#tricorders

The authentic Tricorders do have one out-of-this-world test that can show without a doubt their screen-used status. This is thanks to Leonard Nimoy and a smoking habit he had back when the show was in production.

Many smokers use a pen or some other object to keep their hands occupied when smoking is not an option. Mr. Nimoy used a Tootsie Pop for that very purpose.

Between takes, rather than light up, Nimoy would pull out a sucker and wait for the next camera position to be set. And if they moved a bit too fast, he would take his licked, unfinished Tootsie Pop and place it inside the lower panel of the Tricorder until the cameras stopped rolling.

Take after take, over the course of three years, a sticky Tootsie residue formed inside the prop Tricorders. This candy build-up became a sure-fire way to identify these iconic relics without a doubt.

... and other well-intentioned anti-tech prejudices

Here’s the thing. “Phone” is a stupid name for this wee computer that we now hold in front of our faces, not up to our ears. “Phone” comes from the greek root phōnē meaning "sound, voice," and it’s not the sounds and voices that judgey grandparents are objecting to. “Take a break from your phone for a while.”

Should I also take a break from reading books? Because my books aren’t made of paper and sitting on a shelf somewhere. I mean, paper books are nice and all that. The leather bindings feel and smell wonderful, and the smooth sheen of high-quality paper and crisp print is a pleasure to the eyes. But I’m not getting any of those pleasures from the cheap paper of a perfect-bound paperback which is unsustainably manufactured and carbon-intensive in its transport from factory to printshop to warehouse to bookshop to me. I’ll save my bookshelf space for the rare hand-bound and antique book that comes my way. It’s the ideas expressed in the book that truly matter, and those come across just fine in the e-books that are stored on my “phone”.

“Take a break from your phone for a while.”

I could do that. I might have to go out and buy a radio so that I’d be able to hear the weather report and plan my day accordingly. And a newspaper subscription -- I hate the waste of having to recycle a bale of newsprint every week, but a person needs to know at least a little of what’s going on in the world. And a walk-man so that I can carry my tunes with me -- although finding audio-tapes to feed it doesn’t sound very easy. And a paper engagement book to keep my appointments in. I might miss a few at first since paper engagement books don’t go “ding!”, and I might need a bigger purse to accomodate it -- MUCH bigger, because I’ll also need to carry a Gaelic-English dictionaryfor my studies.

“Take a break from your phone for a while.”

I really like not losing my keys and purse (thank-you, Tile!) and not getting lost when I have to take a new route for some reason (thank-you, Google Maps!). I’ll need to budget extra time for hunting things up every time I step out, along with the extra stress of not knowing whether I will EVER find my keys. Shedding that stress was great for my mental health, but I suppose I could pick it back up. And they still do print those city-map books so I could carry one in my new oversized purse, and pull over every few blocks to check the paper map, since it doesn’t have turn-by-turn voice directions.

“Take a break from your phone for a while.”

My grocery list is on my phone. I mean, I could certainly carry around a paper list -- and while I’m at it, paper grocery coupons and physical loyalty cards and payment cards. That’s what I did in the 90s and they aren’t so long ago. A paper list doesn’t automatically sync with the other members of my household, so we’ll go back to having those occasions when husband and I arrive simultaneously at the refrigerator, both carrying four litres of milk. Of course, I could just phone him and let him know I’m picking up milk -- but there aren’t any pay-phones at the grocery-store exit doors any more, which would be required since I’m taking a break from MY phone for a while.

“Take a break from your phone for a while.”

I’ll have to take a break from my daughter for a while too, and from a lot of other friends and family, since people are spread out a lot farther across the world than they were in a less global age. I can send them letters: we used to do that on a weekly basis, complete with envelopes and stamps. Of course, back in those days the post offices guaranteed next-day delivery so that you COULD actually “exchange” letters within a one-week timeframe. Letters are great: they are still an option and I still send them from time to time. But the reason that we now use email, text, and facetime far more often than letters, is that they are more intimate, more timely, and more versatile. And, that letters nowadays may take a month to be delivered.

Our Phones Are Turning Into Medical Tricorders From Star Trek

Tricorders from Star Trek were meant to be a technology set more than 200 years in the future. But thanks to the pace of advance of modern technology, it looks like they’re going to be showing up a lot earlier than that. Over the last 10 years, since the introduction of the smartphone, tremendous progress has been made towards making tricorders a reality. But rather than being clumsy-looking…

It makes a happy Kirk face. Surprise! The next gen is fluffy. Because Y not Agnes.