Earlier today, I got an email from a Star Trek TNG cast member who will remain nameless. I've chosen the pseudonym Jonathan Frakes for the purposes of this post.
"Jonathan Frakes's" email had been compromised, and I'd gotten one of the things it sent out, so I pinged him and offered to help him fix it, if he needed assistance. "It turns out I still have a little Wesley Crusher in me," I typed. Then I thought for a moment and added, "...eww. That doesn't sound right at all."
I walked him through scanning and removing spyware and malware, mostly via text messages... which was hilarious to me, because my text message alert tone is the original Star Trek communicator sound.
It all ran smoothly, but "Frakes" was concerned about his CPU maxing out. "It's using all the power," he typed to me. Then, and I swear to whatever god you believe in that this is true, he followed that up with: "I'm givin it all I can, Captain!"
I typed back, "Okay. Run a level five diagnostic and emit an inverse neutrino pulse through the main navigational deflector."
A moment later "Jonathan Frakes" replied, "All done! It worked. Thanks for your help."
"Any time," I replied. Then I collapsed into a fit of giggles.
This was funny to me, because we're two Star Trek guys (with magnificent beards), making contextually-relevant Star Trek jokes with each other. More significantly, though, is that we did this using handheld computers which were inspired by the show we were on twenty-five years ago.
Finally, in a nice, poetic bit of closing the circle: twenty-five years ago, I helped Patrick Stewart set up his first Mac II computer. It was an incredible technological marvel, that blew me away... and it didn't have a fraction of the computing power or memory of my four-and-half ounce smart phone.
I love living in the future.
