I’ve been watching Star Trek reruns (thank you, Netflix!) for a while now, and something that caught my eye once I finished TNG and moved on to DS9 was the prevalence of “eBook readers” that have an uncanny resemblance to Amazon’s Kindle.
The devices in DS9 appear to undergo both heavy and subtle changes each time they make an appearance, but one edition of the eBook reader in Star Trek DS9: Profit and Loss bore an incredible resemblance to the (previous gen) Kindle Touch, down to the same gray polymer material, rounded edges, almost exactly the same thickness and dimensions – with the exception of being in color.
The following are screenshots of Odo with said device, reading what he says is a copy of Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury (1947):
Interesting, no? Just one of the many things about the Star Trek series that was way ahead of its time! Keep in mind that this episode aired March 1994, when the closest thing the world had seen to such a device would probably have been the Apple Newton.
For some time now, I have had up on the wall beside my desk, a screen capture of Captain Jean-Luc Picard sitting at his desk in his ready room .. working with a group of tablets .. as he ‘did-his-paperwork’. Remember this show started airing in the late 80’s when it introduced the tablet..