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Orlando and the Tragedy of Technology
For some time now, I've wanted to write a book called "Orlando and the Tragedy of Technology," indirectly inspired by a classic essay by the engineer Samuel Florman. Florman's "Technology and the Tragic View," ran in, of all places, House & Garden magazine's Bicentennial issue in 1976.
This, I thought, was the way to look at technology, probably the most powerful, pervasive, and perplexing social force in the modern world. This, it seemed to me, was the sane position, the rational middle ground between Luddite gloom and techno-hype.
Technology is the universal topic, revolutionizing business, culture, publishing, and soon, politics. Technology is a tidal wave; on everybody's mind; debated, denounced, celebrated and fussed about by journalists, politicians, business people, educators, geeks, engineers, academics, intellectuals, Harry and Martha sitting at home figuring out what to buy.
But I've never been sure how to tackle the subject. Books need narrative spines, story lines that take a reader from one point to the next, and it isn't clear that there is one here.
Then last month, to my pleasant surprise, my editors at Rolling Stone bit. They liked my notion of trying to come up with a contemporary view of technology, and of setting this project in an appropriately bizarre place like Orlando, Florida, founded on techno-visions and now one of the most-visited destinations on earth.
So I'm heading south today to write about Orlando and technology. And I'd like to take a whack at open source non-technical writing - presenting the idea to some of the smartest, most opinionated people involved in technology (that would be you guys) and getting some help.
Orlando is a place where technology, capitalism, imagination, individualism and corporatism collide. A polyglot nation of the imagination, the city, for better or worse, is awash with tourists, theme parks and restaurants, all sorts of amazing technologies and much metaphor - from Tomorrowland to EPCOT Center.
Walt Disney chose Orlando as the place for his new theme park for several reasons. The biggest was he wanted to control the land and environment around his parks, something he'd failed to do around Disneyland. Another was his obsession with building EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow) Center.
Disney was a closet utopian, fixated on the belief that technology could be put in the service of creating perfect little worlds. He believed he could build a model community, free of blight, poverty and crime, and he would do this be harnessing the kinds of technologies that embodied good old American ingenuity, the kind he embraced to such successful effect in his theme parks and imagined worlds.
He meant for EPCOT to serve as a model community of the future; a clean, safe, flawlessly-planned enclave where Disney employees could live, and a community whose trailblazing new educational and environmental technologies would save the world beyond.
It didn't turn out that way. Walt Disney died of lung cancer. Rumors had it that he was studying cryogenics so that he could freeze his body and one day thaw himself out and come back and get even with his bottom-line fixated successors, who he was convinced would commercialize EPCOT.
Disney was right, of course. His successors scrapped his expensive and ephemeral notions of a model town, and swiftly turned EPCOT into a giant promotion, one that not only celebrated corporations, but the new technologies they were deploying for the future. Perhaps Disney's successors' vision -- technology in the service of corporatism -- was more prescient than his own.
Almost nothing of his original dream for EPCOT (some of the echoes of EPCOT survive in Disney's planned town, Celebration) remains, except an architectural model hidden from most visitors in a Tomorrowland train tunnel.
Disney's lost dream was a heartbreaker, though. Modern Orlando is now an astonishing, uniquely American world or collection of disparate and disjointed worlds, a place that Disney spawned but would neither recognize nor approve of. Technology -- visions, representations, manifestations -- are at its heart.
There, technology is on display in all sorts of remarkable forms. There's no Tomorrow in Tomorrowland, for example. Disney's notion of the Space Age as the next big thing in technology fizzled. He never imagined anything like the Internet.
The Space Age died and now Tomorrowland is being revamped at great expense along the lines suggested by Jules Verne, a futurist from the past. The walkways, trams and intergalactic spaceways Disney believed would be part of 21st century life never got out of the park.
It seems to me that one of the things that drove Disney, and drew so many millions of people to the things he built was his idea of technology as a way of imagining the past and the future. His life and work, in fact, embody Florman's notion of the tragic view of technology.
Samuel Florman had this idea: technology was neither good nor evil, but inherently tragic. "I suggest that an appropriate response to our new wisdom is neither optimism nor pessimism, but rather the espousal of an attitude that has traditionally been associated with men and women of noble character -- the tragic view of life."
Tragedy, Florman wrote, is uplifting. It depicts heroes wrestling with fate, struggling to improve the world. It also reflects another inherent human trait -- messing the world up.
"We simply cannot make use of coal without killing miners and polluting the air. Neither can we manufacture solar panels without worker fatalities and environmental degradation."
Florman was onto something, and I think his theories are best reflected and captured in Orlando, in the place fathered by Disney's failed dreams and mangled visions. So I'm on my way: your thoughts, insights, responses, criticisms and ideas are welcome.
