Do they have IT people or internet or specialized engineers in Star Trk?

I like the original series. Who is Linda Park? Who is Tripp?

Mr. Spock was a computer scientist and programmer.

Something else noticeable missing from the Star Trek universe is enlisted personnel. The transporter sometimes was manned by a 'Chief,' presumably a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy mold, but other than that none.

What happens when a Storm Trooper and a Red Shirt meet?

The Red Shirt engage with a tricorder that senses no intelligent life forms.
The Storm Trooper responds with a non-aimed three round blaster burst and misses.
The Red Shirt dies anyway.
"He's dead Jim."

Long Live the Empire*

*The Kligon Empire

Thank you and have a nice day.

I've lived upon the edge of chance for 20 years or more...
Del Rio's Song

Spock was the computer expert in TOS. I think they may have had them in the other series as well. I don't think there was on-ship Internet because the computer did not work that way, hence the fact that people had to actually carry PADDS with information on them to people who needed said info. Which seems like a total waste of time, but perhaps they found that networked computers were not a good idea onboard ship, as they would be susceptible to hacking? Of course, it could just be that every series produced until the 90's would not have had the Internet in real life, so it did not occur to them. In space you most certainly did have to rely on subspace com, due to the distance. If you are 30 light years from Earth, it would take a very long time for a regular message to get through. An example of this is found in The Martian, where there is a lag between messages sent and received, and Mars is relatively close to Earth.

Something else noticeable missing from the Star Trek universe is enlisted personnel.

I always assumed that the redshirts in security and all the techs you see running around in smocks and plain shirts were enlisted personnel.


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dies ist meine unterschrift

I always assumed that the redshirts in security and all the techs you see running around in smocks and plain shirts were enlisted personnel.

Yes, when you look, there seem to be a few around. I'm commenting on the production aesthetic of the entire franchise. They are really ignored and never shown to step up and make a key contribution.

In TNG they wanted to put an untrained boy on the bridge, but only Officers were allowed on the bridge.* They could have awarded Wesley the rank that untrained personnel aboard ship, tracked to become Officers, have always been awarded, Midshipman. Instead they awarded him the rank of 3LT. In my opinion, only officers matter in the Star Trek universe.

But it might just be me, being a retired enlisted man, I may just be feeling picked on. 

* They made a big deal about Commanders never being able change their policies without it being detrimental to their commands. This is non-sense. When a Commander doesn't change policy, in the face of changing conditions, it's detrimental. One of the primary functions of the Officer Corps is the establishment policy. I spent 22 years in the United States Army following policy changes.

I've lived upon the edge of chance for 20 years or more...
Del Rio's Song

Several questions you ask.

IT People/Specialization:
It seems like they don't have coders or people who administer systems. The engineers just repair systems but they don't feel like people who repair computer networks. It's also funny but aren't engineers wildly wildly divergent kinds of people. It seems like they just interchangeably take yellow shirts whenever they need to fix things
As someone else mentioned, you had a lot of enlisted personnel on starships like the Enterprise, usually in jumpsuits. They didn't have lines. Chief O'Brien on TNG and DS9 was the only enlisted person of note, until Rom joined Engineering late in the series. He was a jack-of-all-trades who could fix almost any system. Watch Deep Space Nine for a good overview of what a 24th Century engineer does.

In the modern-day Navy, you have a lot of specialization on ships. A Nuclear technician has a different skill set than a boiler technician, a deck hand, an electrician, a radioman, or a network administrator. All of them can probably turn a wrench, but they each work with different technologies. You couldn't just grab a sailor who knows diesel engines and have him run CAT 5 cable to the Captain's stateroom.

Today, you see more and more integrated circuits in things that used to be all wires and larger parts. In the future, as we rely more on more on computerized parts, we probably will have a whole lot of circuits and parts that are self-contained. A Starfleet enlisted man is probably trained to swap out these parts for any system on the ship, and with one set of tools could probably diagnose any major system and do grunt work. Notice that almost ALL the work Geordi and Data do is on a black panel. Everything is computerized, and managed from a console. You don't have to crawl into a Jeffrey's Tube to enact repairs (most of the time).

The internet question:
I was just watching a couple episode of Enterprise and they talked about contacting Linda Park's parents in one episode or being unable to contact Tripp's sister when that laser beam blasted from Florida to Venezuela.

However, if the internet still exists in the 23rd century or whatever. However, you don't have to rely on subspace communications, if there's some centralized internet, you just sort of need to log on and news about who survived could be posted immediately. I don't sense that there's some concept of a place to log on and find information in Star Trek, it generally boils down to a ships database.

I don't know if any of the Star Trek incarnations show news channels. TOS was produced long before CNN, in the modern military, you have news networks streaming constantly in all major command centers. It stands to reason that any ship in Starfleet would have a UFP News streaming as well. But I guess it makes better television to contact someone directly.

Other shows, like Babylon 5, shows the CNN effect quite well. There are numerous episodes involving the news, I think INN (Interstellar Network News) was the ONLY news channel of Earth. We saw characters watching the news several times, usually to advance the story line of what was happening on earth. They even have a few episodes where martial law is imposed on earth and INN is taken over by government troops. In the next episode, smiling government lackies assure everyone that everything is under control, there is no martial law, nothing to see here, etc. I think JMS did a masterful job of weaving the concept of CNN into his show.

Starfleet would have it's own computer network, it wouldn't rely on the Internet. If the Internet existed at that point, it would probably be too unsecure, and Starfleet ships would not be able to connect to it.

Chief O'Brien on TNG and DS9 was the only enlisted person of note, until Nog joined Engineering late in the series. He was a jack-of-all-trades who could fix almost any system. Watch Deep Space Nine for a good overview of what a 24th Century engineer does.
Rom, not Nog. Nog went to Starfleet to be an officer.


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If I could stop a rapist from raping a child I would. That's the difference between me and god.

Yeah, that was a... proofreading test. Yeah, that's it. You passed.