek.
I must admit that I am more interested in the cultural
impact aspect, but it is also interesting to see what technology became a reality
since then. And, of course, when I am queuing for a flight or waiting for a bus
that is not coming (let alone sitting in my car in a traffic jam), I'd love to
say: Beam me there, Scotty.
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