My First College Research Paper

[Capt_Picard 0]

So, I'm taking English 102 for a summer class and in said class I have to write a 13 to 17 page research paper on a topic of my choosing. My topic is "What effect has Star Trek had on the world?" Now, I'm already going to use some History Channel stuff, things from Star Trek dot Com, and anything else I can find. Anyone want to toss me some links to some useful info?

[Theunicornhunter 2]

I would suggest checking out your college library - there are actually "books" written on this subject - or probably even journal articles - you may even be able to do much of that research online (things have changed since the dinosaur days when I was in college :biggrin:)

 

Part of the idea of doing a "research" paper is doing research - that includes finding your sources. Try an internet search

 

First term paper? Are you sure you haven't asked for term paper critiques before.

[Odie 0]

It sounds like a short term paper. Well, at least for me. I always wrote a lot more then I should. I always had to find ways to cut my papers short. :biggrin:

[Lady Britannia 0]

My topic is "What effect has Star Trek had on the world?"

 

Virtually none.

[Odie 0]

My topic is "What effect has Star Trek had on the world?"

 

Virtually none.

 

So you do not own a cell phone? :biggrin:

[trekz 7]

I would suggest checking out your college library - there are actually "books" written on this subject - or probably even journal articles - you may even be able to do much of that research online (things have changed since the dinosaur days when I was in college :biggrin:)

 

Part of the idea of doing a "research" paper is doing research - that includes finding your sources. Try an internet search

 

First term paper? Are you sure you haven't asked for term paper critiques before. :blink:

Thank you TUH for actually typing those awful words students despise: "library, books, research."

 

All your suggestions are good, TUH. One might even consider looking in a ... look out, scary word coming... dictionary. Words from Star Trek have come into common usage: Klingon; as well as phrases: Beam me up, Scotty etc. There is a source called the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that might help and give sources.

 

There are indeed literature searches possible... you might ask a college librarian.

 

Report back, Picard. Or tell us if you aren't finding enough.

Edited July 9, 2007 by trekz

[Odie 0]

I would suggest checking out your college library - there are actually "books" written on this subject - or probably even journal articles - you may even be able to do much of that research online (things have changed since the dinosaur days when I was in college :biggrin:)

 

Part of the idea of doing a "research" paper is doing research - that includes finding your sources. Try an internet search

 

First term paper? Are you sure you haven't asked for term paper critiques before.

Thank you TUH for actually typing those awful words students despise: "library, books, research."

 

I love going to the library as a student! :blink:

[Lady Britannia 0]

So you do not own a cell phone?

 

No, I have a "mobile" phone.

 

And their development had nothing to do with Star Trek.

 

The origin of mobile phones goes back to the 1940's

Edited July 9, 2007 by Lady Britannia

[Odie 0]

So you do not own a cell phone?

 

No, I have a "mobile" phone.

 

And their development had nothing to do with Star Trek.

 

The origin of mobile phones goes back to the 1940's

They are the same thing. :biggrin:

 

The inventor of the cell phone was Dr. Martin Cooper was inspired from Star Trek with his invention in 1973.

 

Cooper later revealed that watching Captain Kirk talking in his communicator on the tv-show Star Trek inspired him to research the mobile phone.

Answers.com

 

People such as Martin Cooper, inventor of the cell phone. As a young man, he watched the first "Star Trek" TV series that ran from 1966 to

1969 and marveled at the communicators Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock used. He understood then mankind's progress relied on mobility, and its communications must become mobile, too.

 

"The 'Star Trek' communicator, to us, was not a fantasy" where he worked at Motorola, "it was an objective," Cooper said in "How William Shatner Changed the World."

STLtoday

 

So the inventor himself is lying?

 

Mobile radio is not the same thing as cell phone (mobile phone for you). The technology is completely different.

[Lady Britannia 0]

"Mobile phones" and "celluar phones" are the same thing. I am aware of that. They had their origin in World War II and in taxicab radios and two-way radios in police cars. I'm talking about the origin of the concepts not the exact technology. Cooper simply invented the modern version of it using technologicals ideas that pre-dated Star Trek. He may have claimed Star Trek was his inspiration, but the first mobile phones looked nothing like anything used in Star Trek, and even the communication devices in Star Trek were not used like mobile/cell phones. The first commercial mobile phones looked like giant bricks. I don't recall Captain Kirk ever using one of those. In fact, I would say he's probably joking when he says that Star Trek inspired him. During a BBC Chat, he explains his real inspiration:

 

BBC NEWS ONLINE: Tell us what inspired that vision of a personal handheld phone.

