Ask a hundred Trekkies why they love the Star Trek franchise, and we estimate no fewer than 99 will likely cite the franchise's forward-thinking, all-inclusive, incredibly optimistic vision of the future. But one of the most peculiar aspects of the Star Trek world -- specifically during the consecutive shows Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek Voyager -- is how Gene Roddenberry and fellow Trek creators envisioned the arts, social technologies and recreational pastimes of the era. The world of Star Trek has always been a bit of a futuristic utopia, a place where we are told there is no poverty, and solutions are reached by the most logical, respectful and noble means possible (within Federation territories, at least). So what does pop culture look like some 300 years from now in a world this seemingly perfect and advanced? Although modern culture has a huge appetite for film, television, popular music, gaming and social media, what the crews of TNG, DS9 and Voyager do in their downtime often looks very different. Examining what the people of the Star Trek universe enjoy (sticking to these three shows, which are set in the furthest future) -- and what pastimes fallen into obscurity -- offers a fascinating look at how it envisions the pop culture of the future, the diversions it thinks a utopian world would cherish -- and the ones it believes we may leave behind in the march to the 24th century. —DEVON MALONEY Above: VIDEO GAMES Role in modern culture: Video games are an increasingly powerful force in entertainment, not just in terms of the billions of hours we spend on them, but the money. The recently released Grand Theft Auto 5 not only cost a rumored $265 million dollars to make, a number that rivals the budgets for top-tier movies, but earned $800 million dollars – more than the worldwide gross for nearly every 2013 film -- in the first 24 hours it was on sale. Role in Star Trek culture: Almost none. (Or a lot, depending on how you look at it.) There is a notable gaming episode in The Next Generation, involving a game (known simply as "The Game," not to be confused with The Game), which is played on a device that vaguely resembled a two-sided Google Glass. After being introduced to Commander Riker by an alien sex friend, the Game becomes fantastically popular on the ship, thanks to its enticing mix of Atari-level graphics and the apparent orgasms it delivers to users when they successfully toss red hockey pucks into undulating purple trumpets. It’s more than a mere fad, however; it’s actually a highly addictive experience that somehow reprograms the brain to Manchurian Candidate levels by "activating the reticular formation" and "increasing synaptic activity in the frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex," which basically makes people react like they’ve been injected with heroin. (If you can guess the subtle metaphor involved here, congratulations: You are conscious.) Yes, video games are often designed around goals and reward systems that are designed to make them addictive to users (I’m looking at you, Candy Crush -- my sin, my soul), but the Game also brainwashes the crew not only to keep playing it, but also force every person around them to play it too before collectively compelling them to hand the Enterprise over to Riker’s vacation fling. The video games of the future: dangerously addictive Google Glass puzzle programs that radically alter your personality, and are only slightly more complex than Pong. However! One could argue that holodeck programs are actually a better representation of the future of video games, given the increasingly immersive qualities of games like Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto 5, not to mention technologies like the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Oddly, however, the actual holodeck seems to be used primarily for simulations of physical sports, training exercises, and recreated environments like bars and forests – not experiences that fall within the realm of "video game" (although the definition of that term is still a matter of debate). Regardless, Picard’s holodeck recreations of noir detective stories and Data’s Sherlock Holmes mystery program operate in subjective mode -- which allows users to interact with and influence events – and would very likely qualify as video games. But these too are used to illustrate fears of gaming technology as often as they do its potential; on various occasions, users become trapped inside the Holodeck ("A Fistful of Datas"), are harmed or killed when safety protocols are disengaged ("The Big Goodbye"), tragically fall in love with too-realistic simulated women ("11001001"), and retreat entirely into the holodeck environment ("Hollow Pursuits," "It’s Only a Paper Moon"), neglecting their actual lives. Did you know that at one point Captain Janeway fell in love with a holodeck man and then deleted his wife? She did! At least one Holodeck character – Moriarty – even developed intelligence so advanced that it allowed him take the ship hostage ("Elementary, My Dear Data"). In short, these fantastically advanced gaming environments have a tendency to become too real, intruding into the lives of their users in ways that are disruptive, emotionally damaging, and sometimes even lethal, echoing many of the fears that surround the medium today. —LAURA HUDSON

