Active Safety
Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2012 12:00 am
I'm not sure if this belongs here or somewhere else. However I think it fits in "General/Trek..."
One of the things we always like to decry here is the dependency in Trek on active safety systems. I think more than once we've talked about how the warp core really should have something that does not require active power or maintenance to keep it stable (i.e. a containment field). And we've all had good discussions about how prominent incidents with those sorts of systems are in Trek. Well I was watching a car commercial recently and this got me thinking: maybe this dependency on active systems isn't so far-fetched/so much a symptom of lazy writing as we thought.
I don't know how it is across the pond but if you've watched any American car commercials they seem to be designing new cars with a lot of systems designed to tell the driver something is wrong or in their way and tack action automatically in place of the driver. There are cars with back-up cameras, seats that buzz to alert the driver there's something behind them and/or apply the brake before the driver does; parking assisted cars etc. To me these seem to be the sorts of things are useful, but also dangerous if they get to the point where they begin to replace actual attention. Do we think it is possible that the development of these systems will lead to a time where the failure of these systems might cause a catastrophe because humans have forgotten to be vigilant -- similar in manner, if not scale, to how the failure of the antimatter containment field leads to a warp core breach because there is no passive back up?
One of the things we always like to decry here is the dependency in Trek on active safety systems. I think more than once we've talked about how the warp core really should have something that does not require active power or maintenance to keep it stable (i.e. a containment field). And we've all had good discussions about how prominent incidents with those sorts of systems are in Trek. Well I was watching a car commercial recently and this got me thinking: maybe this dependency on active systems isn't so far-fetched/so much a symptom of lazy writing as we thought.
I don't know how it is across the pond but if you've watched any American car commercials they seem to be designing new cars with a lot of systems designed to tell the driver something is wrong or in their way and tack action automatically in place of the driver. There are cars with back-up cameras, seats that buzz to alert the driver there's something behind them and/or apply the brake before the driver does; parking assisted cars etc. To me these seem to be the sorts of things are useful, but also dangerous if they get to the point where they begin to replace actual attention. Do we think it is possible that the development of these systems will lead to a time where the failure of these systems might cause a catastrophe because humans have forgotten to be vigilant -- similar in manner, if not scale, to how the failure of the antimatter containment field leads to a warp core breach because there is no passive back up?