As we explained early in this book, computers in their most basic form are merely collections of on-off switches. The on-off position is determined by the flow of electricity through a transistor. Each transistor represents one bit of data. Group a number of bits together and you form a byte, a basic unit of information for a computer. Link millions, or billions of bytes together, add an operating system, and you have a computer.
What's important is that all digital computers depend on bitsâon whether a switch is on or off, as determined by the flow of electricity. Computers are not dependent on human or alien languages, the appearance of their operators or the location of their home world. They're based on one of the basic truisms of physics, the flow of electrons.
Thus, the Bynars, (“11001001,”
TNG
) even though they are an alien race who evolved independently of Terran civilization, use digital computers, based on the same basic concept of digital computersâbinary language. And they're described as the finest computer engineers in the Alpha Quadrant. Once we accept the idea that binary codes and bits are a likely path for development of computers, it stops being totally unbelievable that the various cybernetic systems used by the different races in the galaxy might have a basic common denominator.
Which raises the question: Are there possible computer systems not dependent on binary machine language? At least one
Star Trek
race uses computers that are totally different from anything
used in our galaxy. That's because the aliens who employ them aren't from our universe. They come from fluidic space and are supposedly the ultimate biological creations. The Borg call them Species 8472 and their starships and computers are composed entirely from organic matter (“Scorpion, Parts 1 and 2,”
VGR
). Where the Federation's computers use optical switches as the heart of their processors, Species 8472's computers use DNA, the genetic material of living cells.
Is such a thing possible? In fact, DNA computers have been in the works for years. In 1997, two researchers at the University of Rochester, Animesh Ray and Mitsu Ogihara, constructed logic gates using DNA molecules, a major step towards DNA computers capable of solving problems normally handled by digital computers. DNA computers seem a very real part of our future.
Instead of using silicon chips and electrical currents, DNA computers rely on deoxyribonucleic acidsâA (adenine), C (cytosine), G (guanine) and T (thymine)âas memory units and carry out fundamental operations by recombinant techniques. The main difference between DNA computers and electronic computers is that regular computer bits have two positions (On/Off) while DNA bits have four (C, G, A, and T). Therefore, DNA molecules can in theory handle any problem done on a conventional computer, but can also manage more complex operations as well by using their extra two positions.
As we've discussed earlier in this book, most electronic computers handle operations linearlyâone operation at a time, though at incredible speeds. DNA computers rely on biochemical reactions that work in parallel. A single operation in a DNA computer can affect trillions of other DNA strands. DNA computers are thus much faster than any electronic computer.
Synthesized DNA strands are used in DNA computers. The amount of information that can be stored in these biological
strands is staggering. One cubic centimeter of DNA material can hold as much as 1021 bits of information. More to the point, it's estimated that one pound of synthetic DNA has the capacity to store more information than all the electronic computers in use in the world today.
Needless to say, future advances in DNA computers hold great promise. At present, they're only capable of solving very specific types of logic problems, but it seems quite likely that in three centuries, fully functional DNA computers will be a reality. Their existence on the biological ships of Species 8472 is much closer than three centuries in the future.
With their totally incompatible computer systems, communication between
Voyager
and Species 8472 is impossible. (Fortunately, Kes' telepathic powers come to the rescue. Never underestimate psychic power when you need a deus ex machina.) Usually, when
Voyager
or any other Federation starship makes contact with a new alien species, the Universal Translator comes into play. It's another wonderful time-saving device that eliminates a lot of dead air (although the hilarious scene in
The Undiscovered Country
in which the
Entreprise's
bridge crew all crowd around Uhura, leafing frantically through dusty old English-Klingon dictionaries because they think the Klingon outpost they're trying to slip past would be made suspicious by the Universal Translator, is an anachronism not to be missed). Still, while a Universal Translator sounds like a necessary tool for any space exploration team, is it really possible?
Maybe, but not as presented on
Trek.
Present day computers are capable of roughly translating documents from one language to another in seconds. Hand-held computers have been developed to translate words spoken in one language to another. It won't be long before telephone calls made between different countries will feature automatic translation. In all these cases,
however, we're working with two known languages and two known sets of grammatical rules. That won't be the case if and when we encounter alien species in outer space.
According to
The Star Trek: The Next Generation
â
Technical Manual,
the Universal Translator is a very sophisticated computer program that analyzes patterns of unknown languages and then comes up with a system to translate our speech into that language. This is done by obtaining large samples of aliens speaking with each other, so the program can study usage patterns, vocabulary, syntax and so on. It all sounds very logical. Too bad it makes no sense.
Computers are wonderful code-breakers, the finest such devices in the universe. But languages are not codes. Conversations without reference points do not necessarily illuminate what they are about. For example, try watching a Japanese film without subtitles. When two Samurai meet in a noodle shop, are they discussing the weather, the best way to kill a man, the politics of the town, whether the girl serving them noodles is attractive, or the meaning of the universe? Any of these conversations is equally possible, and they all sound quite similar. Japanese can't be learned by assembling a huge library of conversations and then analyzing them by a computer. It's like the 1950s science-fiction movies where the aliens claim to have learned to speak English by watching our television shows. Unfortunately
I Love Lucy
doesn't work as a language primer. Something more is necessary. A key. A Rosetta stone.