Specifically, I'm interested not in Orlando itself, but in this tragic view of technology -- the idea that it represents the best and worst in humanity almost simultaneously -- as it plays out in Orlando, not only in Disney World but in the network of parks and rendered worlds from Sea World to Universal Studios: in visions of technology and the future, in the ways in which technology captures the imagination. I'll be filing reports from Orlando to Slashdot in the next week or so. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I don't know if this idea is a book or not -- I hope it is -- but at the very least, it promises to be a great conversation.
Make sure you definitely go to Sea World.
I think a little commentary on "Penguin Encounter" will give you plenty of bonus points here on slashdot. Disney is defenitely a good starting point to see technology and non-tech mesh.
Good Luck, Katz
wolf31o2 Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team
That's great.
:)
I'd LOVE to have my company pay for a trip myself there. You taking anyone else?
Have fun.
-Benjamin Shniper
Anyone ever actually been to Disneyland/world/etc?
Its kinda weird. They *really* spy on you when you're there. Cameras *ALL* over the rides, people watching your almost every move.
Amidst all the joyous kid things, there are people in plainclothes called the "DBI" who enforce the law of the land. If you look 'weird' you're not allowed into the park. If you're wearing a tshirt that says something unsavory (like "Eat the homeless"). If you're too pierced. If you're not living up to Disney's expectations, you're given the boot. Their utopia is no 'weirdos'.
Remember what Arthur C. Clarke wrote:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Maybe Clarke saw something in Disney's magic...
We're here to give you an OS, not a religion.
I don't think technology's tragity is found with in the number of individuals whose deaths can be atributed to a given technology but within the the belief that technology gives us (and those it touches) imortality.
"The future masters of technology must be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the
Katz writes:"It also reflects another inherent human trait -- messing the world up.
[quoting from Florman] "We simply cannot make use of coal without killing miners and polluting the air. Neither can we manufacture solar panels without worker fatalities and environmental degradation."
Am I the only one to whom this quote looks like both pointless and obvious? Here's my version of the quote.
"We simply can't have millions of people breathe air into their lungs without people dying from airborne diseases. We can't walk down the stairs without fatalities."
Now that's the Jon Katz article I'm waiting for -- lets take on the oxygen industry and reveal the horrors of our oxygen-dependent society.
...has Katz used the term "Luddite" in every article he has written lately?
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
I do think that this is a good idea but an article would not do the subject justice. There's just to much information to present here.
I look forward to your future postings. And yes, it will be great conversation.
If you truely love the memory, you must set it free().
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
I have two things to say on this subject:
1. I worked for Disney for quite a while at their Disneyland park in Anaheim, CA. There is a strong tendancy among people writing about Disney to bash the company, as if their desire to have every day at the park go flawlessly is bad. Disney has high standards, and I found them to be an exacting company to work for- they require every "cast member" (the Disney term for somone working in Disneyland) to do their absolute best at all times. They give a lot in return, however. Good pay, good benifits, and a strong sense of community- corporate culture that is lacking in many large companies these days. In short, I enjoyed working for them, and I wish every company I work for could be as well run. They know what they're doing.
2. Technology is not tragic. It's not perfect, nothing is 100% perfect in every way, but compare the life of a typical person in a first world country now to 400 years ago. People rarely die of common infections, childbirth is not a serious health risk, I can have fresh, unrotted meat whenever I want, my home has air conditioning and a radio, most people have ALL of their children survive infanthood, starvation is almost unheard of, and the street outside my house is not an open sewer. From the point of view of someone who lived 400 years ago, I must be living in utopia. If you were to ask a medival peasant if our lives look better than his, he'd laugh, then kill you for your fridge. Keep it in perspective when you wonder if technology is doing us any good.
You might want to check out:
"The Celebration Chronicles : Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney's New Town"
by Andrew Ross
Ballantine Books ISBN: 0345417518
Talks all about this stuff.
HTH
Technology isn't good or evil, it just exists. People create things and solve problems, and technology is both the solution to problems, and the source of new ones. To ascribe words like good or evil or tragic to technology is to ignore the problem that we are trying to address in making technology.
Stupid Example:
Problem: It's a bit chilly in the room.
Solution: Make a heat source. This might involving developing technologies that involve rubbing two sticks together, or a phosphorus match, or a method whereby you burn stuff remotely, convert the energy into electricty, and the convert the electricy back into heat within that space that is chilly. This fire causes pollution, and might burn your house down.
Is fire tragic? hardly. It's just the way we solved the problem. Without the problem of a cold room to solve, the technology of fire wouldn't be required. At a deeper level, the cause of the tragedy isn't fire (the technology) at all, it's the fact that the room is cold (the problem).
