"Beam Me Up Scotty"?

Written by Douglas Bedell (djbedell@juno.com)

What factors in Star Trek could be in the future of humankind? Some people believe that teleporting people is within a generation or two. It isn’t quite the transporter on the USS Enterprise-D, but it might lead to it, and it wouldn’t exactly be human teleportation either, it would start within quantum computers. Teleportation research is actually going on as we speak. We are currently teleporting very small things, like a beam of light. But anything beyond that is a ways away. But you never know what human technology will be like in the future.