Facebook was inevitable: a.k.a., Gene Roddenberry really did know the future.

Normally, I’d toss up a YouTube to illustrate my point, but Paramount seems to have that on lockdown, so if you’d like to check it out, the cheapest version seems to be on iTunes here:
Star Trek (2009)

There was a discussion during President’s Day Weekend about the awesomeness of the new Star Trek movie. Because let’s face it – J.J. totally lived up to my assertion that based on the opening sequence in the pilot of Lost & the car crash at the end of Season 4 of Alias, nobody shoots realistic chaos & mayhem like J.J. Abrams, and I love him for that!

Afterwards, however, I borrowed Polgara’s copy of the movie & settled in for a review. As I was doing so, I realized something – Gene Roddenberry? Totally anticipated Facebook. And podcasting. And Twitter. And every little bit of narcissistically-applied technology that we use to log & document our lives today.

How do I know this? Two words, people: Captain’s Log.

Okay yes – the Captain’s log is a long-held tradition in any military application, but the principle of it has been applied to our entire lives, and I find it amusing that this expression is projected to continue even when we finally get our hovercrafts. (Seriously, we live in the damn future – where is my freakin’ hovercraft, man? Shouldn’t we have that by now?)

Example: Kirk – kicked off a spaceship, on a damn ice planet.
(because really, is it a sci-fi space epic if there’s not at least one sequence on an ice planet? No, really it’s not, thank you George Lucas. By the way, George, I’m still a little bitter about the prequels… wait, where were we? Oh. Right. Ice planet. Carry on.)

So yes – Kirk on an ice planet after being kicked off a spaceship. And rather than be, ya know, afraid or bothered about the immediate problem of being stranded on a planet made of ice & snow, what is James Tiberius Kirk doing? He has booted up his recorder & is complaining about the fact that Spock’s kind of a douche. He is, in essence… podcasting. Podcasting about crappy transportation customer service on a scale initiated by Kevin Smith v. Southwest Airlines. (Way to go Kev, your public humiliation is our sociological future.)

And they all do this – Spock has an entire ship to run after seeing the destruction of his birth planet, and what does he do? He stops to have an Edward Cullen and verbalize how awesomely stoic he is. Now, I’ll admit that I’ve never been in the middle of a huge interplanetary crisis, but I’m going to go on a limb & guess that if I were, I doubt I’d have time to stop & Lord Byron out some emo navel-gazing. Did Kennedy pause for Deep Thoughts during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Me no thinkey so.

Clearly, no matter what kind of thing the universe threw at them – be it death, destruction, or Eric Bana with a shaved head & a decided need for Prozac-fueled group hug therapy – Spock & Kirk were destined to be friends. If nothing else, their shared obsession with narcissistic ramblings made it inevitable*.
*Don’t worry – my next blog will be titled, “Pot, meet kettle”. Look for it on a bandwidth near you!

The point? All of this just goes to show that no matter how far we advance as a species, or how much technology improves our lives, one thing will never change – the fact that we’re going to be willing to make passive-aggressive status updates to let our friends know when someone’s being a douche.

Moment of truth: let’s be honest – even with a hovercraft, I’d still end up running about 15 minutes late. But I’d be 15 minutes late and arriving in a hovercraft.

Music: You Don’t Know Me – Ray Charles