Ever since first watching Star Trek: The Next Generation as an awkward, distinctly geeky teenager, there were two things I couldn’t wait for technology to get around to giving us.
1) Holodecks where an awkward, distinctly geeky teenager could ‘make’ ‘friends’, and 2) Personal Access Display Devices (PADD), the portable touchscreen computer interface devices that Cap’n Picard and his space-tripping star sailors used to walk around the corridors of the Enterprise frantically tapping on. Flash forward from the early 90s to 2023, and while the moral flexibility of ‘what happens on Holodeck 2 stays on Holodeck 2’ remains beyond my awful reach, I have been able to dabble my digits in touchscreen tablet tech for a couple of decades now, which is cool, but very much the runner-up’s prize.