I might argue that it's tragic that it's chilly in the room sometimes, but that's just life. There will always be problems. We can try to work towards a minimal subset of those problems. The algorithm for determining the global minimum value of problems in the world is left as an excercise for the reader.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
...technology was neither good nor evil, but inherently tragic.
Why tragic? There can be no doubt that technology is neither good nor evil, but to describe it as 'tragic' is the ultimate glass-is-half-empty sort of outlook.
For a start, what is technology? As far as I'm concerned, it's the use of any tool to help in a task. That tool can be a stick, a rock, a (shudder) NT box or an ICBM. All of these can be used for evil, but consider that we wouldn't have made it to the moon without technology that was first used to blow the shit out of people.
A better question to ask, imho, would be 'why do so many (ie most) people, if pushed, view technology as tyrranical? Would these people change their minds if they were shown that everything (everything) they do is a result of technology or involves its use.
I also spent a few minutes wondering how Disneyland fit into this. Then it hit me... tax breaks. Jon's been reading Dave Barry
I went to EPCOT this summer, and it was sufficiently hot that shorts and a t-shirt were called for. Unfortunately, I decided to wear a shirt that Xircom had sent me after getting a RealPort Modem/Ethernet card for my laptop. Well, the back has an image of a dongle in a surgeon's tray, along with the words, "Have you had your dongle removed?" Heh, I like the shirt, but as the day was winding down, I was approached by one of their security team asking what this "dongle business" was all about. My generous hosts eventually let me stay after giving them a thorough explanation of what the shirt meant, although I don't think they understood a word I said.
Oh well, even though I'd love one, I guess it's for the best that I don't have a shirt with their other ad: A picture of Michelangelo's David, except with his penis broken off, along with the phrase "Uh oh, David's lost his dongle." Heh, Disney probably would've beaten me down with some billy clubs if I had worn that one.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I don't know if this is on-topic, but the mention of "open source writing" made me think of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Not the book, the web site. It is basically a collaboration of everyone who feels like contributing. It seems to me to be the embodyment of "open source writing."
Interesting concept, Jon. I just got back from Orlando, where I spent a day at EPCOT. The last time I visited anything Disney was some 28 years ago, when I was too young to see past the rides and the carnival atmosphere. EPCOT is disappointing, utimately, for a number of reasons. If you've travelled - and I have visited some of the countries represented in the EPCOT park - you quickly realize that they have reduced each to a sound bite. It is Julian Barnes "England, England" come to life... "England, well, we need a Fish-n-Chips place." Then there is the technology. A monorail still glides across the landscape, but that was there 28 years ago. Modern cities have light rail, etc. Are there no new sucesses here? One of the main buildings advertises "Innovation"; I say "advertises" deliberately, for the minute you walk in you are aware of the corporate slogans and the product labels. Walk through the IBM section, the Xerox section, the Sega section. See Thinkpads. See video games. See Bose Speakers. Listen to the guides tell you how you can buy all of this stuff today! All they need is a car lot to complete the shopping experience. The Millenium village comes off as a place where the countries not willing to sign a big enough check to Disney are herded under the same tent, where they shout out like carnival barkers for your attention. I spoke to several country representatives and each was well-spoken and informed about their countries purpose in being there. But what was Disney's contribution to this? Advertising space? Let's face it, Disney is a country and that country has a service-based economy. It is no longer the technological dreamscape that Walt Disney wished it to be.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 4th Ed., Vol 2
They *really* spy on you when you're there. Cameras *ALL* over the rides, people watching your almost every move.
True. But one of the most important things to disney and it's theme parks is being "family friendly". It sucks that you can't wear your "eat the homeless" shirt. Oh well. Disney theme parks are private. You probably wouldn't be allowed in a lot of resturants, gov't buildings, courtrooms, etc. with it either. If they want to stop paying customers, it's their decision.
As for cameras, yeah, there's a lot of them. But from working at Anaheim's Disneyland, I've seen a lot of things people do just because they want to get away with something at "The happiest place on Earth". Disney would be stupid not to have cameras everywhere.
The Good Reverend
I have two things to say on this subject:
1. I worked for Disney for quite a while at their Disneyland park in Anaheim, CA. There is a strong tendancy among people writing about Disney to bash the company, as if their desire to have every day at the park go flawlessly is bad. Disney has high standards, and I found them to be an exacting company to work for- they require every "cast member" (the Disney term for somone working in Disneyland) to do their absolute best at all times. They give a lot in return, however. Good pay, good benifits, and a strong sense of community- corporate culture that is lacking in many large companies these days. In short, I enjoyed working for them, and I wish every company I work for could be as well run. They know what they're doing.
