A look at life in Star Trek's Federation in the original TV series in the 60's, based on the American Culture website.
If you're a human in the United Federation of Planets (at the time of Captain Kirk)
* You believe deep down in the Freedom of Speech, guaranteed by the government, or rather Starfleet as you're much more familiar with them than your government.
* You're familiar with classical Earth music and literature, though are hard-pressed to name anything recent and original.
* You're familiar with traditional Earth sports, though prefer 3-D chess, even though you can't always remember exactly how to move the peices up and down.
* If you're a diplomat or a scientist, you can't remember when you've had a vacation.
If you died tonight ...
*You're fairly likely to believe in God. If not, you're unlikely to have been approached by people asking whether you know that you're going to heaven. And you wonder why people like that used to be considered a nusciance.
* Food comes from a restaraunt or "food slots." The latter is like a 20th-Century hot dog, chances are you have no idea what your meal really is made of.
* You don't consider insects, dogs, cats, monkeys, or guinea pigs to be food, although you may be familiar with someone from a world that does.
* A bathroom may or may not have a sonic shower, but it certainly has a toilet. You're familiar with the jokes about starship bathrooms, as toilets are never seen in media brodcasts.
* You probably own a video screen and some kind of point-to-point communication device. Your place is heated in the winter, cooled in the summer, and has its own bathroom. You don't have a dirt floor. You do your laundry in a machine, unless you wear disposable clothes. You don't kill your own food, though you're probably familiar with someone from a world that does.
* If you're a civilian, communications, transportation, vehicle manufacturers, and power companies are privately owned. There are those who want to put everything under government control, but you consider that unlikely.
* You hardly hear much about your government, except when there's some forgein or pirate attack on an ambassador.
* Race is unimportant to you. You do not get upset if someone calls you a racial name. If a light-skinned captain is seen kissing a dark-skinned lieutenant, the only thing that comes to mind is the rank difference.
* You think most problems could be solved if only people would put aside their predjuces and worked together.
* You take a strong court system for granted, even if you don't use it.
* You'd respect someone who speaks French, German, or Japanese, though all humans know English so speaking with other humans is never a problem. For everyone else, there's always the "Universal Translator," though chances are you have no idea at all how it works.
* Taxes are never a burning issue.
* School is free, and no one considers it odd if your kids learn at home.
* College is normaly four years long, excluding graduate study.
What time is it again?
* Although the old Earth dating system is still in use, official and Starfleet files put down the "stardate." You have a hard time figuring it out and have no idea how it's calculated. But since everyone else uses it, you say nothing.
* The decimal point is a dot, certainly not a comma.
* A billion is a thousand times a million.
* You expect marriages to be made for love, not by third parties. A man gets one wife at a time.
* If a man has sex with another man, he's a homosexual. But it happens so little, you're hardly aware of it. Male friends can embrace one another, and no one thinks anything of it.
* Once you're introduced to someone (Besides Starfleet admirals, ambassadors, and other lofty figures), you can call them by their first name.
* If you're a woman, you don't go to the beach topless. Though you have no idea why the fashion designers make some of those skirts so short.
* A hotel room has a private bath.
* You seriously expect to be able to transact business, or deal with the government, without paying bribes.
* If a politician has been cheating on his wife, you would question his ability to govern.
* Any store will take your credits.
* A company can fire just about anyone it wants. No one worries about discrimination.
* You like your bacon crisp.
But can they cure Rigelian flu?
* You count on excelent medical treatment. You know you're not going to die from cholera or some other long-forgotten disease. There are even treatments for exotic alien germs, sometimes within days or even hours of discovery. Still, the Terran Common Cold remains without a cure.
* You went over Earth history, and some history of other Federation worlds, in school.
* You expect Starfleet to explore space, police the space lanes, and fight wars. Not get involved in politics. Although you may know of expectional captains, you may not know the head of Starfleet.
* Your civilization has never been conquered by another power.
* You find the Vulcans a bit odd and standoffish, but polite. You find the Tellarites a bit argumenative and pugnatious. You don't know enough about the Andorians to have a real opinion.
* You find other powers rather hostile. The vicious and cruel Klingons in particular remind you of some mid-20th Century media Japanese villians. Then again, if these other powers were more peaceable, they'd probably have signed up with the Federation.
* You still measure things in feet, pounds, and gallons. Though very long distances are measured in "parsecs," whatever those are.
* You are not a farmer.
* The police are armed, but only with hand phasers invariably set on "stun." Submachine guns went out of style after the Eugenics Wars.
* If a woman is plumper, it doesn't improve her looks. In fact, you can't recall ever seeing an overweight woman.
* The biggest meal of the day is in the evening.
But what about those ears?
* The race everyone makes the most jokes about are the Vulcans.
* In the city at night, there may be places you wish to avoid.
* You don't care very much what family someone comes from.
* The nomral thing when a couple dies is for their estate to be divided equally between their children.
* If you have an appointment, you'll mutter an excuse if you're five minutes late.
* You're likely to have seen a play. Why would anyone spend all his free time in front of a display screen? You work in front of one all day.
Go to Trek Culture of the "Next Generation" era