Star Trek: The Original Series and How It Changed the World of Gadgets
The Google doodle today is celebrating the debut of Star Trek: The Original Series 46 years ago Friday and this reminded me of a documentary I once saw starring William Shatner that I thought you guys might enjoy. In this documentary, Shatner playfully explains how he (and Star Trek he finally admits) changed the world. And to his credit, he’s sort of right (maybe not so much about himself, but Star Trek at least).
Essentially the concept is that a lot of the gadgets people saw on Star Trek: The Original Series, like the “Star Trek Communicator” for example, ended up leading certain fans to actually invent similar devices, like the cell phone. Life imitating art sort of thing here. Makes sense to me. As I watch movies now and see crazy gadgets, for our time, I can’t help but to think, “how would we be able to make that in real life,” so you can imagine that 46 years ago some engineers were thinking the exact same thing. Even if you don’t fully believe that, it’s definitely worth checking out and Shatner’s full-of-himself humor helps the feature-film length documentary go by just a bit quicker.
Check out the full documentary below if the mood strikes you.