2. Technology is not tragic. It's not perfect, nothing is 100% perfect in every way, but compare the life of a typical person in a first world country now to 400 years ago. People rarely die of common infections, childbirth is not a serious health risk, I can have fresh, unrotted meat whenever I want, my home has air conditioning and a radio, most people have ALL of their children survive infanthood, starvation is almost unheard of, and the street outside my house is not an open sewer. From the point of view of someone who lived 400 years ago, I must be living in utopia. If you were to ask a medival peasant if our lives look better than his, he'd laugh, then kill you for your fridge. Keep it in perspective when you wonder if technology is doing us any good.
About two years ago, we went to Disney World. Had a great time; it was lots of fun. At the time, a very small thing impressed me more than anything else: during the week I was there, I saw precisely one mosquito.
So why was this so impressive to me? I suddenly realized, "Hey, this is Florida, otherwise known as the subtropics. Why aren't you being eaten alive by bugs?"
I think Disney must be putting an astonishing amount of poison into the environment down there to keep the bugs down. The amounts they must be using would have to be enormous -- Florida is a gigantic swamp. It's all standing water. How far out do they have to go from the park to keep mosquitoes away from the guests, and what methods do they use to control them?
I suspect that environmentalists are not going to like the answers too much.
Any proof of the "DBI"? I wore a "Taz" shirt to Disney to see if I would be hassled. Not a peep.
I took my whole family down to Disney in 95 for New Year's Eve. The Disney people were nothing put pleasant and helpfull (and yes, a little droid like). The really annoying part of Disney was the other people. I have never seen such a rude group of people in one place. People cutting in lines, pushing little kids out of the way, and generally being *ssholes.
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
As I interpret the phrase "open source" when applied to writing, all of us would be able to reproduce, modify, and re-release the product of Katz's labor. We could submit or remove chapters, sell individual paragraphs, or scoop Barnes and Noble by copying the text off an FTP site (where it will be freely available) and reselling print copies with no royalties going to Jonathan Katz.
I strongly suspect this is not what Katz means. Rather, his hope seems to be that we supply him with our ideas, as moderated by his target audience to "Interesting" and "Insightful" levels, he farms those ideas and tosses in a few adverbs as relish, and then he becomes wealthy. If his book is not copyrighted, I will eat my shoe.
Open source writing might very well work for a topic that is highly technical and an author who is highly altruistic. I question whether this book (which may nonetheless be very interesting) fits those criteria.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Hi Mr. Katz,
Are you familiar with Michel Foucault's terms "heterotopias" and "panopticons"? He takes the former from the medical term meaning to take one part and place it in another (unnatural place) as a substitute; e.g. skin graft, sex change.
DisneyWorld is not a utopia, but a heterotopia. It is a mirror, a place which stands apart from the rest of society so that we can gaze into the depths of our society's soul.
Samuel Delany's Triton and Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed both give different pictures of heterotopias. Delany uses advances in technology as part of this mirror. Perhaps it is more of a prism, though.
If you want more depth on Delany's "prism, mirror, lens" metaphors, he uses them through his work, but the figure prominently in Dhalgren.
nick
Yeah, This is where I would concentrate on in your acticle. For those of you who don't know "Celebration" was/is Disney's planned small-town utopian community. While the theme parks are, in my oppinion, basically a public spectacle, "Celebration" was an actual attempt to put some of Disney's ideas into practice. They have a very "wired" community, their own transportation system, and schools among other things. IMO this community seems really ugly and homoginized and elitist. That's not the point though. The problem with technology isn't inherent to the technology, it is its application. The parallel I see with Disney/Celelbration is that people have tried to use technology to make for a better community. Unfortunately, they've made it so its accessible to only a small group of people who can afford it. Yes, technology is a driving force in our society, but in order for it to better society, it must reach all members of our society and not just the upper class. I think that this might be something, thematically that your article SHOULD explore. Furthermore, this all begs the question, what if, instead of creating theme parks and planned communities, all of the creativity and technological know how had gone into doing something really great for all of humanity. I don't think that all technology has to be socially concious, but the fact that technology has become intertwined with our society means that to some extent, there is a responsibility for technologists to develop technology for the betterment of society. Hope this gives you some food for thought.
First of all, I disagree that "technology" is tragic. Technology is an attempt to find practical application for knowledge. If technology is tragic then the quest for knowledge is as well. Unless you buy into the whole concept of hubris, chances are that won't fly with you either.
Technology is just the favorite whipping boy because it's so blatantly obvious. The same tragedies that happen with technological issues can happen without technological issues as well. Just as fusion power is a lofty concept until somebody makes a fusion powered death ray, a human's hands seem to be elegant adaptations until somebody uses them to strangle the life out of an 8 year old kid.