 

MARTY: The time was the late 1960s. There was one telephone company in the US, one in Britain and one in Japan and so forth. In our case it was AT&T and they were the largest company in the world and they had invented this thing called cellular. Their invention was car telephones. Can you imagine? We believed people didn't want to talk to cars and that people wanted to talk to other people and the only way we at Motorola, this little company, could prove this to the world was to actually show we could build a cellular telephone, a personal telephone. Something that would represent an individual so you could assign a number not to a place, not to a desk, not to a home but to a person.

[Gummy 0]

I would also suggest Shatner's book, "I'm Working On That" which explains in detail some of the Trek Tech that is now being used in everyday life.

[Odie 0]

I strongly doubt the inventor was joking. Star Trek came out in the late sixties. The brick came out in the 70's. The technology was not their for phones to look like the ones in the on the television show. It look in like a brink for a reason, because the microchip where not invented until the 70's. They used transistor circuits in the first phone. What was used forty years ago is still in use today.

 

 

FYI... The interview he did on BBS basicly said several years later on the History Chanel.

 

It just takes an inspiration to start something. There might have been technology that might have predate the show. The show inspired the man to take the technology a step further. I wonder if the inventor did not watch the show in the late 60's would it have inspire him to invent cell phones today.

 

There are many that where inspire by Star Trek.

 

Star Trek as a Cultural Phenomenon

 

Star Trek ranks as one of the most culturally influential television shows of all time and clearly the most influential science fiction TV show of all time. The original series, which aired on the NBC network from 1966 to 1969, has spawned four successor shows starting in the 1980s and ten movies. Countless toys, books, and other products have been marketed by Paramount, the company that owns the Star Trek "franchise." But the show's cultural influence goes far beyond its ability to replicate itself and make money for its owners...

 

...Many people in scientific and engineering fields have stated that they were inspired by Star Trek, which they thought portrayed science and engineering in a positive light (although rarely accurately). Even physicist Stephen Hawking was a fan of the show. Although the original Star Trek series was occasionally sexist (women wore skimpy outfits and no woman was ever shown commanding a starship), many women have testified that they were positively influenced by the show's depiction of women scientists working alongside their male counterparts. Actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg has said that seeing a black woman sitting on the bridge of a starship, and not working as a maid, made her believe as a young girl that she could be an actress with a real role. Mae Jamison, the first African-American woman to fly in space, has also said that she was deeply influenced by the show. Goldberg later played a regular on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Jamison made a cameo appearance on the show. Star Trek's influence on numerous people was chronicled in a light-hearted documentary, Trekkies.

 

NASA develops Star Trek glasses for the visually impaired

 

In 1999, Mogan became one of the first to use the device, also known as the Joint Optical Reflective Display, which is based on NASA technology. Normally, his vision is only about five percent of the average person's sight. When he first tried JORDY, he immediately noticed the difference.

 

"I was in the office of a low-vision specialist, and I was pretty thrilled to be able to read the 20/20 line on the eye chart," Mogan recalls.

 

JORDY's name was inspired by Geordi La Forge, a character on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Geordi, who was blind, used special glasses that enabled him to see.

 

The Star Trek Influence on the Palm OS

 

"When I designed the UI (user interface) for the Palm OS back in '93, my first sketches were influenced by the UI of the Enterprise bridge panels,'' said Rob Haitani, product design architect for Palm-One Inc. [...] "Years later, when we designed the first Treo (a combo phone and wireless PDA), it had a form factor similar to the communicators in the original series. It had a speakerphone mode so you could stand there and talk into it like Capt. Kirk.''

 

Straight from science fiction: Star Trek's holodeck inspires Case communication sciences professor

 

Inspired by Star Trek's holodeck, Case Western Reserve University Assistant Professor Stacy Williams has dreamed—for more than a decade—of building a virtual reality theater to help people with speech and language deficits.

 

"When I saw the TV series, I just knew we needed something like this, with its real-life situations, for speech-language therapy," said Williams.

 

But the Star Trek technology that transforms a person's thoughts into holograms that are then projected onto the walls of a room in a spaceship—simulating real-life people, places and experiences—was difficult to produce in reality.

[Kor37 9]

Also, don't forget about all those people that went into the space program, medicine or engineering fields because they were inspired by Star Trek!

[Theunicornhunter 2]

There was that mental health program in Oregon that advertised for someone who could speak Klingon - apparently some of the patients only spoke in Klingon.

[trekz 7]

My topic is "What effect has Star Trek had on the world?"

 

Virtually none.

Music would be another area.

 

When I was in London my first trip in 2002, I went to the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. The medley of music that got the most applause was a Star Trek medley. A number of composers worked on the movies and the various series, and there are a number of recordings of Star Trek music.. The music is recognizable to many people. Of course there is klingon opera, too :biggrin: Brent Spiner for one has recorded one Album title "Old yellow Eyes is back" an obvious connection to his Data charcater. Vic Fontaine's singing on DS9 helped maintain and increase the popularity of that artist. And there have been symphony orchestra's playing Star Trek music.