MUSIC The role it plays in modern pop culture: There are few areas of entertainment more rapidly evolving in the 21st century than pop music. Since the 1980s, when the Trek franchises in question began airing, new technologies for recording, distributing and performing have allowed exponential innovation when it comes to synthesizing new sounds (see: the rise of the synthesizer in the 1970s) and ways to bring those sounds to people (see: the Internet, social media, Tupac holograms). Though the music industry itself has lost a lot of its economic power in the past few decades (compared to when these Trek shows were on the air, in the '80s and '90s), the physical consumption of music of all volumes, complexities, and subjects, from all over the world has never been easier. The role it plays in Star Trek culture: Vital, yet extremely limited, genre-wise. While music is certainly a significant part of the recreational activities portrayed on TNG, DS9, and Voyager, rarely, if ever, does the music breach the boundaries of the 20th century. To enjoy music — much like many other areas of "art" in the Star Trek worlds — characters almost always appear to be partaking in an old-timey pastime, one that demonstrates their sophisticated taste. In the Deep Space Nine episode "His Way," Odo learns how to woo Kira via a self-aware hologram singer who performs Sinatra and jazz tunes in a 1963 supper club. In a sixth-season episode of Voyager, the Doctor teaches the Qomarian people, who have never heard music before, a number of classical pieces that include Italian opera, and in the Voyager episode "Riddles," even the Vulcan Tuvok also learns to enjoy jazz -- but only after he loses his mind. The music performed on the Enterprise-D is similarly limited: Data plays classical violin, Commander Riker plays the jazz trombone, and Lieutenant Worf "prefers Klingon opera." The focus on an Anglo "canon" and the absence of innovation — as well as, oh, I don't know, R&B, or rock and roll, or hip-hop, or even electronic music – is peculiar, given not only how many planets and peoples are a part of the Federation and how many freaky, wonderful opportunities for humor something like a Vulcan mathcore or a "Cardassian death metal" could offer the show. Though all three franchises finished by 2001, their treatment of music is actually in line with a newer concept, retromania, that has been widely discussed in pop culture circles, most notably by Simon Reynolds who coined the term in his 2011 book. The idea suggests that thanks to the rise of the Internet and its vast databases, nostalgia has gone on overdrive in Western society causing "vintage" and "old-school" fashions to overshadow new ideas and tastes. It suggests that society is culturally eating its own tail, forming a feedback loop that makes innovation impossible. While we're led to believe that new music may be getting written somewhere in the 24th century (one of the Qomarians, for example, composes an entirely new piece for the Doctor to sing that's "based on the intersection of two fractals"), what persists on the Enterprise-D, Voyager, and space station Deep Space Nine is almost entirely historical, sophisticated and Euro-centric music, with a notable absence of what we'd call radio pop, let alone experimental stuff like noise music or minimalism. This seems to suggest that retromania proponents are correct, and in a few hundred years, we'll have somehow abandoned all that low-brow, capitalist-driven nonsense in favor of what's really important: skill, tradition and high taste. ("What is punk?": A question not even the badass rebel Alexander, yet another jazz enthusiast, has thought to ask an adult.) Of course, this could just be the product of viewing the 24th century through the lens of Starfleet's quasi-military atmosphere. Still, for a bunch of officers who are young, curious (often to a fault) and ostensibly highly-intelligent, to be more or less uninterested in new music from around the universe and laser-focused on the traditional musics of the Anglo quarter of one planet ends up appearing conservative and sterile, especially when considering the optimistic, liberal ideology behind Star Trek as a whole. —DEVON MALONEY

