I'm Going to Need Help from Star Trek Fans on This One...

Seriously, Star Trek fans... consider yourselves mobilized.

Cassidy Steele Dale writes to equip you with the forecasts, foresight skills and perspectives, and tools you may need to create a better, kinder world.

And one of those ways is to show you how a futurist thinks… and daydreams... about the better, kinder world in Star Trek.

Sometimes a futurist will skip the immediate future in order to think about and plan for what’s beyond that.

For example, smart clothes will be developed. I don’t know how but they will be. And as they become cheaper to manufacture (or print or grow) will become some aspect of the norm for many.

• Smart clothes can be anything from high tech fabrics with inherent properties to technology incorporated within the garment somehow, or both. Here’s several bits of sizzle on this. And those are what the technology currently can do or is about to.

This begins my occasional new series The Futures of What’s in Your Pockets, a conceit to talk about potential futures for aspects of our regular lives. (For example, you probably have a house key in your pocket… what are potential futures of keys… of home security… of homes? You probably have a car key in your pocket… what are potential futures for cars, gas stations, roads… You get the idea.)

But before we talk about that we have to talk about the futures of pockets and to do that you have to talk about the futures of clothes and what clothes will be able to do that will change what you carry around in your pockets.

So let’s skip ahead a few decades so we can imagine all of that.

Better yet, let’s skip ahead a few centuries and instead think about smart clothing in the 23rd century of Star Trek’s Starfleet uniforms and what those uniforms were always capable of even if we never saw it on screen. Why? Why not? Because it’s fun to think about.

• Wait — I’m not finding anything online about Starfleet uniform capabilities. There’s a great deal of information on uniform colors, rank designations, variations, costume design philosophies, velour, Spandex, and the Picard maneuver. How on Earth can this franchise’s writers and fandom not have generated technical manuals on Starfleet britches but have generated lore on every starship, phaser, and the second alien from the right who walked past a camera 35 years ago once? Memory Alpha, I love you, but have we as a community just not thought much about this yet?

• Or, more likely, have I just failed to find it (minus a couple of one-liners about how Starfleet uniforms are supposed to be somewhat all-environment wear) because I haven’t seen every episode of Star Trek and consumed all the lore?

Star Trek fans, consider yourself mobilized. I need your help on this.

What can Star Trek uniforms do?

So let’s ask: what might the capabilities of the Starfleet uniforms of, say, the crew of the Enterprise in Strange New Worlds be? And then spin some other ideas out from there. Let’s bound ourselves mostly to Strange New Worlds: it’s farther out than Enterprise but not as far out as Next Generation. (For you who have been reading this newsletter for a while, I’m inviting us to do something like a futures wheel here.)

• Starfleet uniforms’ main everyday responsibility — beyond signifying department and rank — would probably be mere temperature regulation. I presume nanotech smart clothing — and temperature detection within it — would loosen or tighten its weave (or printed or grown arrangement of fibers) to release or retain heat depending on ambient temperatures and body temperature. It would vent or retain heat — within limited parameters — to keep you comfortable and help you survive whatever environment you found yourself in. More on that in a second.

• UV and other radiation protection, of course. And moisture wicking.

• Power generation via solar collection and through motion/friction/stretching — and storage. Agitated molecules via sunlight, body heat, and body motion? That’s electricity. And storage? No reason a battery has to be solid. Maybe your batteries are within every hem in your clothing.

• And how to use that power? Heat generation for when you’re out in the cold (within reason) — you’d literally be wearing a mild electric blanket. Or maybe sections of your uniform could emit light if you’re in the dark. Or sound — a screech if you want to signal you’re in distress, or a beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep if you’ve flatlined and need immediate help.

• Basic biomonitoring powered by your uniform’s flexible batteries.

• Basic GPS and location powered by the same, but perhaps only within a ship or starbase. GPS on a planet is handled via your communicator or combadge.

• Somewhat self-cleaning because Starfleet cracked some of the code of merino wool and/or alpaca fibers and because nano-clothing could shed stains or not take them on in the first place. How would you clean Starfleet uniforms after light duty? Not by throwing them into a washing machine but maybe by shaking them out hard. I don’t recall seeing a single ship’s laundry in all of Star Trek though I’ve spotted mentions of garment reprocessors (which I presume are akin to replicators) in Next Generation and a mention of a ship’s laundry on Deck H on the Enterprise in The Original Series. (If you order a chicken sandwich and coffee from a food machine in The Original Series, there’s going to be a Maytag somewhere.)

