They’d likely have similar technology with their touchscreens as well do ours. It’s not meant to react against any pressure, but only recognizes conductive material.
And Starfleet would make sure NOT to have the ass of their uniforms made of that kind of material for these exact reasons
Boimler did say Starfleet is always updating and improving them. Maybe that’s why they changed on the D. Riker forced them to invent anti-console padding
Apparently Johnathan Frakes had hip issues which is why Riker stepped over chairs and he was always leaning on things.
And yet a touchscreen that doesn’t explode is still beyond all of their technology.
The consoles occasionally exploding into sparks or rocks is on purpose. It gives all the engineers that aren’t the chief engineer something to do.
Man, between Lt. Pierce and the disgruntled workers apparent from your GIF, Utopia Planitia had some problems.
I believe there was a mention in Lower Decks about having to refill the rocks in the bridge consoles.
EDIT: S5E8 “Upper Decks”
Billups: “My team replaced all the Cordry rocks in the ceiling panels on the bridge.”
Ransom: “Ugh, hate those things. They always fall out and hit me on the head when we take damage.”
Billups: “Well, their non-centrosymmetry disrupts the charge leptons in the isolinear pathways of the main deflector, which then causes-”
Look, there’s a reason you can wire almost any heavy machinery into any random console or wall panel… When you run this much power to every station, exploding panels are gonna happen.
It’s either that, or we run our ships like Vulcans, and that’s just boring.
That’s what happens when your computer designers seem to have a microtape loose, and decide that connecting the multi-exawatt power system directly to all the powered systems is a good idea.
Prssumably the same people who build a malevolent AI that takes over the ship every few decades, or makes it so that starships explode if they bonk into anything hard enough.
Data: “Commander, you just vaporized the Vulcan supply convoy.”
I think this was addressed explicitly on TNG even! IIRC there was an episode where a kid has ptsd thinking he caused his ship to wreck. It comes out that while the ship was shaking he pressed his forearm up against the panel for balance. One of the enterprise crew tells him at the climax he couldn’t have messed anything up because he’s not crew or something
And the designers of LCARS informed the cast that any button they pressed was the correct button, because the system was smart enough to present a custom smart interface that was intuitive to the crew member using it. Presumably, it’s also smart enough to recognize Riker’s ass.
The idea that the computer can tell who is interacting with the panel, authenticate them, and distinguish a command from something set/leaning on it makes sense. Riker is trusting that system. They could have made a throwaway joke about Riker breaking a prototype replacement in testing when he leaned on it.
