Motherboard Meets William Shatner: 'You Technologists Have Failed Us!'

The night before I had the chance to sit down with William Shatner at a "press day" ahead of the Broadway run of his one-man show, "Shatner's World," I had a strange dream: that he would punch me in the face. I don't know where this came from, given his famous sense of humor and gentlemanly persona. But then I suggested he had a bad temper — it was meant as a joke, a ruse — and I thought it just might happen. Things only got darker after I asked him about technology ("The internal combustion engine has done us in! Why are you looking at the notes? The next question will come as a result of what I'm saying!"), and which of the universe's biggest mysteries bothers him most ("Dark matter—dark energy, what the F—hell is it!").

Here's more from the former captain of the Starship Enterprise:

"I love and hate the technology. … You mothers have brought us to our knees, this world, this planet, we're all about to expire because of technology… Now you younger guys have gotta reverse the whole thing and get us out."

"There was a lot of publicity about flying cars and being able to transport from one place to another and we'd all be healthy, cities would rise, they'd have green around it, they'd go up in the air rather than spread out. None of that has happened. Because you technologists have failed us!"

"A city boy, I looked up into the stars, and with bewilderment and wonderment fell backwards on my back, all those stars, I felt a sense of insignificance. Tiny little me, looking up, my life meant nothing. It's taken me all these years to arrange a show, a one-man show, to try and see if my life really did mean anything. And I leave it to the audience to make that judgement at the Music Box Theater, February 16th through March 4th."

"I would like to be a scientist and have the technology to explore the mysteries we all know exist… Dark matter—dark energy, what the F—hell is it!"

"Shatner's World" continues its global tour; see upcoming dates here. Watch Shatner rhapsodizing about technology in the 1970s, and listen to his 1968 album, The Transformed Man:

And here is in the first Star Trek episode, two years prior: