Over the last few days I have been feeling a little sad. I found the news of the death of Sir Patrick Stewart has hit a little harder than I might have expected. It surprised me how much I felt on this news. I had similar feeling when Bowie died, but for some reason, Stewart’s death, seems to have caused me some lingering sadness.
Why, I ask myself. It’s not like I knew the guy personally. I never had the privilege of seeing him perform live. Like most of us, I’ve only seen his films and tv - and a few videos of his various interviews and convention appearances.
One possible explanation - is that the news was quite unexpected. I assume only close family and friends knew of his illness. I think many people stupidly never considered that one day he too will shuffle off his mortal coil.
To ease my sadness, I have started rewatching Star Trek Next Generation episodes - starting with season one from the late 1980s. And yes, some of these early episodes are very cringy and problematic - but Captain Picard (portrayed by Sir Patrick Stewart) is always true to form, a calming, reasoned and impassioned protector - the leader I so want now.
One episode caught my attention. Viewing it today at the end of 2026, has perhaps, re-contextualised it for me. The episode “When the Bough Breaks” is a story of the Federation’s Star Ship Enterprise, encountering another post-scarcity society - the Aldeans - a kind of mythical Atlantis.
The episode (whether the writers had originally intended this, I am not sure), contrasts two visions of post-scarcity societies. Both societies, have their fancy computers, replicators and other high tech gadgets. Their citizens for the most part enjoy a life free of the worry of those boring mundane needs. But there are 2 key differences highlighted in the story.
First, the Aldeans have isolated their world from the galaxy, hiding from everyone. And secondly, they have become totally reliant on their super computer - the Custodian - to the point where they only have a limited understanding why or how things works. The have grown to be rather incurious to their world around them.
There were a few scenes that had made me raise an eyebrow, ala Mr Spoke.
We see the Enterprise’s acting Wesley Crusher is introduced by an Aldean, to their Custodian computer. Wesley has an abundance of bewildering questions: “how do you maintain this computer?” and “what’s behind that door?”. The Aldeans just do not understand why he is interested in such things - his questions seem so peculiar to them.
And another scene, we see the Aldeans teach a young boy how to craft a sculpture from a block of wood. He is given a tool that ‘magically’ discovers the art work - he only needs to think of the thing for it to be crafted. The Aldeans, in effect, just ‘prompt’ a sculpture into existence.
All this is contrasted against the federation’s society. A group of open and diverse peoples. And despite having the same computing power - they still use real people to teach their children. Still learn to play musical instruments the hard way - still play and perform for each other. They strive to learn, to “better themselves” – just like their Captain Picard.
This story seems to be very pertinent to todays use of LLM. With more and more people using LLM to solve those boring and mundane tasks. Using ChatGPT to write their blogs, using Claude to write code, including lots of retro Z80 assembly code. Getting Grok to design retro hardware schematics and PCBs. You-tubers’ using agents to create Memory Modules for their PDP-11 system.
The fact that the AI can even hope to do the thing it does, is only due to the large number of real people who have shared their knowledge and experience, gained from spending endless days and night, learning, experimenting, and figuring stuff out for themselves - attributing and acknowledge all others who have helped them in their learning experience.
I doubt, those who have shared their journeys, appreciate when people use these mega-corporation’s profit driven drivel, to just ‘prompt’ some slop out.
I remember watching Star Trek as a very young person, with its vision of a wonderful future. Of a society that strove to help all - with their shared compassion & empathy, supported by lots of wonderful cool technology - that is what Captain Picard stood for - and I think, Sir Patrick Stewart, a loud and proud socialist also championed for.
It is sad we will not be granted anymore wonderful and inspiring performances from the Sir Patrick Stewart. But I will do my best, in my small little place in this world to be true as possible to that vision he so brilliantly portrayed.
Live long and prosper.
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