How the Star Wars vs Star Trek debate has now officially been settled.

Source: “Science Worship” by jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The camera pans around to Captain Kirk, his gaze stoic – yet – genial, as he negotiates with an alien, whose face fills the massive video screen at the forefront of the Enterprise’s bridge. Kirk receives the alien’s outrageous demands with a smirk as he stiffens his back slightly as he readies himself to dismiss them. He will tell the eight-eyed creature how things are really going to go, with a confidence that comes not only from experience, but from something greater. And you’d be forgiven if you thought it was the technological might of the Federation’s armies. For all their impressiveness, it is not what that fortifies Kirk’s nerve. It’s something much mightier than photon torpedoes.

Ever since humanity rubbed two sticks together and created fire, technology has been a major force in creating wealth and abundance. It’d take tomes to accurately recount technology’s benefits to humanity over our existence, so I won’t try, but instead, will proffer the following as a sort of proxy – the proportion of people below the international poverty line (as recorded by the World Health Organization). Now to be fair, that $1.90 USD per day represents the poverty line seems interesting to say the least, but aside from that, the numbers speak for themselves. A full 15.6% of people proportionally, have moved above the poverty line since 2002. That’s over a billion people! Said another way, astonishingly, over 90% of people now exist above the poverty line.

It’d be disingenuous to accurately pinpoint the cause of this abrupt change, but it’s safe to say that the global adoption of advancing technology has played a pivotal role. Transocean fiber-optic cables alone have connected the world in ways that have fundamentally changed how and where work gets done, and also have opened up new markets that didn’t exist before.

Because technology’s development and its use must be guided by good idea, not bad ones. And one need only to look in the rear-view mirror of history to see how easy it can be corrupted.

In other words, technology has ‘saved’ a lot of people or at least made their lives immeasurably better. And it begs the question, can’t we rely on technology to continue to save us? To make us live longer? To pacify the climate? To further provide abundance? The short answer is yes, we should expect technology to continue to provide benefit to the human race. The thoughtful answer however, is, no, we cannot rely on it to do so, nor should we expect it. And the reason is simple. Our current political and social orientation is divided and disoriented, which increases the potential for technology to be misused. But how is this so?

Because technology’s development and its use must be guided by good ideas, not bad ones. And one need only to look in the rear-view mirror of history to see how easy technology can be corrupted.

The Nazis harnessed cutting edge computers to inventory, track and tally Jews as they were herded onto cattle cars and into the gas chambers. The atom bomb, a herculean model of human ingenuity, can kill hundreds of thousands instantly, and many multiples of these, slowly and horribly over time. And even today, social credit rankings are being used to regulate people’s behavior and limit their freedom of choice and restrict their freedom of speech.

So what do we do then?

The answer lies in what our society chooses to value foremost. And that’s less Silicon Valley, the cradle of technocracy, and more ancient Athens, the cradle of philosophy. For there we can rediscover the intimacies of our human condition, appreciate our differences and learn the art of rational discourse. If we insist on seeking truth first, we can solve our problems, leveraging technology within its confines to bring goodness to the world. Not as today, where technology has increasingly become the vehicle of the politically gifted and powerful to bring convenient and self-enriching ‘truths’ to the masses.

This is why Captain Kirk held a huge advantage in the aforementioned fictional negotiation. He represents a Federation of planets that largely agree on just about everything. A unified utopia, a celestial kumbaya, one that ensures he never has to second guess his bargaining position or fear that his decisions will bring joy to some factions and enrage others. For he exists in a panacea where truth and virtue are firmly held and the moral high ground is settled and thriving with happy Federation citizens. But it’s all fiction. Our world is mired in divergent interests, a place where understanding is second to politics and where castigation is coveted over civil discourse. And in such a world, technology will eventually be used like a club that the powerful will wield to beat you with, just wait your turn.  

And its why Star Wars is superior in narrative to Star Trek in that it represents a more realistic view of us here on planet Earth circa 2021. The Imperial Empire, possessed by bad ideas, wields the most innovative technology to literally destroy planets and thereby subjugate the galaxy. There’s nothing more real than that, since that story has been lived in similar ways throughout human history.

And that truth will play out again and again, unless we talk to one another, as equals, so that the good ideas intercede to stop the bad ones.

And only then, can we live long and prosper, with technology lighting the way.