• Color and texture changes on demand. If you’ve noticed yet, the texture in the shoulders and sleeves of the uniforms in Strange New Worlds matches the department in which the officers work. So in my head canon perhaps every officer on board has a half dozen nondescript GRAY jerseys that — when the officer puts them on and the jersey recognizes them — transforms to the color and texture of their department — and their rank. And constricts to fit to their body — instant tailoring that resizes if you have a large lunch. Look closely at Spock’s — and how the Science Department circles in his delta and his shoulders match:

• And a wristwatch? Probably digital (or an analog face) if you touch the inside of your wrist. Alarms? Program them the same way. Control surfaces don’t have to be solid; they just have to be flat enough to work.

• And pockets. At least on The Original Series. Kirk kept his communicator somewhere.

What about PADDs (Personal Access Display Devices)?

Let’s take this further.

Starfleet probably long since determined that unduly divided attention = lethal risk so they probably train — and structure their protocols — toward Deep (uninterrupted, deep-focus) Work. What does that mean? That means 95% of your personal communications and distractions are routed to your personal PADD (smart tablet equivalent since as far back as The Original Series) in your bunk or your quarters.

• Your PADD can handle — and keep virtual rather than tangible — all of your media… your reading, news, music, podcasts, and video as well as your personal planning and all the writing and music you compose. And your games. And whatever FaceTime conversations you want to do within the ship’s Intranet.

Your workstation can handle the official stuff. Michael Okuda (who designed the visual aesthetic of the technology of Star Trek: The Next Generation) once told Marina Sirtis when she asked him ‘How do I fly this thing?’ and he said ‘When you walk up to it, the computer recognizes you and the system on which you trained on it so… do whatever you want to do.’ (Okuda’s design sensibility heavily influenced how your smart phone interface works. And remember: he designed the Enterprise of The Next Generation before there was an Internet and far before anyone other than a few geeks even had a personal computer in their homes at all. When The Next Generation first aired most kids’ most advanced technology in their entire lives was a Trapper Keeper and an Erasable Bic and a few upright videogame machines in a small dank storefront somewhere in town. Okuda was a badass futurist back in the day.) So whatever workstation you walk up to recognizes you and resets itself to your parameters. And your orders? Your official emails and communications? Your lunch plan emails? They’re in a tiny, no-notifications, semi-optional window you check once every few hours on whatever computer screen you walk up to on board. Because Starfleet designs everything so you keep your eyes on the ball.

So what about Starfleet officers’ Every Day Carry (EDC) and personal possessions?

So let’s ask this: if what you wear and eat and all your medical needs are replicated and/or supplied by Starfleet and what you need in your bunk or quarters are provided for you and dissolved back down into molecules when you no longer need them (your uniforms, boots, field survival bags, jackets, globes, hats, workout wear, PADD, communicator or combadge, your sleepwear, your bedding… even your throw blanket)… what’s left for you to own? If you don’t — and can no longer — care about most of the basic possessions necessary for survival, then what would you care enough about to continue to own long term?

Your home decor? Your civilian clothes? Maybe but still… you’d probably still ultimately consider most of those disposable or molecule fuel for matter/nano-reassemblers.

Your pocket gear? Your EDC (Every Day Carry)? Your keys? Your wallet? Your watch? Most of what’s on your phone gets pushed to your PADD and the most critical stuff gets transmitted to your communicator/combadge or to your workstation.

What’s left then? Things get minimalist fast. Maybe all that’s left is a small lockbox of what you love, mementos of what you’ve done, physical marks of your service that you need to hold onto to prove to yourself that you ever did something that truly matters… even if no one knew. And evidence of something you have not yet come to peace with but cannot yet destroy.

What would you carry in your pockets? Photos, totems, tools, and toys.

• Sulu, in the Kelvin timeline, kept a photo of his family on his piloting console. I presume by that era a single physical photograph — the physical paper itself — could display any photo held in the photo’s onboard storage.

