From: myleslee@next15pg2.wam.umd.edu (Alan Brady Ward)
Subject: Re: "Phase" and "polarization" being used too much?
Organization: Workstations at Maryland, University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 17:15:10 GMT

In article <1992Sep23.194421.16090@bnlux1.bnl.gov> schroede@bnlux1.bnl.gov  
(gary l. schroeder) writes:
> In article <19n72bINN41d@gap.caltech.edu> keith@cco.caltech.edu (Keith  
Allan Schneider) writes:
> 
> >I've been watching STTNG for some time now.  Does anyone else thing  
that
> >the terms "phase" and "polarization" are being used entirely too much?
> >These terms have bene key parts of man of the most recent plot lines.
> >Can't the writers read a few more science books and come up with some
> >new words or ideas?
> 
> 
> Please, don't egg Sternbach and Okuda on to come up with more techno  
babble
> words and phrases.  I don't know who these people think they're
> entertaining with such language.  It's all pseudo-tech anyway: words
> lifted from the pages of Scientific American and rearranged to protect
> the names of the innocent.
> 
> Just for a laugh the other night, I picked up the TNG tech manual.  The
> schematics are fun to look at, and the side bar notes are interesting,
> but come on... can anyone actually sit down and _read_ this thing?  I
> was reading the section on phaser technology which ran something along
> the lines of the Pulsed Nanion Effect (PNE) is used to deliniate the
> phase boundary between the plasma injection coil region and the
> diuranium-krelleride 246 induction zone.  This is no exaggeration and
> the text is like this for pretty much the whole length of the book.
> 
> These two must have a loooooot of spare time on their hands to generate
> this kind of meaningless fluff.  Give me Franz Joseph any day.  As I
> read this section, the idea occurred to me that when the script calls
> for pseudo-tech jargon, they just crank up the PTJ AUTO program that
> they have on the Mac which randomly assembles these words and phrases
> into dialogue which Geordi or Data can speak.
> 
> Data: Captain, I am detecting a 0.87% drop in warp coil field strength.
> 
> Geordi: I see it, Data!  Captain, the only way to reverse this effect is
> to create a super-string linear phase interface amplifier with a
> sensetivity of greater than 0.00045.                     
> 
> Picard: Yes, but can you do it? 
> 
> Geordi:  It'll be mighty tricky, and I can't guarantee anything, but if
> I had Data's anti-neutronic polarity picker, I _might_ be able to do it.
> 
> Picard: Make it so.
> 
> 
> How many TNG episodes can _you_ name in which similar scenes take place?
> Submit your entries to this group.

Personally though I like the techno jargon.  I mean given what Wesley (God  
forbid I use him as an example) studied as advanced topics as he did at  
the academy (assume it equivalates to college, ie: he didn't learn  
integral Calculus he learned Sub-Atomic Phase Physics) it does not bother  
me too much to hear such high-tech terms used by supposed experts.  The  
average citizen of the Federation definitely knows much more about science  
and tech than the average citizen of anywhere in our world does.  That is,  
many things only known by techies of todays world are common knowledge in  
ST.  The experts ramble on about the things you are saying, but not  
everybody.

They do alot with matter-energy conversion, which they've obviously  
mastered in the 24th c including alot of theoretical matter waves and the  
like.  They obviously have some control over the space-time continuum.   
Most of the phenomena are based on theoretical physics (assuming they  
broke the light barrier, just about anything is possible).  So, yes, they  
use alot of jargon, but given the setting, I don't really have a problem  
with it.