Wednesday, December 23, 2020

New Star Trek series, new societal challenges?


Star Trek has tackled most of today's societal issues in these past few decades. When the course material was completed, we were yet to see the Picard series that had its take on articifial intelligence and the boundaries between humans and AI at a much higher level than any series before. This would have been a topic to be challenged by a Star Trek series anyway, so I wasn't surprised. What happens if (when?) humans become superfluous and AI will be able to do everything better? Will there be a role for humans? Will humans tolerate a species that is even more invasive than them?

Another topic yet to be included in the Star Trek universe is mass migration. Of course this is nothing new, especially not for the USA where the series originates from, but for this reason it is even more interesting to think how it is possible for a nation of immigrants to cast majority vote on anti-immigration. Is there a moment when you can put up a "Full" sign? And if yes, do you have a responsibility for those left putside?

The past few months of Covid has also shown that we need to remind ourselves as well as politiciant how dangerous it is to have one-sided approaches and protecting people against their will and best interest. The governmental and media reactions to a no-so-deadly virus is a huge warning to all of us. If you only consider a single factor, the consequences are catastrophic. What if we face a real danger in the future? And even if you try to find a little more complex solution (that the majority of governments have failed to do), on the one hand it is difficult to save your people from major impact of other governments' failure in a globalised world, and on the other hand impact outside your country has not been a factor considered in the equation. This would be a very interesting Star Trek topic. How short sighted governments kill far more people than they save, and how to make people aware of the fact and raise against such rules and politicians. Probably a little more ancient history will once show that the wars before the Earth's global government was formed was a result of a coexistence of so many totally short-sighted governments not capable of thinking in a 1-bit way.  


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