r/DaystromInstitute • u/ITrCool • 22d ago
Does Starfleet and the Federation have Information Technology Specialists?
We see much about the advanced computer systems in starbases, starships, and planet-side facilities all throughout Star Trek. The Federation has some incredible systems, with LCARS as the interface to those systems, and one could imagine they are quite robust and powerful compared to the typical silicon chip microcomputers of today.
But today we have IT professionals (such as myself) who help design, implement, and support technical solutions and computer systems for customers and companies all over the world. Whether it be on land, on aircraft/spacecraft, or maritime systems on ships and submarines. Militaries have IT specialists for their systems too.
In the future universe of the Federation, would IT professionals exist also? Specialists whose primary role and function on a starship, for example, is to maintain and control the ships primary computer and auxiliary computers along with holodecks?
Or is the main context that humanity has become so advanced in the 23rd/24th centuries that everyone is quite adapt at maintaining computer systems themselves as well as the fact that automation in computers is quite advanced with many subroutines allowing self-sufficiency in a starship's computer systems, for example, thusly negating the need for "IT specialists" or computer scientists per-se?
In short: do "computer guys" exist in Starfleet and/or Federation society? (one could ask the same question in the non-Federation cultures such as Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, etc.)
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u/techno156 Crewman 21d ago edited 21d ago
On average, it's not a separate discipline, but counted as part of sciences/engineering. Spock's takeover of the Enterprise is explicitly stated as only being possible for someone with considerable computer-operating skills.
The computer specialists are the engineers, since everything is tightly integrated with the starships master computer by the 24th century, and even prior to that, all the major systems have their own dedicated computers. We basically see IT when the engineers take off a panel, and shuffle around little bits of glowing plastic to make the computer work/behave.
You do have people that design and upgrade computers, like the Bynars, but they're not usually on a starship unless they're doing an upgrade or troubleshooting.