• Totems would be any small object of significance to you. Kirk, in the Kelvin timeline, carried around a tiny metal toy model of The Kelvin.

• Tools would be anything Chief O’Brien kept jammed in every once of his probably 12 pockets and could be anything from Federation sonic screwdrivers to tricorders to toys that have work usages like using a flipoflip or other kinetic gadgets to manually test whether ship’s gravity and vibration are calibrated accurately.

• Toys could include gravity discs or mini-frisbees but never an alien Super Fun Ball. (Side question: What would be considered contraband or banned on a starship when a Klingon officer could carry around a Bat’leth?)

In Strange New Worlds when the crew observed a day of remembrance for the crews of their previous ships on which they served, La’an Noonian Singh went back to her lockbox of Possessions of Personal Importance (my term) (which I presume in Starfleet is an inviolable right not to intrude upon unless there are extreme legal/investigative reasons):

To which I’m certain she added the wristwatch. If you know, you know. If you don’t yet, then watch all of Strange New Worlds.

But still… look at everything in her quarters. Very few of those objects are precious to her, probably. She could live without all but what was in her lockbox.

And Dr. M’benga… that lockbox may be all he has that he can’t part with. Except what’s in the buffer. (And once you know what he keeps in the buffer then you know half of what Star Trek is about.)

I left the time stamps in in case you want to go look more closely at their lockboxes but, you know, giant spoiler warning on the M’Benga one.

• Side note: I fear losing all my digital life to an electromagnetic pulse or something as we become more digital and less tangible. I wonder if by then I (we) would occasionally create (in the replicators) an optical disk (almost like an old microfiche) on which is printed a precision, miniaturized archive of what I love — diaries, photos, things I’ve written and my family has written — that could be read later (and recovered) via a simple microscope. Something like The Long Now Foundation’s Rosetta Disk or its smaller, wearable version.)

And the bunks in Lower Decks? The lockers and under-bunk storage are probably akin to what you’d find in a Navy berth.

Starfleet officers’ minimalism may be a Starfleet value, a broader Federation value, or both. Sure, the Federation is post-scarcity, acquisition of wealth isn’t a major priority, and its economy works, you know, somehow but my point is that Starfleet characters’ minimalism is a feature, not a bug.

So occasionally I look around my house and mentally subtract all the furniture and clothes and food and supplies and then I mentally flatten down all my books and media into digits and I get a pretty good picture of what belongings are left that I actually really care about. It’s always less than I thought.

So… what now?

So…

• because I am a solo person with a limited imagination who has only spent a small amount of time thinking about this and probably has only come up with 10% of what is possible… but your collective capacities are unending, and

• because very soon there will be some 11-year-old kid in rural Indiana who last night watched an episode of Star Trek that hasn’t been made yet in which a group of Starfleet officers are buried in a pitch-doom-black cave and certain to die and instead they all light up their uniforms and begin work not on saving themselves but on saving the entire alien planet and all the beings on it whom they have never met… and that 11-year-old saw these heroes suddenly become — out of the deep, pitch-black dark — beings of light and knowledge and skill in a place of darkness and cynicism and defeat and doom and they got to work and handed Doom their ass. Because Starfleet isn’t and has never been an organization of bureaucrats; it’s been one of badass explorers and extreme altruists who volunteered to go out beyond the final frontier, and

• because that 11-year-old kid will be on a cold school bus tomorrow morning with two windows broken in the down position and cannot let go of that image of their mere clothes lit up the dark and then thinks Wait… if THAT is possible, then what else could be... Could my fingers be warmer in my pockets right now? My hands are cold. Could their pockets be heated? No, they’d do more than that, right? They’d do a LOT more. What else could they do?

We Star Trek fans were that 11-year-old kid once. And something about Star Trek blew our minds a long time ago and got us hooked. There’s a new 11-year-old kid out there who maybe needs some help to aspire, even about something small… like high tech heated coat pockets that could keep their hands warm on a cold school bus.

So I’m asking what would you tell that 11-year-old kid that Starfleet uniforms — or the smart clothes of someday soon — could do? And why?

This is the sort of thing this fandom has been training its entire life for. The comments section below? That’s what it’s for. Tell that kid because that kid was you.