If you're hard set about finding a tragedy, look at human nature. We are the ones that can turn a beneficial invention into a device of destruction. Technology is merely one of the many means to that end.
Examples like coal power producing pollution have nothing to do with technology. What if coal didn't produce pollution? Then we'd still use it as a power source. The fact that coal does pollute has led to the technology of burning coal to be gradually phased out in favor of cleaner fuels.
While I would agree that there is tragedy in Disney's failed legacy, that has everything to do with the politics of corporations and nothing to do with technology. Politics have been around for as long as mankind has been able to impress itself with lies.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
Life speeds up the death of a planet, its a destructive force. Anything that life does that is not destructive is generally to help it's self. Thats the nature of life. To live. Technology I think is good for us as individuals, but not so much as often as a society, or species, because we're usually thinking of our selves as individuals, not as a species or just as life in general. I think that if emphasis was placed on life, not ourselves, we'd end up benifiting ourselves more than we would by thinking of ourselves as individuals. at least in the long term. individuality might be a big mistake of life. We as individuals are much less efficient than say are cells operating for the good of the whole - the body, which is much more resistant. How would your body fare if each cell is responcible for its self? we'd all die or explode or something, each cell deciding that it wants food more than the other and crouding towards our capilaries, smooshin them. Blood would have enough of it and quit. heh.
Disney World may well be more precient that Walt could have ever dreamed. Obviously, we're in the middle of a paradigm shift away from personal privacy, and the Disney Experience is just a sign of things to come.
An example. Where I grew up, in Fort Worth, Texas, there's a downtown district that's now called Sundance Square. As recently as a decade ago, it was a run-down, nondescript urban area. Thanks to the investment a very rich family who, to be sure, has done many wonderful things for Fort Worth, the area has since been revitalized into a lively entertainment district. However, it is also damn near a police state. It's been said, probably without hyperbole, that in what amounts to about a fifteen city block area, there's not a single place you can stand and not be under the surveillance of the private police force of this wealthy family. Fort Worth got a nice little cash cow and the nearest thing they've got to a tourist attraction, but at what cost?
Nor do I see how things can get significantly better. Remote observation will only become easier with the progression of technology, and Diamond Age-esque serveillance robots may be uncomfortably close.
Welcome to the future. Thanks for the preview, Walt.
-jay
Who was it that said (something like):
To the feeling man life is a tragedy. To the thinking man, life is a comedy.?
...when, at the end of the first paragraph he states "I could use some help." And I thought we'd never see eye to eye on anything.
Its all a conspiracy by the shirt people! They plan on taking over the whole United States! They're in cahoots (I always wanted to use "cahoots" in a sentence) with the CIA, FBI, and the NSA! I'm not sure why they're starting with the theme parks, but its TRUE, I tell you!
(FYI: When in Disney, we noticed large groups of people wandering around all wearing the same coloured T-shirts. They were promptly dubbed "Shirt people". And no, I am actually NOT insane)
>>>>>>>>> Kvort, Lord High Peanut of Krondor
-Don't mind me, I'm personality-deficient and mentally-impaired.
Any proof of the "DBI"? I wore a "Taz" shirt to Disney to see if I would be hassled. Not a peep.
:)
I think the hassling comes from presenting yourself not so much in a way that the Disney Corp. might not like, such as wearing images of their competitors' trademarks, but in a way that might squick an average person, who is there to have an average sort of fun, a concept mutually exclusive from squicklement.
I should think that people wearing gonzo-slogan T-shirts into Disney, of all places on earth, are itching for confrontation anyway.
J
MacOS Open Source
jmac
I would just hope that Jon keeps his mind and eyes open rather than trying to impose a theory on researches -- I find that the truth is almost always more interesting than fiction.
..
"The Disneyland imaginary is neither true nor false; it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejunvenate in reverse the fiction of the real. It is meant to be an infantile world, in order to make us believe that adults are elsewhere, in the 'real' world, and to conceal the fact that real childishness is everywhere, particularly amongst those adults who go there to act the child in order to foster illusions to their real childishness."
-excerpted from Jean Baudrillard's The Precession of Simulacra, Art & Text, no.11 Sept. 1983 3-47, also in his book Simulations
You might find this a useful read on Disney's utopian dream and the technologies of simulation.
scrooge@ga311.elps.vt.edu
He doesn't strike me as someone who would support romantic posturing and notions like "inherently tragic." Or someone who'd waste his time wandering around Disneyworld looking for portentious sociohistorical lessons.
For balance, Jon, go read the last chapter of Freeman Dyson's Weapons and Hope, "Tragedy is Not Our Business."
