Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Science fiction? Not any more (24 Sep 2004) The person receiving the call then hears an audible alert stating the name of the caller and, if he or she wishes to take the call, responds by tapping the badge and starting to speak. That highlights a key difference between the “Star Trek” comm badge and the real-life version: Vocera's implementation allows people to reject incoming calls, rather than having the voice of the caller patched through automatically. But even the most purist fans can forgive Vocera for deviating from the script in this way, says David Batchelor, an astrophysicist and “Star Trek” enthusiast at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland. For there are, he notes, some curious aspects to the behaviour of the comm badges in “Star Trek”. In particular, the fictional badge seems to be able to predict the future. When the captain of the Enterprise says “Picard to sick-bay: Medical emergency on the bridge,” for example, his badge somehow connects him to the sick-bay before he has stated the destination of the call. Article URL: http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3171407 Read 53 more articles from Economist sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: The Finger Salute     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy