Star Trek technology in the Jardin
By Charles Miller


From time to time I will have an experience that brings home to me that not everyone has yet achieved the same level of understanding when it comes to matters technological. As someone who works with high-tech every day, I sometimes carelessly assume people know more than they actually do.

Recently, I received a call from a lady who had purchased a new laptop computer during her last trip to the States. She was new to computers, and understandably distressed that the brand-new computer had stopped working as soon as she arrived in San Miguel and after only a few hours’ use.

I hurried to her aid and immediately noted that the laptop was completely lifeless. The first thing to suspect in these cases is that the battery might be discharged. When I asked where the power cord was, the lady told me “That can’t be the problem. The salesman told me the battery would last for years!”

On another occasion, I was driving down that lonely highway from Laredo and was traveling with a good friend who is a very intelligent person. I needed to make a phone call and from the driver’s seat asked him if he could fire up my laptop computer to look up a phone number in my address database.


My friend did this and dialed the number on my cell phone for me. I was concentrating on my driving while on the phone, but I noticed out of the corner of my eye that my friend was still typing on my laptop.

I realized he was typing “www.hotmail.com” and getting an error message saying “This page cannot be displayed.” Somehow my friend just had not realized that driving down the road at 100 kph was not a location that would permit him to get a good wireless internet connection with which he could check his email.

The interesting thing underlying both of these anecdotes is that neither is likely to age very well. Should anyone save this article for a few years they are likely to read this and wonder what point I was trying to make about batteries or wireless internet access?

A few years from now it is likely that technology will bring us a laptop computer power source that can go for months or years without needing to be recharged. There are several promising technologies on the horizon.

Likewise, most of us understand that you cannot get a good wireless internet connection out in the middle of nowhere, but the world’s communications infrastructure is constantly expanding.

In the late sixties I was a big fan of the television series Star Trek. It is truly amazing how many of the science-fiction technologies of the series have become reality today. I remember at the time discussing these with other “Trekkies.” The “transporter” instantly transported people and things from place to place.

I believed “Sure, that is going to be possible someday.” Crew members of the starship NCC Enterprise carried “phasers” or hand-held lasers packing the firepower of a battleship. I agreed with other trekkies who said, “That also is going to be a reality someday.” But when it came to the “communicators,” the radios the crew used to communicate with anyone from anywhere—30 years ago my friend Robert believed that was the most implausible of the fictional technologies. “That is not going to happen,” he said. Today that memory comes back to me when someone in the States or Europe reaches me on my cell phone while I am sitting in the Jardin.

Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044-415-101-8528 or email FAQ7@SMAguru.com.