Trek needs to visibly "sci-fi-up" extant tech in order to have the poetic narrative license to tell its present-day parables.

Things just need to "look futuristic". The don't actually need to have practical function outside whatever narrative constraints are imposed in order to provide pace and tension to the story.

I forget who said it first, but "Warp is really the speed of plot".

▲

PunchyHamster 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Case in point - nobody sensible would put realtime ship controls on a touchscreen if the designed use of it was combat or complex human driven manoeuvrers.

	▲	calmbonsai an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I always laughed at the "fixed-position" rotatable laptop equivalents https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp... that were on people's desks as if somehow a single physical desktop location would work for everyone--let alone aliens. In truth, that was due to having a fixed sight-line and focal distance to the camera so any post-production LCARS effects could be matched-moved to the action and any possible alternative lighting conditions. Offhand, I can't think of any explicit digital match-moving shots, but I'm certain that's the reason. As pointed out in that infamous Red Letter Media video, all the screens on the bridge ended up casting too much glare so they very blatantly used gaffer tape on them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzJqarYU5Io . :)