Is Telepathy Next?

By Joe Van Zutphen

Indeed, everything we need to know we learned from Star Trek. The notion that the day’s science fiction is the reality of the future can be no more exemplified than how we have adapted the models from the voyages of the starship Enterprise.

With this in mind, I am filled with great hope for the future of telepathic communication and am heartened by the progress we have made; that being the plethora of technological advances that have put us on the rudimentary doorstep to telepathy.

There were certainly episodes of Star Trek that dealt with aliens who possessed the skill to communicate telepathically. At times, they even exchanged ideas over great distances of space in seconds.

This is encouraging to me because of the many devices we have developed which were merely fantasy at the time the shows were first broadcast in the 1960s.

The first that pops into mind is the communicator, or, as we call it today, the cell phone. A handheld device that allowed us to speak to anyone over great distances, it flips open and requires no wires. What is especially hopeful here is that we have gone beyond to include Internet, texting, camera, global tracking, news alerts, and a host of media downloads (here I might add that refreshing disclaimer of anyone writing about technology: “this technology will probably be outdated by the time this is published.” Another note to the speed of progress: I am writing this on Word 2003 and my spell check is not recognizing the word texting).

The cell phone, now an obsolete term because it does far more than just a phone, has entered and suffused our society in wide-ranging ways. Cheaper now than a moderate addiction to cigarettes, or a daily latte for that matter, cell phones permeate our supermarkets, offices, schools, and virtually wherever we are gathered. The other day, I was in my local Safeway browsing for the cheapest breakfast cereal. A voice interrupted my perusal: “They have good prices on Kellog’s today.” Although the words interjected into my thoughts, I did not look up toward the voice, or even think about a response. Why? It was probably someone talking on a cell phone. To my surprise though, there was a follow-up: “Have you tried the maple and brown sugar mini wheat?” At which point, an elderly woman’s index finger appeared in front of a box.

Another breakthrough we seem to be in the initial stages of is the Star Trek concept of beaming each other around. On election night, November 4, 2008, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer talked to a holograph image of reporter Jessica Yellin. She was hundreds of miles away, but Wolf was able to talk to her image, a few meters to the left on stage, in real time as if she were there. Holographic technology has been around for decades, but I wonder if my teenage children would not longer have to bicycle, or drive to their friends houses but instead just invite them over “holographically.” They could talk, eat, watch TV, and possibly even play chess with each other, all the while, being apart.

Though, necessity being the mother of invention, we may have to wait until actual whole humans will be teleported because kids nowadays can already have a full visit with a friend without even being there. Again, Star Trek has given us the model. In many episodes, when Captain Kirk wanted to talk to an alien leader, the communication would start with Kirk saying, “on screen.” A two-way, real time conversation then took place between the two. In recent years computers have come with webcams where you can see and talk to a person thousands of miles away. Teens nowadays can view the same web site, type to each other, and virtually “hang-out” for an entire evening without having to leave the comfort of their own bedrooms.

Critics would say that kids today are missing out on the exercise; especially when X-Box Live has allowed you to “play” a sport, via the Internet connected to the TV, against someone in a far-off country. “Why not play basketball in the driveway?” critics will lament. However, there is an answer to that too.

We can now enjoy exercise via Nintendo’s Wii. The game simulates actual games such as golf, tennis, boxing, and baseball (to name a few) with persons holding the controller. For example, you can swing the controller like a tennis racquet and a cartoon character on the TV screen will duplicate your stroke and the ball will go over the net (depending on your ability) and the other player then hits it back, or not. These two people could be in time zones warp speeds apart. One can remember the episode of Star Trek where Kirk was getting punched by an invisible force, but Kirk figured out how to punch back and defeated his enemy. Again, thanks Gene Roddenberry.

So, kids are able to communicate, see each other, hang-out with each other, even play a physical game with each other, and not even be in the same climate zone.

And as I think back, I realize how fortunate kids are today. I often walked a mile to the nearest field or park where all the guys were meeting for a game of baseball, football or ice hockey. We did not even have cell phones. Most of the time, people knew game time was “about an hour after school.” We came home with dirty and ripped clothing, had large appetites for dinner and talked about what fun it was. We couldn’t text our friends or get on Facebook or Twitter, or sit in front of a monitor and “play” a stranger. What we could do though,  before we went to bed and woke up the next day, was watch Star Trek and dream of a distant future. And in 2010 we still use our voices to communicate, but we have come a long way toward reading people's minds. The owners of your search engine make a living at it.