Re:Idiots (Score 2, Insightful)

Only case in point you really need to know is that the guy who invented the cell phone (and I forget his name right now, one of the engineers at Motorola) has gone on record many times as saying the cell phone would not exist today if not for Star Trek. He set out to make the Star Trek communicator and that led to the first handheld cell phone. Motorola finally got it right with the StarTAC, which led to the Razr. It all grew out of Star Trek.

What on Earth are you talking about? First of all, "one of the engineers at Motorola" certainly didn't "invent" the cell phone. The evolution of portable radio phones and the networks that support them is a continuum that started almost a century ago. During the last couple of decades mobile phones have really taken off because the networks have gotten smarter and the devices easier, smaller and cheaper. That's just a natural progression of technology which certainly would have happened even if Star Trek had never existed. Do you really think that without some random TV show the many engineers around the world who were developing mobile phone technology would just have thought "Well, these briefcase-sized portable phones sure are handy enough, no reason to make them smaller"?

Secondly, the StarTAC was in no way a technological breakthrough. It was the first clamshell phone and relatively small, but from a technological standpoint it was just another mobile phone, although one that looked a little bit like a Star Trek communicator. The same is even more true regaring the RAZR - it had absolutely no new technical innovations, simply an attractive design.