system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[startrek] why do they pass pads around instead of just emailing information between them?
gpt
Despite rampant and wide ranging advancements in technology across all quadrants throughout history, nearly all humanoid lifeforms continue to carry on instinctual 'holdovers' from millennia of evolutionary development.

In example, the act of pointing with an outstretched arm or finger. Dozens of species have evolved this particular gesture in different ways, and is still useful today in many aspects as a result. We see subjects point despite there being many unique and many times, faster, forms and Formats of nonverbal attention drawing, selection, and similar.

This carries over to modern day, much to the chagrin and dismay of communications, science, and engineering officers throughout the galaxy. Even with constant upgrades and revamps of internal communication procedures and protocols,  throughput-alpha increases of bio-neural gel networks (especially in regards to retrofits from isolinear circuit networks), and even experimental chroniton-based systems, most humanoids tend to subconsciously crave direct interpersonal communication, along with the requisite multitude of signifiers and modifiers (gestures and body language, tonality, pheromones, low/high level brainwave synchronization, et al). This tends to lead crewmembers to meet directly for discussion over matters regardless of their complexity, security level, or urgency.

Simply put, while we continue to take science and technology further than our ancestors could likely imagine, we are still at the mercy of the instincts that got us here in the first place.