Edited July 9, 2007 by trekz

[Capt_Picard 0]

You guys have no idea how much this is helping me...

[jadziaezri 0]

need to rent or buy, "how william shatner changed the world" it would be an awesome starting point.

 

Also hope we get to see the finished product and maybe some mentions in the bibliography. :biggrin:

[Kor37 9]

StarTrekfans.net had better be listed as a source!.. :biggrin:

[Lady Britannia 0]

The mobile phone developer offered a more concise and professional explanation to the BBC, so it's perfectly reasonable to say that his Star Trek comment was in jest. Something whimsical. It's 2007 now and we still don't use mobile phones like the Trek communicator. We don't flip it open and speak into it from a distance, nor do we tap our chests and speak openly for all to hear. As I see it, there's nothing serious to suggest this technology was inspired by Trek. Business opportunities are the more likely source. There are many pieces of technology used in everyday life that however vaguely resemble things seen in Star Trek and other sci-fi, but I doubt strongly that their development was influenced by Star Trek. The JORDY device seems named in an affectionate way, simply because it deals with blindness. I find it funny that any woman could claim that they were inspired by TOS since it basically showed women either in eye-candy minor roles or in Uhura's case, a meaningless role on the bridge, like a background detail. She was basically a piece of equipment. If women wanted to be inspired by science, then surely Marie Curie would provide it. If they wanted to be adventurous explorers, then Amelia Earhart comes to mind. The holodeck and the concept of a virtual reality environment actually dates back not to TNG, but rather in the 1950's and Morton Hellig's "experience theatre". As for the franchise "inspiring" people to go into the space program, medicine, and engineering, it's nothing exceptional in that regard. The space program was in operation long before Star Trek came along and previous science fiction like Jules Verne would have captured minds before Roddenberry.

 

I don't doubt that some people find and have found Star Trek influential and inspiring.

 

But "an effect on the WORLD?"

 

 

Please, let's get real.

[Data 0]

A book I read a while back, Future Perfect-How Star Trek conquered planet earth by Jeff Greenwald.... .

[trekz 7]

http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/re...glish158mk.html

 

 

Some highlights:

Library Research Guide for English 158.7:

Deconstructing Star Trek

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ENCYCLOPEDIAS AND DICTIONARIES

 

A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory. Edited by Michael Payne. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996. Olin Ref +HM 101 D55 1996

A "reference guide to modern ideas in the broad interdisciplinary fields of cultural and critical theory, which have developed from interactions among historical traditions of thought." (Pref.) Entries cover concepts, individuals, and movements that bridge the traditional boundaries between the humanities and social sciences (e.g., hermeneutics, structuralism, post-colonialism, multi-culturalism). Secondary references are provided for each. Indexed, with a general bibliography.

 

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture. edited by Gary W. McDonogh, Robert Gregg, and Cindy H. Wong. New York : Routledge, 2001. Olin Ref E169.12 E49x 2001 +

 

St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. 5 vols. Edited by Tom and Sara Pendergast. Detroit, MI : St. James Press, 2000. Uris REF E 169.1 S764x 2000

Contains nearly 3,000 essays, both brief and long, on topics in the areas of film, music, print culture, social life (e.g., food,fashion, fads), electronic media, art and performance, with an emphasis on post-World War II America. Entries are arranged alphabetically, and often provide cultural context as well as factual information. Short bibliographies are appended to each.The fifth volume indexes the contents of the entire set, and includes a general index, a categorical index, and a chronological index arranged by decade. An eclectic compendium, the encyclopedia covers such varied subjects as Star Trek, big bands, flag burning,TV dinners, the Cold War, Ice-T, South Park, Hulk Hogan, Barbie, and Creationism.

 

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HANDBOOKS AND GUIDES

 

The Guide to United States Popular Culture. Edited by Ray B. Browne and Pat Browne. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, c2001. Olin Ref E169.1 D399x 2001 +

A collection of bibliographic essays on various aspects of American popular culture, including such topics as advertising, animation, editorial cartoons, film, magazines, radio, sports, and television. Each chapter was "prepared by an authority on the subject, provides a brief chronological survey of the development of the medium; a critical guide in essay form to the standard or most useful bibliographies, reference works, histories, critical studies, and journals; a description of the existing research centers and collections of primary and secondary materials; and a checklist of works cited in the text." (Preface) Each volume has its own index.

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FINDING e-REFERENCE RESOURCES

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Bartleby.com (via e-Reference Resources)

An online compendium of dictionaries, thesauri, grammar and usage handbooks, including:

 

Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. 2001. The most up-to-date encyclopedia available contains over 50,000 articles, 40,000 bibliographic citations and 80,000 cross-references.

 

The Encyclopedia of World History, 6th ed. 2001. Renowned historian Peter N. Stearns’s comprehensive chronology of more than 20,000 entries that span the millenia from prehistoric times to the year 2000.

 

Britannica Online (Library Catalog or e-Reference Resources)

Offers the full text of the multivolume paper encyclopedia set, including its numerous bibliographies, maps, and photographs, as well as supplying links to related Web sites for many of the topics covered.

 

Literature Resource Center [Farmington Hills, MI] : Gale Group, c1999-. (Library Catalog or e-Reference Resources)

"The Literature Resource Center (LRC) is a complete literature reference database designed for the undergraduate student. LRC combines biographical, bibliographical, and contextual information to deliver a complete reference/resource package on authors and their works (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, and journalism).

 

Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press, [2000]- (Library Catalog or e-Reference Resources)

The OED presents in alphabetical series the words that have formed the English vocabulary from the time of the earliest records down to the present day, with all the relevant facts concerning their form, sense-history, pronunciation, and etymology. It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectical usage and slang. This online edition contains the complete A to Z sequence of the Second Edition, its three-volume Additions Series, and also draft material from the revision programme, which represents the latest progress towards the Third Edition.

 

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FINDING BOOKS

Cornell University Library Catalog Plus, Olin Library Card Catalog

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Some useful Library of Congress Subject Headings for this class are:

 

STAR TREK FILMS

STAR TREK TELEVISION PROGRAM

POSTCOLONIALISM

IMPERIALISM

 

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FINDING PERIODICAL ARTICLES

Periodical Indexes and Abstracts

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SELECTED PERIODICAL INDEXES AND ABSTRACTS

 

Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) (via The web of science: citation databases. [Philadelphia, Pa.]: Institute for Scientific Information, 1975 - present. e-Reference Collection or Library Catalog

ISI citation databases are multidisciplinary databases of bibliographic information indexed to be searched by subject, author, journal, and/or author address. They can also be searched for articles that cite a known author or work. Cited reference searching allows use of a given work as if it were a subject term, to identify more recent articles on the same topic. A&HCI includes citations to performance, book, and film reviews.

 

LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe. e-Reference Collection or Library Catalog

An online database created for lawyers, businesses, and broadcast and print news organizations. It contains the full text of a number of large- and medium-size newspapers; transcripts of broadcast news shows, interviews, and press conferences; local and state business publications; wire services; some popular magazines; and legal materials. Since it is updated daily, it is an excellent index to current topics and events, as well as to reviews of plays, books, and films.

 

MLA International Bibliography. New York: Modern Language Association, 1963 - . e-Reference Collection or Library Catalog; pre-1963 in print at Olin Ref

An international database providing references to scholarly articles from over 4000 journals dealing with languages, literature, folklore and linguistics. It is useful for finding literary criticism of a particular author or work, as well as articles on literary theory, women's studies, popular culture, and performing arts. Both the online version of MLA and the CD-ROM version cover 1963 to present.

 

Periodical Abstracts. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1986- . e-Reference Collection or Library Catalog

Indexes and abstracts over 1600 general interest magazines and scholarly journals including all the magazines in Reader's Guide and most of the scholarly journals from Social Sciences Index, Humanities Index, General Science Index. It also includes citations and abstracts to selected television and radio programs. The Library subscribes to most of the periodicals indexed. Holdings can be found easily since the titles are linked to the online catalog. The full text of some transcripts from the television and radio programs can be found by searching the Transcript Files on LEXIS/NEXIS Academic Universe.

 

Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. New York: Wilson, 1900/04- . Uris Ref AI 3 R28; also Olin Ref

The Readers' Guide indexes approximately 160 American popular and semi-popular periodicals. Author and subject entries are in one alphabet. Each entry gives the necessary information for finding the article: author, title, name of periodical (abbreviated), volume number, inclusive paging, and date. Maps, portraits, illustrations and bibliographies are noted. Published semi-monthly with cumulations annually. Book reviews appear at the end of each volume. Though articles from 1986 onward are well covered in Periodical Abstracts (see above), Readers' Guide.. is invaluable for locating periodical articles from the 1970s, 1960s and earlier.

 

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FINDING INTERNET RESOURCES

Search Engines and Subject Guides

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Selected Internet Resources

STasis Guide to the Scholarly Literature of TREK. - "contains over 500 abstracts, summaries, and references to reliable, authoritative information sources about TREK for writers, researchers, students, reporters, editors, biographers, sociologists, journalists, and fans."

Edited July 10, 2007 by trekz