11 May 2009 | Uncategorized | bob

Is there paper in your future? We’ve often turned to the world of science fiction to tell us what we can expect in the world of tomorrow. From Jules Verne’s submarine voyages beneath the North Pole to Arthur C. Clarke’s geostationary communications satellites, the creators of science fiction have been giving us peeks at the wonders of futuristic technology. So let’s take a spin in the sci-fi time machine and sample some printers of the far distant future.

Babylon 5
Print is clearly alive and well in the Babylon 5 universe. Somehow, newspapers survived the online assault and the readers of tomorrow still suffer ink-stained fingers as they peruse the sports page. Readers of the Earth-based “Universe Today” feed the previous day’s copy into a recycling slot, where the paper is reused to print today’s paper, with the sections personalized for your interests. Unfortunately, looking at the first few minutes of this clip from second season episode, “Divided Loyalties,” it seems toner cartridges still need the occasional shake to keep the print quality even.

Dr. Who
The Time Lords of Gallifrey, of course, don’t worry about such things. Their psychic paper makes you see printing that’s not even there, saving their civilization billions in ink costs. Even better, psychic paper shows you what you want to see, making everyone far happier and more mellow. Unfortunately, this may have lead to the destruction of their civilization since the psychic paper probably never told them, “Hey, the Daleks are coming to KILL YOU ALL!!!”

Battlestar Galactica (2004)

The Babylon 5 folks have it easy compared to the humans in the latest iteration of Battlestar Galactica. The printers on board the human vessels have joined forces with the Cylons as something of a fifth column. With the corners carefully snipped off, every page of paper has eight rather than the normal four sides, increasing the number of razor-sharp edges. Was it an outbreak of painful, stinging papercuts that led to Starbuck’s mysterious disappearance at the end of the show? Only the printers know for sure…

Firefly
Not to be outdone are the sinisterly secretive paper products of Firefly. Who can forget River Tam’s one-woman war against Blue Sun can wrappers and food packaging in the episode “Shindig”:

There it is, there it is. It’s always there if you look for it. Everybody sees and nobody sees it… These are the ones that take you! Little ones in the corner that you almost don’t see. But they’re the ones that reach in and do it. They’re the ones with teeth and you have to smash them! A million things, and the hands go everywhere and when you brush your teeth all the little blue things are there but no one says it because, because sometimes they’re afraid. And then they come… The hands go everywhere. Two by two, hands of blue.

Just what is the link between the sinister Blue Hands and the paper packaging of Blue Sun food products? And why does River hate them so much? Was the threat of paper cuts used to keep the children at the mysterious academy in line? Or is there something far more sinister going on?

Star Trek
When creating Star Trek, however, Gene Roddenberry imagined a kinder utopian future. One of the hallmarks of this more perfect tomorrow is the complete lack of paper products. Yes, the Enterprise is a paperless starship. Even in the relatively low-tech original series, Captain Kirk set stylus to a paper-free data pad and information was stored on brightly colored microtapes. Which was a good thing. We can only imagine how a papercut incident might have played out on the Enterprise :

You’re dripping your cursed green blood all over my sickbay. Damn it, Spock, I’m a doctor not a… Oh, right. I’ll see if I have any bandaids…

But fear not… Captain Picard boldly goes where many have gotten papercuts before as evidenced by his treasured collection of books. Truly, only the bravest of starship captains would dare to employ such ancient and dangerous technology.

Photo credits: dalangalma, free-ers, thegreatgeekmanual, rojer.