Don't forget "Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World" by Carl Hiaasen. Great book, delves a lot into the manipulation of technology to satisfy the immediate (entertainment) need....without actually mentioning "technology" "manipulation" or "need."
Squicklement? 8P
Yah. You are right about the people itching for confrontation. Or attention. A few years back at a Metallica show, we saw a guy who was wearing a black leather thong, a body stocking, and a jester's hat. I leaned over to my wife and said, "See what happens when parents don't play with their children?"
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
Obviously, some advances cause more harm than good; others benefit humanit enormously. And with every advance, sacrifices are made. How can every scientific achievment or innovation be summarized into one view about "technology"? That is, in effect, assigning the same level of goodness to the atomic bomb as to the polio vaccine. Given that, I'd say any view of technology is tragic.
I would have to say that I disagree with the assessment that technology is tragic. Technology just is. What is tragic is that in the midst of the research (either basic or applied) that will end with an advance in technology, the human condition does not advance with it. Tragedy is that humans spend most of our time trying to tame our environment and make survival easier, but we spend almost no time trying to help our own species (and others) come to terms with the advancements we have made.
If we could advance our society and personal "psyche" at the same rate that we advance our technology, many problems that we experience today would not be a problem. For instance, if we had advanced our species as quickly as we have advanced medical technology, perhaps war would no longer be an issue, or even aggression. Why are ideas such as greed and intolerance still effecting us today in the same ways that they effected us 500 years ago? Perhaps the answer is to spend more effort in the advancement of philosphy and religion. My opinion on why we don't do this now, is because an advance in science or technology is much sexier than an advancement in philosophy. (When was the last time that the evening news reported on the newest theory of a great philosopher?)
Anyway, that is my opinion Mr. Katz, please take it how you will.
The major issues with technology are that it is very expensive to use it cleanly, and that it changes much faster than people.
A lot of the problems with technology are strongly related to the scarcity of energy. In theory, with an infinite supply of cheap energy, technology could limit its own negative ecological effects. The main arguments against ecological alternatives are economic. It would also cease to provide a social gradient that helped to separate rich and poor. Fission, fusion and space-based solar energy are all possibilities for increasing the energy supply, but none looks to be cheap, completely safe, or all that plentiful. Finding a good source of energy would redefine the technology landscape, making clean use of energy practical and reducing scarcity of goods in general. Can we survive long enough to find one? Shouldn't we be looking a little harder?
The other aspect of technological tragedy is social. People's cultures and means of living together change much slower than technology. New technologies, while increasing production, also create personal tragedies thru obsolescence and unanticipated side effects. For one example, feeding everyone thru efficient agriculture leads to population growth. This means that we live maladapted to technology and often without much idea why. We can acculturate faster, or control the growth of technology. I'm mostly for the former (I'd rather not shut down the internet until the lawmakers catch up.) But when new technologies have expensive social costs that aren't reflected in the bottom lines of the corporations promoting them, restraint is required for the common good.
In 1976 I had the chance to take a behind the scenes tour at Disneyworld. Epcot was newly opened at the time and Card Walker had stated a commitment to continueing the Walt Disney Dream.
Frankly, from what I saw, if Disney had been in charge of the space program, he would have had a resort on the moon by '69 instead of just a few trips there.
There were a lot of roadblocks to what Walt Disney wanted to do in Florida. One of the largest ones is that Disney was never allowed to build its own power plant. That was one of the big ideas for making a self sustaining community. (As a sidebar, note that Florida Power's Tampa plant, newly built to handle the increased load of the Kissimee-Tampa resort corridor, blew up last year killing several people)
The Disney Seaside resort near Ft. Pierce with Monorail transit to the Magic Kingdome died due to legislative roadblocks.
Orlando is very much a technical dichotomy of a city. The high tech in the closed communities of the Kississimmee are contrast greatly with the areas of Orange County to the north were you have outdated phone switching equiment making more that a 14.4 connection startling.
Contrast what you see in the Kissimmee area for tech with what you will see at the Sanford Flea Market. Orlando is an area where the tech and the money concentrated with a few and left the rest of the area depressed below the norm.
I left Orlando in January of this year for a job in Washington.
Steven
NRRPT/RCT
What? No post-Columbine article?
Make sure you pick up a copy of Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation". If you can get through it (it's advanced reading), there's a chapter or two that discusses the "reality" that Disney tends to present.
And if you're getting a book around Disneyworld, don't get the Birnbaum's Official Guide. As a tourist, the best book is Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2000 by Bob Sehlinger.
... I might actually read it when it is finished.
:)
Who in their right mind, living in the mid-century would believe that we, in almost the year 2000 have not already actively colonized space stations, that the moon is not home to at least a lab and that we have not even set foot on Mars yet!?
