[The original title of this article was about AI . . . SC]

By Martin Armstrong - September 8, 2025

I have been involved in AI, actually, since the late 1960s. I have explained how the TV show Star Trek not only secured funding from Congress for NASA’s Moon mission and named the first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, but also inspired us in the computer industry to dream big. We all knew each other back then. Even the clamshell flip communicators used by the crew of the USS Enterprise are a clear visual and conceptual precursor to the flip phones that dominated the market before the iPhone, and by extension, the iPhone itself.

While Steve never said, “I copied the Communicator,” he did explicitly reference Star Trek when introducing the iPhone. At the 2007 Macworld keynote, while demonstrating the iPhone’s multi-touch interface for the first time, he said, “Boy, have we patented it!” This was a direct and knowing wink to the “pinch-to-zoom” and swipe gestures that looked exactly like the magic interfaces everyone had seen in science fiction for decades, with Star Trek being the prime example. The idea of a sleek, portable, handheld device used for instant communication, information access, and computation is pure Star Trek. The iPhone made that science fiction a reality.

Long before tablets were a practical reality, Star Trek: The Next Generation featured characters using flat, touch-screen devices called PADDs (Personal Access Display Devices). The crew members would carry these thin, slate-like devices to read reports, access data, and input commands. They were used exactly as we use tablets today: for reading, browsing, and as a portable terminal. When Steve introduced the iPad, he framed it as a new category of device between a laptop and a smartphone. For any fan of Star Trek, it was immediately recognizable as the realization of the PADD. The form factor, the touch interface, and its purpose as an information consumption device were all directly inspired by that vision of the future.

Dragon Systems was one of the first utilities that allowed someone to talk to their computer

The idea of talking to your computer and it talking back to you in a natural, conversational way was a staple of Star Trek. The crew could walk onto the bridge and ask the computer any question and get a verbal answer. In the early 1980s, I was working with Dragon System when this was all hardware. Today it is software. My kids grew up talking to the computer. They were my guinea pigs to teach Socrates how even to have a conversation with them. My daughter thought it was completely normal and would ask her friends, You don’t talk to your father’s computer? She would bring her girlfriends over, and they would be stunned.

This vision of a voice-activated, intelligent assistant is . . .

[SNIP]