(Source: Pixabay) Looking ahead in the new year, I noticed a cool milestone on the calendar. On August 19, “Star Trek” fans like me will celebrate the 100 th birthday of the series’ creator, the late Gene Roddenberry. People love “Star Trek” for many reasons – the prescient technologies like wireless communicators and virtual assistants, the diverse cast, the idea of going boldly where no one has gone before. But something else has always grabbed me as well: the show’s mostly optimistic view of a future in which automation has taken over. Roddenberry and team presented a utopian view of an Earth where automation has freed humanity from the tedium of work and eliminated scarcity of resources, putting an end to hunger, poverty, and war. Rather than obsessing over material things, people focus on mutual understanding and knowledge-seeking (hence the effort to explore space, the final frontier).