We have done squat as far as the "final frontier" is concerned! Well, of course the main reason is that there simply no money in it (at least right now). So capitalism has thwarted Mr. Disney's dreams in yet another way
Instead, the "final frontier" has been internalized. The Internet, mapping out the human gene code, modern medecine and biotechnologies. There is money in that... that is where our interest lies... not space.
I have joked about the new silver spacesuit I bought for New Year's this year... because afterall, that is what everyone will be wearing in the 21st Century!? Now, who knows when I will really be able to wear that and fit in!? Probably not for a while.
Alas....
Now if you could find out why, with all that technology, all of the water on Disney properties make NJ water taste like Evian...
Well, I have no AAA trip tips to give you, but I will weigh in on the book idea.
... he thought the thing would end all wars.
... probably not. But what about this ...
... accidents maim and kill customers, products turn out bad, computer bugs put company memos on the web page ... everything goes down the elevator in a handbasket. Turns out this major piece of technology self-checks against the creator's morals and begins to undermine the company in its own special way. This isn't the same scenario that caused HAL900 to kill his crewmates ... HAL has a conflict of logic similar to insanisy. This demise is clearly planned by a strict set of rules, more calculating ... cleaner and more efficient.
What you're talking about doing ties in with the Internet more than you know. From what I have read in recent press, the original idealists behind the Internet had no idea that (1) their dream would take flight and (2) that their dream would turn out to be a large commercial network selling sex, books, and sporting goods.
Most any technology comes to a sad use that the inventor never imagined. Oppenheimer regreted his research into the atomic bomb to his dying day
The motivating facror for this book isn't the sad application that the tech is used for, but what the ramifications are for those that created it and those that use it in an "improper fashion".
When you mentioned Disney, I can see him rising from his Amana freezer and going Jackie Chan on Orlando (except he would be better dubbed). Kind of like the "ghost in the machine" in the &^%$ed up movie version of Johnny Nmeonic (sp?).
So I can see a short story where the creator of the technology rights a few wrongs (think Harlan Ellison's short story when Mother Nature goes haywire and swallows Los Angeles in a fit of revenge for all the toxic waste & pollution).
Will that serve to fuel a whole book
Company starts using "technology x" for their commercial pursuits. This tech was developed by a visionary college professor, very idealistic and socially aware kind of guy. Commercial pursuits become very commercial, making the company a monster image of everything bad about greed & such (this is where the stereotypes come in). Company suddenly starts going down the tubes
But hey, that may have been done before.
Brian Richardson
brian@freebytes.net
so what are you going to do now, Jon Katz?
"I'm going to Disney World!"
Don't forget to hit Celebration, Florida. It's somewhere around Orlando.... quite absurd and closely resembles the town in The Truman Show. We walked around there one night with a white van following us. Looks like it was intended as a Main Street USA replica that one could buy a house near.
despite what you may think, not all of us who live
and work in orlando have lives that revolve around disney. if you're going to make generalizations
based solely upon wdw/epcot, that's fairly
inaccurate considering many folks who live in
orlando despise disney with a passion.
and what's this open source writing thing?
People create things and solve problems, and technology is both the solution to problems, and the source of new ones.
Homer: "Here's to alcohol. The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems"
+&x
Have you read Stephenson's In the Beginning essay? This is a very thoughtful essay on technology and culture. He also visited Disney (the Magic Kingdom) and had some interesting things to say about corporatization, cultural homogenization, and all the other things that you think about when you hear the word Disney.
Of course his essay isn't "open source" so you can't embrace and extend it. But it should give you an interesting perspective as well as being something entertaining to read on the plane!
JMC
Makes the whole experience much more satisfying.
Any given instance of technology with a small "t" is just an attempt to solve a problem (sadly, that problem is increasingly "how do we enchance stockholder value?")
However, Technology with a big T (viz: Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology) is the implicit faith and complex of assumptions that motivates us to seek technological, rather than social, spiritual, cultural, political or psychological responses to our environment - when we encounter our world entirely in terms of tools, methods, and means. It's noble in that it is a positive, reasonable, and often helpful stance to problems. It is tragic in a number of senses: often, it seeks to satisfy a desire without understanding the engine that underlies desire; satisfying desire is itself essentially tragic, since desire is extinguished in its satisfaction and the motivation lost. From a Buddhist perspective, desire is the source of suffering, and technology only feeds the illusion that desire can be fulfilled.
Heidegger's plaint is that the technological stance towards the world eclipses all others, and is a sort of squandering and corruption of our ability to generate Being through interaction with the world. I think it's largely an aesthetic argument, but it really is a powerful one -by choosing to live in a technological mode, we stop inhabiting a world and start dwelling amidst Objects and Tools.
