PicardRex Wrote:the tech? You argue that the tech would have drastically altered society, I ask how is that not shown?
Even in the Abrams reboot the second movie would not have happened anywhere as it did. First, Khan would likely have been held prisoner in "transporter stasis" (rematerializing later, it minimizes both risk and resource expenditure, and some would even consider it humane to being kept in a brig, and it's also easier than applying manacles). And neither ship would've crashed at the end because the global sats (which are no doubt much more mobile and quicker than today with at least the ability to emulate AI along with guidance from Star Fleet, and IIRC one ep of ST mentioned global sats that controlled the weather around Earth) equipped with the transporter tech and mastery of gravity displayed elsewhere would've made it impossible with a mix of emergency beam outs and artificial gravity (and if all else failed, disintegration of said falling debris).
Furthermore, while I can see why robots would be limited in such a society they'd still be there for emergencies to deal with deadly radiation (and that's assuming even if the engineer room was itself not self-correcting, automated, and robotic). And if they can store the molecules of food to appear later then they could of a protective suit as well which should be easily available around the affected areas (along with other protections they might have) which could create (maybe even adorn) the suit in an instant.
And as for speaking of robots if the daughter could be beamed off the bridge then they could also beam in a robotic drone (much like how we use drones on enemy targets now to great destruction and theirs would be outfitted with even deadlier capabilities with defenses against mere hand phasers), or even beam away a section of the hull instantly exposing the entire bridge to vacuum. Even if they couldn't for some strange reason then everyone else could be transported off the bridge as well (either into the waiting phasers of a security team ready to kill them or intentionally "lost" as has been known to happen accidentally, effectively disintegrating them). Of course their control of gravity has powerful military application potential as well. And the attacking ship was itself a military vessel, not an exploratory one, so all these options should be reasonably expected (and the Enterprise unable to quickly counter such tactics).
This is what happens in the real world, inventions aren't static, but rather adapted into every field, especially military (some even say our military society spurred on technological development that then filtered down to the rest of society to make a buck, including the internet, and by the way our international highways were constructed to move military assets across the nation quickly rather than to facilitate civilian traffic).
And going into Roddenberry's version it gets far more extreme what would be possible. Can you see in the dark? The Borg can with their cybernetic devices that would probably be superior to Geordie's VISOR and thus prefer cutting lights (and obscuring vision in other ways which the Borg would be immune to), and artificial lungs would help them fight in toxic, debilitating, or stunning gasses that they can release from canisters if not hijacked life support systems, certainly on the Borg Cubes themselves, and they can use transporter tech which is superior to Federation to deliver said cannisters as well as other projectile weapons, including needles with the transformative nanites in them. Just one example of how things would be different. Of course the Federation would adapt new weapons and turn them against the Borg as well, and very likely produce their own nanites that serve as inoculation against assimilation (which is when the Borg switch to their advanced transporter tech to shoot them with transponders that instantly stun or transport them where a more invasive approach can be used to assimilate).
Really, I could go on forever, and I'm having a hard time to decide what to go onto next, so I'll just end with medical advances. Even without transporter tech, lifespan should be centuries by the time of ST, and that's even without finding all the plants and devices that negate aging (adapting them of course). In the ep Rascals Dr. Crusher learned how to replicate the original pattern of the affected crew members able to effectively change their age. That alone, especially after some work, should make death and aging near obsolete, especially as healthy organs are preserved (essentially "cloned" at the molecular level to be instantly transferred through surgical transporter/replicator tech) and can be replaced with healthy ones once broken down (and that assumes one just isn't rebooted whole). And they wouldn't wait for a freak accident like in Rascals to do that, the tech would IMMEDIATELY be adapted (at least they'd attempt it), so it's possible that even someone dying of radiation sickness could be revived easily from an old pattern and healthy transplants so that Kirk (or Spock) didn't have to die.
But the way of ST is to keep it limited to serving the mythos and the story, not what society would actually do with such technology and how it would change things as a result (besides "making people nicer," which of course would not happen).