Optimistic. It's a small step from those to compulsory "social credit" - like money, but worse - and other more or less overt forms of thought control and behaviour modification.

I'm sorry you had to go through your childhood without Star Trek ;)

There's an idea for a series: a space opera with a cutting edge analytics-enhanced Ferengi ship where "it's continuing mission is to explore strange new ad streams, to fleece out new life and new civilisations, to boldly trade where no one has gone before".

The main adversary will be the cookie monster.

I really did go without Star Trek! I had some small exposure to Star Wars, but what really grabbed my attention was the Neuromancer novel, and later the Matrix film series. Of course I'm cherry-picking my experience but it's a valid observation of yours that while I'm a technologist through and through, I often focus at its ugly side.

Yeah I really enjoy optimistic sci-fi :)

I do enjoy Dark sci-fi also every now and then but I generally like my heroes to be scientists, explorers, to solve ethical questions.

I like that too. I like it when the threat is external, and the people get together and collectively do something that makes the threat go away.

Not too far off:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(Star_Trek%3A_The_Nex...

I just lost the game.

The concept of digital advertisement was unknown to Humans in ST universe until Ferengis brought an example to Federation Starbase Deep Space 9 in 2372, so that’s one divergence between our universe and Star Trek version of it.

Off topic, but Deep Space 9 was not a federation starbase. It was a Bajorian Republic station under Federation administration following the Cardassian withdrawal.

Oh I assumed it was under sole Federation control from the prefix “Deep Space”, wasn’t aware it was under Bajorian ownership. I stand corrected.

S/he's very sorry for misusing "starbase", s/he means a station.

Sao Paulo did away with public advertising for a couple decades.

I believe it is creeping back in now. But it can be done.

Star Trek was always a spherical cow as far as futures go. I'm not saying that it's not useful as an inspiration (socially, technologically and as emotional support), but realistically humans will pursue profit until we get a UBI system in place.

Such a shame the current writers of the franchise apparently didn't, either. Which is depriving current and recent generations of kids of that optimistic ideal.

(Yes, Discovery season 3 is a thing I know about.)

Considering how much computing power is available and how much of it is used to deceive, misinform, or manipulate people, this sounds likely.

The only thing more disturbing and sad about this is how much consumer demand there is and will be for deception, misinformation, and manipulation.

I think we already have those, even without Ubiquitous computing. Hell, we had them even before we had any computing whatsoever. Sure they are more efficient now (what isn't) but they always existed...

Older ads were far less powerful. They also couldn't embed themselves into your everyday life so much. "Hey Google, ..."/"Alexa, ..."/"Siri, ..." is an exercise in brand reinforcement every time you want to ask your smart assistant about something. At one point, I creeped myself out by realising that my first instinct is to call out "Hey Google" when I need something, even if I'm away from my Google Home.