MOVIES Role in modern culture: Cinema is arguably the second-biggest mass medium in the world today behind television, and its influence is still growing. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, two thirds of the entire population of North America went to the movies at least once in 2012, with global box office last year reaching $34.7 billion -- which is up 6% on 2011's total, with all markets (with the exception of Europe) seeing growth on the previous year. None of that touches on the afterlife of movies, what with DVD, Blu-ray and streaming availability, or even their eventual television debuts. Suffice to say, if you don't live in a place devoid of any electronic equipment, chances are you've seen a movie at least once in your life. Hey, maybe it was even a Star Trek movie. Role in Star Trek culture: At some point, movies all but ceased to exist in the Star Trek universe. The time of their demise can be traced back to roughly some point between the 22nd century and the 24th. The crew of the original starship Enterprise enjoyed a regular movie night (as seen in Star Trek: Enterprise episodes), by the time The Next Generation rolled around, they were apparently no more, with the exception of period-appropriate holodeck sequences. (We do see B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris find and later watch a television during one episode of Voyager, though it is treated very much as a historical artifact.) It's not hard to imagine that the idea of "going to the movies" has become archaic four centuries from now; the invention of new technology over the last century has already changed our relationship with the medium drastically. Regardless, a lot of Star Trek involves people sitting down and watching things happen on screens, whether it's the massive display on the bridge of the Enterprise or the smaller monitors where characters watch recordings of past events and messages from loved ones. The sheer prevalence of characters watching -- and occasionally having conversations with -- screens suggests the traditional delivery system of movies and TV is still very much in use, but for some reason people aren't using them to experience creative media anymore. The holodeck is clearly intended to be the replacement for movies and television, one that allows the audience members to immerse completely in the fictional environment as well as actively participate in the narrative. Instead of just watching a movie, now you could be in a movie -- a possible dovetailing of the future of both film and video games. But there's something about this distinction between watching and experiencing entertainment that speaks to the larger Star Trek idea of 24th Century humanity, and the ways in which it tends to be both inspirational and entirely unrealistic. For the Star Trek characters, doing was always better than watching. Whether it was their instinctive curiosity, devil-may-care attitude towards life or self-righteousness, the various Starfleet crews didn't know how to stand back while events transpired -- they absolutely had to be in the middle of things, right smack dab in the center of the action. As the popularity of the holodeck demonstrates, that went beyond their day jobs and into their downtime as well. It explains why they employ 2D screens at work but seek out life-like recreations of fictional stories: there's a need to feel as if they're participating in something, as opposed to passively, voyeuristically, just consuming it. By contrast, a lot of 21st-century consumers of media don't want to do anything except watch. We order pizza and Netflix-binge our way through TV shows and old movies, letting our minds go blank and allowing the story to carry us passively away. It'd be nice to think that if we had holodeck technology we'd still be inspired to a state of constant engagement and activity, but it's not really true. Sometimes, it's just better to be able to escape reality and lose yourself in a form of entertainment where all you have to do is sit down and keep your eyes open. —GRAEME MCMILLAN

COMMUNICATION Role in modern culture: Think about how much you use your phone. (There's a 56% chance that phone is a smartphone.) Think about how much time you spend on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Pinterest, and all of their lesser cohorts, combined. (Hint: it's a lot.) Now compare that to how much time you spend watching movies or television, going to concerts or plays, playing sports and listening to music. A mobile software update like the recent release of iOS 7 is as salient a trending topic on Twitter as #LadyGaga or #BreakingBad. Let's face it: in the 21st century, digital communication -- with IRL friends and family and folks you only know from the Internet -- is as much a part of our recreational and pop cultural diets as anything. Role in Star Trek culture: Strictly utilitarian, oddly. Okay, okay, so we'll let the Trek writers slide a bit here. The shows did do a remarkable job in predicting the way mobile communication technology would eventually integrate itself into our day-to-day lives. (Though it is worth noting that communicators and comm badges are used by Starfleet officers, making them more military devices than civilian or social ones.) Obviously, communication is hugely important in a universe where characters are often light years from one another, often getting chucked into the far reaches of the galaxy (and once, in "Where No One Has Gone Before," to the edge of the universe, thanks to the Traveler, a mysterious character with the ability to bend time and space). Given their prescient display of touch-screen panels and consoles, mobile phone-like communicators, personal tracking