Grizzlybur

That’s the one I had in mind when writing the first comment. The worse part is Geordie kept that largely respectable. Could you imagine what someone with no self control and a holodeck of their coworkers could do?

I’d love if there was an exploration of what holodeck usage for civilians looks like. If you can have a holodeck that can bring the entire universe to you, why bother doing anything? Especially since you are already in a post scarcity society where strictly speaking you don’t need to do anything. I always felt that the federation having motivated people is societal momentum from earlier centuries, but in a couple more centuries I think it’s entirely plausible that most of humanity would become simply indifferent to the greater world around them, infinitely entertained by holodecks and again, zero scarcity. Honestly, not so different from the Q in a way. How much of society in Star Trek is actually productive? Someone’s gotta be mining the dilithium. Is there genuinely enough people who just volunteer for that?

How exactly does a post scarcity society function?…. And could they please tell us so we can get there ASAP.

God I loved lower decks. I think that episode still only scratches the surface of malicious use cases for holodeck technology.

Plus I think it helps that much of what the holodeck recreates is centuries old at that point. 21st century earth, long ago. It’s not anyone’s current creations, and then beyond that it’s using data that the federation personally got by exploration. Like if people only used AI to generate medieval drawings I don’t think anyone would be too upset really. Maybe weirded out but not upset. Aside from the environmental concerns I guess.

however generating holo characters that look like your coworkers and doing weird stuff to them is a entirely canon issue. And Star Trek never touched on it, but wow would it be easy to fake footage of historical events in a holodeck, especially to civilizations without advanced technology. I work in history as my career and the amount of YouTube videos telling fake stories and showing fake footage of 20th century history is genuinely terrifying. I don’t know what the solution is. Digitization was meant to preserve historical footage but now it just makes it look just like the fake stuff. If anyone digitized historical footage and the physical no longer exists, verifying anything will become a nightmare and sometimes it would be strictly possible.

Honestly the more I think about the holodeck the more I think it’s dangerous as fuck, literally and socially, and Star Trek shows usually only very innocence uses for it. Like you thought parasocial relationships are bad now?

Specially since they get the same cut per dollar whether it’s a AAA game or indie. With how cost prohibitive many larger publisher titles are becoming, this is just smart.

They’re gonna look at this shit in a few centuries in the same way that we look at old chinese foot binding . I agree with others that having this expensive and very visually apparent procedures done must be some sort of way for them to flaunt status and wealth or something. It’s hard to imagine someone thinking this looks good, it’s nearly uncanny valley.

I run a few small communities on the fediverse, and its tough trying to start one up. Granted I try to keep mine canadian focused, but its an uphill battle either way. I was never one to volunteer or be an admin of a community, but I wanted to get the ball rolling somehow. Very disheartening to realize I’m the only one posting in the community, esp because I’m just a lurker at heart.