When humans encounter an alien race, there is not automatically a third species that knows both languages and can serve as a bridge between them. Nor is every race in
Star Trek
telepathic (though for simplicity's sake, it seems that an awful lot of them are!). Are we forced to conclude that the Universal Translator is no more than a neat gimmick? Not entirely but almost.
In the classic science-fiction story “Omnilingual,” by H. Beam Piper,
5
the author addresses the problem of translating an alien
language into English. Making it even more difficult on the archaeologists, the language in question is Martian and the inhabitants of the red planet have been dead for forty thousand years, leaving behind a ruined civilization. The question raised in the story is pretty much the same we are faced with in the Universal Translator. How do you decipher an alien language without a tongue common to both civilizations? Piper came up with the answer and it's as true now as it was forty years ago and will be true three centuries in the future. Science and mathematics.
Despite differences in culture, society, philosophy, and patterns of speech among civilizations, our atomic table of elements is always the same. The atomic structure of water, H
2
0, is identical everywhere in the universe. The sum of 2 + 2 = 4 cannot change. The basic laws of physics and mathematics are the same throughout the universe. They form a universal language.
Using basic building blocks of scientific and mathematical terminology, a fairly detailed dictionary of words can be constructed. With AI computers, working at incredible speeds, extrapolating terms dealing with the manipulation of such words would follow quickly. In days, perhaps hours, a simple but useful glossary could be constructed, and from there, with continued dialogue between species, a true Universal Translator could be devised.
That's not the way it's done on
Star Trek
. At least, we never see it handled in such a manner. The
Technical Manual
offers us a magic wand but nothing practical. Still, the method we describe is one possible way it might work in the future.
Like many of the devices displayed on
Star Trek
, the Universal Translator is possible. The key is that it must rely on real computer technology and logic. But, like many of the inventions shown on the series, it is coming. The
Star Trek
future is on the way. Most likely, sooner than we think.
Notes
Chapter One
Chapter Two
1
Rick Sternach and Michael Okuda,
Star Trek: The Next GenerationâTechnical Manual
(New York: Pocket Books, 1991).
2
David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy,
Computer Architecture:
A
Quantitative Approach
(San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., 1990). See pages 199-201 for a quick introduction to processors.
3
Star Trek: The Next GenerationâTechnical Manual
, page 49.
6
Rick Sternach and Michael Okuda,
Star Trek
Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future
(New York: Pocket Books, 1997).
7
“More Storage, Please,”
Forbes,
July 7, 1997.
Chapter Three
1
“Onward Cyber Soldiers,” by Douglas Waller and Mark Thomas,
Time, August
21, 1995, pp. 38-46.
3
Bruce Schneier,
Applied Cryptography,
Second Edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996).
4
Bruce Schneier and David Banisar,
The Electronic Privacy Papers
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997).
5
Dr. Dobb's Journal,
December 1998.
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
1
Rodney Brooks, “Elephants Don't Play Chess,”
Robotics and Autonomous Systems,
(North Holland: Elsevier Science Publishers, 1990). Also: Rodney Brooks, “New Approaches to Robotics,”
Science,
(September 3, 1991).
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
1
Rick Sternach and Michael Okuda,
Star Trek: The Next Generation
â
Technical Manual
(New York: Pocket Books, 1991).
Chapter Eight
1
Maryann Karinch,
Telemedicine,
(Horizon Press, 1995), Introduction.
3
“Smart T-Shirts Know When Something Is Wrong,”
USA Today
, 17 November 1998, p. 10D.
4
Lawrence M. Krauss,
The Physics of Star Trek
(New York: Basic Books, 1995).
5
H. Beam Piper, “Omnilingual,”
Astounding Science Fiction
(January 1957).
Index
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
Alexander (son of Worf)
Alife (artificial life)
“Alter Ego” (VGR)
Analog signals
Androids
feasibility of
and vision
“Apple, The” (TOS)
Applied Cryptology
“Arena” (TOS)
“Arsenal of Freedom, The” (TNG)
Artificial intelligence
bottom-up
and characters in Holodeck
Dartmouth College conference on
and LCARS
top-down
and voice recognition
Artificial life
Arturis, and breaking of encryption codes
Aurora
“Babel” (DS9)
Banisar, David
Barclay, Reg
Bashir, Doctor Julian
and holodeck
and repatterning of DNA
shrinking to enter computer console
Battle Simulation Center
Bell Labs
“Best of Both Worlds, The” (TNG)
Binary switching
Biobeds
Biochemical lubricants
Bioelectric fields, and security
Biometric Consortium
Biometric encryption
Biometric Handshape Recognition
Biometrics
international use of
“Birthright, Part 1” (TNG)
Bodynets
Body networks
“Booby Trap” (TNG)
Borg
and battling Species 8472
Queen
Bottom-up artificial intelligence table
Brahms, Dr. Lea
Brain
and comparison with computer
and location of consciousness