devices, video "transmissions" and multiple, it's easy to point to Trek as an oracle for how we will connect to one another. But as with most science fiction, the future it envisions was somewhat limited by the imaginations of the time in which it was created. (As one io9 writer eloquently put it, "Star Trek is a butterfly in a glass. It is no longer meant to predict or exhibit the future, but to quietly stand for the world of the past, as much as the Shire ever was.") For the most part, people in the 24th century are still using communication technology on an as-needed, utiliarian basis, rather than for the entertainment and networking uses of our social media, smartphones, and other Internet interactions today. Despite purportedly hundreds of years of technological advances, which even include communication and literal healthcare via holo-program, the ways Trek characters communicate are still incredibly traditional. Civilians rarely seem to interact with devices at all, while officers use video transmissions, communicators and consoles strictly in the line of duty. Also, consider the decades where these Star Trek technologies were being imagined: By The Next Generation's end in 1994, AOL and similar providers had popularized chat rooms. Voyager wasn't cancelled until 2001, when the Internet was well on its way of becoming not just a means to an end but a pop culture in and of itself. (Don't believe me? Hamster Dance had already existed for a year.) It's not like these technologies were viewed as mere fads, either, especially in the sci-fi and tech communities that Trek inhabited; sci-fi essayist J.G. Ballard predicted the rise of social media as early as 1977. That very little casual interaction takes place digitally among 24th century inhabitants creates a bizarre, regressive aura of isolation around Star Trek's version of the future, especially when compared to the role mobile technology and social media play in our lives today as a pastime in and of itself, and not just as a means for dispersing mission orders – or a means to an end. —DEVON MALONEY

MANUAL GAMES Role in modern culture: Not all games have to be as... well, active as football, tennis or baseball. Some are more relaxing, even if they're no less competitive or exciting – consider the humble board game, darts match or session at the card table. These are the quieter games of modern culture, the ones that may not attract as much attention or bring in as much money, but are threaded throughout the world nonetheless: more intimate, more private, perhaps, but no less ubiquitous. Role in Star Trek culture: Surprisingly unchanged, for the most part. For all that is different about the 24th century of Star Trek's "next generation," it's worth noting that much of the social structure of more intimate play – not like that, thank you very much – remains in place. The crew of the Enterprise meets for a regular poker game as seen throughout the series, but "Cause and Effect" and "All Good Things" are the most-poker-centric episodes). When Miles O'Brien moved from the Enterprise-D to Deep Space Nine, he introduced darts to the station and, of course, everyone at Quark's played a little Dabo every now and then. Onboard Voyager, there was Kal-toh – a game described as "Vulcan chess", much to Tuvok's annoyance. (The real Vulcan chess was demonstrated in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, after all.) The actual game of chess is referenced so many times throughout Star Trek – including two chess tournaments upon the Enterprise being mentioned in the TNG episode "Data's Day" (Captain Sisko and Lt. Commander Dax play a game on Deep Space Nine at one point, as well) – that you'd almost believe that the ability to play is a requirement to enter Starfleet Academy. In each of these cases, the purpose of the games remains consistent with why we play them today: to relax (while still keeping our brains sharp, of course), and to socialize in a low-key manner. Just as drink-based socializing has remained pretty consistent in Star Trek's distant imagined tomorrow – note the importance of the Enterprise's Ten-Forward and Deep Space Nine's Quark's Bar – so has the role of manual gaming. This is what the various citizens of Trek's universe do to blow off some steam without a holodeck, major time commitment or anything beyond some friends and the props of the game itself. In many ways, it's one of the pastimes that makes the characters seem a little bit more like us. —GRAEME MCMILLAN

