It's somewhat ironic that science-fiction is often, sometimes very quickly, surpassed by science fact. Now, that isn't to say that you've missed the advent of artificial gravity or faster than light travel... no, it's often the case that everyday technology can surpass what is demonstrated in TV shows.

It wasn't until the 10th Star Trek film - Nemesis - that we actually saw the use of wireless. Before everything had to be done by a touch screen... and while some Trek fans might think that LCARS - the name of the Federation's interface system - represents the pinnacle of advancement... it seems rather strange that people should even have to be sitting down and hitting buttons at all.

There are instances - mostly notably the Borg - who have massive interface but somewhat laughably, this most technologically upgraded of races seems to suffer one flaw. In Voyager a drone has to get out of its alcove, go to a panel and hit some buttons to see what's going on... surely the whole POINT of having a body full of cybernetic implants is that you're tied into everything.

More to the point, some are predicting that some manner of interface between the brain and computers could be possible within two to three decades. Even at a primitive level this would surely vastly surface even the most sophisticated tactile interface. Hence, the general total lack of neural interfaces - you could probably could them on one hand - in all televisual sci-fi, is somewhat jarring.

There's also a disturbing lack of integration. It took us some years to get a phaser with a light on it (in Doom 3 you could travel to Mars but not get a gun with a light on) and people are forever running from one console to another, tossing around different data pads. Right now, you could go out and buy an integrated mobile, camera, video, PDA etc. etc. 300 years in the future and communication on away missions is limited to an audio channel? Hell, it was a big deal to get Geordi's VISOR linked up to the view screen one time.

Not only this but despite the fact it's actually a piece of cake to do face to face chats, people are CONSTANTLY running all over the ship because five words can't be exchanged in anything BUT person. The ship is under attack but oh, there's plenty of time for us to all run down to engineering and hear three sentences that could have been said over comms. If you ran an actual ship like that, you'd probably be dead before you got there. Although, that could be dismissed as dramatic license.

Still, it doesn't change the fact that while warp drives get faster, shields get stronger and weapons more powerful that the kind of useful and integrated technology we take for granted in society today can be utterly alien in the future.