10 Predictions About The Future Star Trek Probably Got Wrong
2. All Of The Future: No Social Media?
Science fiction authors have provided us with predictions of the internet, or an internet, and its social implications since the 19th century. In his 1898 short story From The 'London Times' of 1904, Mark Twain wrote about the invention of the 'telectroscope' that connected all telephones in the world, making everyone's "daily doings" visible. Ironically, he probably didn't nab the idea from the Enterprise-D.
In the canon of Star Trek's future, there is no social media — certainly not in any way familiar to us. In reality, to have truly predicted the likes of Twitter (sorry, X) in the 1960s, you'd have to have been either a visionary or a psychopath, so it is unsurprising that we didn't see Kirk checking his feed during his downtime.
In the Delta Quadrant, Neelix was for a while what might now be called a 'YouTuber' (think: A Briefing with Neelix/Good Morning, Voyager), and Michael Jonas was technically Voyager's first (plasma) streamer. However, even in the contemporary Trek incarnations, no one shares snaps of their replicated meals on Instagram (not in Starfleet, anyway).
A future without social media seems improbable, but at least Trek gives us a glimpse at it. Myspace should have made a comeback, though!