Trope-a-Day: Data Pad - General - The Eldraeverse

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February 2025

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joelkreissman <zarpaulus@gmail.com> on 2016-09-21 09:07:45 wrote:

TV writers of the 80s could foresee the tablet computer but couldn’t grasp the concept of email?

jrdougan <jdougan@acm.org> on 2016-09-21 15:56:16 wrote:

I guess you could gloss it by claiming that each tablet is connected to a different stovepiped and security isolated system. You know the Federation/Republic has to have an crazy complex bureaucracy.
Also, the Original Series foresaw the tablet in the 60s. Gene Roddenbery figured that it would be insane to take up all that ship volume in hard copy paperwork.

Alexander van Gessel <ai0867@gmail.com> on 2016-09-22 01:45:02 wrote:

Star Trek was full-on paperless, but lazy writers then used all the paper tropes with tablets instead. So instead of stacks of paper in your inbox you had a stack of data pads there.

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