LITERATURE Role in modern culture: Not as good as it should be, according to many. Not only are there 774 million people in the world who can't read, according to the National Institute of Literacy, but the content people choose to read is under fire in some educational circles: complaints over the Common Core State Standards program include the question of whether classical literature is being abandoned in favor of "non-imaginative" non-fiction texts. Role in Star Trek culture: While the Star Trek universe is far from illiterate — as some have argued is the case for Star Wars — it's a place where most reading takes place more for professional reasons rather than recreational ones, and usually on a screen, display panel or PADD. That's not to say that no one reads for pleasure in the 24th Century. Data is revealed to be a voracious reader of Shakespeare in "The Measure of a Man" in the second season of The Next Generation and receives a copy of a Klingon novel as a gift in the same episode, but as a pastime, non-practical reading appears to have become something of particularly niche appeal. The age of most literature in the 24th Century is also curious. With a few rare exceptions, the literature cited in The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager is hundreds of years old, and "classic" even by today's standards. Instead of something contemporary, it appears that Starfleet officers prefer to indulge themselves with the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce (Captain Picard takes a copy of Ulysses with him on vacation in "Captain's Holiday") or John Keats (Commander Riker has a collection of Keats' work in his quarters, as revealed in "Conundrum"). Even the less highbrow literature enjoyed by the crew of the Enterprise is antique; consider Picard's love for the fictional pulp detective Dixon Hill, which apparently originated in the 1940s. In the world of Star Trek, even the trash culture is of a high-quality vintage. All of which makes Deep Space Nine's Jake Sisko all the more unusual. The son of commanding officer Benjamin Sisko, Jake ignored the idea of following in his father's footsteps, instead choosing life as a writer. He even went as far as to begin a novel that — in an alternate timeline, at least — was so successful that at least one person claimed it changed her life. By the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation, recreational reading seems to have fulfilled both the best and worst case scenarios for those worried about the state of literacy today: It appears to be something of a niche interest, with most people finding other ways to get their fictional kicks (hello again, holodecks). But when people do read — for reasons unrelated to keeping starships afloat — they go for the classics. —GRAEME MCMILLAN

SPORTS Role in modern culture: Sports are a form of entertainment that crosses all borders and cultures. No matter where you are in the world, your life is likely touched by sports in some way whether it's taking part in a game of basketball or soccer, supporting a local team or even just tuning into ESPN every now and then. Role in Star Trek culture: Considering all the physical activity required of Starfleet officers in the 24th Century, it's no surprise that most crew members participate in relatively active pastimes. The future games mentioned by the crews of the Enterprise-D, Voyager and Deep Space Nine include sports like "Vajhaq" ("Meridian"), "Karo-Net" ("A Man Alone") and the "Antarian Trans-stellar Rally" ("Drive"), many of which – unlike many other pastimes in the 24th century – are relatively modern, and have been assimilated from other races and cultures into wider future society. Contemporary 21st century sports have survived, as well, to some degree. The Next Generation's Captain Picard was an avid fencer, as demonstrated in more than one episode, and a love of baseball was one of the defining characteristics for Deep Space Nine's Captain Benjamin Sisko, to the point that he actually used it to teach the concept of time to non-linear beings. The importance of the holodeck to sports in Star Trek's 24th century can't be overstated. Understandably, if trapped on a starship or space station for an appreciable amount of time, you'd want to approximate the feeling of being somewhere else – somewhere outside – as often as possible. For many, though, that translates into playing sports of some kind. Golf was a favorite of the Doctor on Voyager, while Captain Janeway preferred tennis (A sport that DS9's Doctor Bashir almost played professionally). Other members of the Voyager crew enjoyed skiing as a way to relax. Sisko's fondness for baseball was somewhat different from that of a regular 21st century fan, however; in "If Wishes Were Horses", it's revealed that baseball in the 24th century is some kind of nostalgic hobbyist revival, as opposed to a mainstream pastime. (Imagine it as as a futuristic and less culturally fraught version of Civil War re-enactments.) According to Trek mythology, the game fell out of favor as a cultural force in the mid-21st century. (2042 was its last big huzzah, so you have 29 years to enjoy it, readers) and was eventually abandoned until its 24th century revival, something made possible in large part by the myriad of play options made possible by the holodeck. Not all familiar sports have been reduced to niche pastimes, however. An episode of Deep Space Nine revealed that there is a thriving professional soccer league in the 24th century, while another Voyager episode made mention of a female volleyball championship – although that, admittedly, was purely because Harry Kim wanted to ogle the gold medal winners. —GRAEME MCMILLAN