Items

• 2021-02-11

  Star Trek and the Pandemic

  Since its release in 1966, Star Trek has been an inspiring and comforting series to millions of people around the world. It is unapologetically utopian and hopeful, and throughout the pandemic it has been of incredible utility to people suffering from isolation and other stress in their lives. Even though the pandemic has had little real impact on my day to day life, Star Trek has still remained my favorite piece of media to immerse myself in to feel a little better about the future. Set hundreds or even a thousand years in the future, Star Trek is a setting where diseases like Covid-19 have been wiped from the Earth permanently, and even unknown alien diseases can be cured and eliminated in just hours of study and research. No one suffers from homelessness or poverty, as replicators have enabled extremely high quality of life for everyone. For me, in a time when not only is there uncertainty about disease but also high degrees of political and societal stress, Star Trek is a breath of fresh air whenever I sit down to watch it. For a time I no longer have to worry about Q-Anon cultists ransacking the capital or about catching the disease. I have seen Star Trek referred to as "competency porn," and indeed that is exactly one of the things that appeals so much in this time of strife and angst. Unlike most pieces of media, Star Trek doesn't rely on failures of communication and other frustratingly real issues to drive its conflict and stories. Instead, each show is focused on extremely competent and intelligent characters who are able to work together to quickly and efficiently solve issues using their pooled knowledge, despite their differences. Through this I can revel in the utopian ideal of the show and believe even for just a moment that we could reach that point ourselves one day, even if for now our society is plagued by the very issues Star Trek posits we can overcome. One could call it escapism, but I think many people would agree that escapism is exactly what people need and want right now due to the ever-present and overpowering feeling of doom surrounding everything else.
• 2021-01-28

  Silences in the Archive

  As I've been reading through the archive and seeing the stories shown, I have been struck by one important missing group from the narratives of Covid-19: Those who haven't taken it seriously. There are countless stories of people who see the wilful ignorance and even maliciousness of those who either don't believe Covid is important or is simply a hoax, there is little to no input from those kinds of people themselves. This cannot be blamed entirely on the archive, to be sure. Every contribution here is voluntary, and if you are someone who is already disinclined to believe that Covid is important then you are less likely to attempt to talk about it in this space. Moreover, as this archive was created by and shared among academics, it is less likely to reach people who largely only use sites like Facebook on the internet and exist in their own bubbles. There is also the point that giving a space and platform to toxic conspiracies is not exactly a great idea. We live in an age of alternative facts and wildly different sources of news and entertainment. Future historians using this archive will need to keep in mind that most of what is presented here is just one of the many realities people have been dealing with this past year.