While the solutions addressed by technology is almost always local, its effects are often global. Technology always serves someone's interest, and that interest may be someone elses's detriment.
But the essence of the tragic nature of technology is this: the technological stance seems redemptive, but it can never actually redeem.
How about Words That Rhyme With Pretentious.
Go back to accounting, Jon. You must have been better at it.
-137
There is a really fascinating chunk in Neal's In the Beginning... essay about Disney's perfection of "mediated reality". I won't even try to summarize, but everyone on /. should read In the Beginning anyways.
Actually, you most likely *would* be allowed in govt. facilities. I can't recall the name of the case, but I believe the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a man wearing a "fsck the draft" t-shirt in a courtroom during the Vietnam era; his conviction on obscenity charges was overturned. I'm not positive whether this would directly apply, but it's my guess that barring obscenity, most messages would (must) be allowed.
Jon Katz has specifically said he's getting paid for this article.
Will he at least be mentioning as co-authors the people who give him the best ideas?
Could any of them then peddle this article elsewhere? Or variants thereof?
I think this smacks of exploitation, that he can rely on SlashDotties to be his inspiration, or at least his 'secret ingredient', but otherwise it's the same old deal: he owns the copyright, he gets the money.
What do you think?
Be sure and drop by the Kennedy Space Center while you're in the area. I think its proximity to the tourist parks, its own status as a tourist attraction would add important perspective to your work. Also, the hardscrabble dedication to the long-term promise of technology (versus short-term consumerism) displayed by many employees here would contrast well with Orlando's tourist industry.
Also, a visit to the to some of the tech companies developing around the UCF (University of Central Florida) may show a different side of the city.
One of my former employers (Time Warner) did a major test roll out of interactive cable service here, emptying out the group I was working with in the process. I often wonder what became of it.
Is this the kind of help you meant? Or were you just looking for a "sound byte" on technology?
Actually, it would be great to review people's perceptions of the town of Celebration. How is it viewed by (a) its residents, (b) people who live in nearby towns (c) visitors from cities big and small.
:: there is enough material here for dozens of essays, if not books.
Also, isn't there a small town on the Gulf Coast that was set up as a similar corporate planned community? Was it called Seaside? The town that was the setting for "The Truman Show" (which in itself is a fascinating social commentary).
Harper's Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly have printed a number of articles describing these and other planned communities. The concept goes back all the way to Levittown.
Good luck, Mr. Katz
Incidentally, I'm a resident of Berkeley, a community which is quite weird in its own way. Anti-corporate, unplanned, and commu-anarchic. An interesting contrast to Celebration et al.
get over it with your geek oppresion moronathon and your stupid posts
I think I remember than from Cyrano de Bergerac.
Check out "The Existential Pleasures of Engineering", "The Civilized Engineer" or any of his other books.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I personally think the Disney story is more interesting... I still can't believe that Disney World is actually a legally-recognized town with its own taxes, courts, services, etc...
Don't forget to check out the 'House of Tomorrow' down there.. IIRC it's a set of stucco-like geodesic domes with some cool stuff inside (when I went it was Apple ][ based). I wonder if it still has that Curtis Mathes big-screen TV with the shatterproof glass..
Your Working Boy,
It is said that some of the charecters in the suits are secuirity too.
Maybe just a myth?
I don't know, if you've been to Disney as many times as I have, you might start to beleive it too. It is just amazing the level of detail they put into every attraction, every store, every little bench, just to fit into the theme that they present in that area of each park. After going to Disney a couple times a year for my whole life I have decided that there is no extreme for Disney, and that the characters very well could be security.
-Zach
"I told you a million times not to exaggerate!"
Those of us who aren't making minimum wage serving tourists like you (also probably the only ones in down with a paycheck that even halfway suits our self-esteem) would like to kindly ask you to leave. You are the world's worst drivers. Stop asking me for directions to Universal. Oh, and by the way, Team Disney are a bunch of Windows NT-lovers.
First of all, I'm tired of people blaming technology for various woes. Technology tools work just like other tools - they allow you to do more, good and bad. It's how YOU use them that makes the difference. I think one of the tragedies of Disney, if you consider Disney tragic, is that I do not believe that the company's upper management believes in the same principles that Walt did (I'm assuming that Walt was sincere). Disney keeps up the family-oriented facade because that's what the Disney brand is associated with, while as a company they have no problem with non-family-oriented operations like Touchstone pictures. Do you think Walt would want his company producing R-rated films? Maybe it's naive to expect a company to ignore potential profits in order to maintain the principles the company was built on, but I believe that is one of the darker aspects of capitalism. EPCOT is a perfect example of that. Forget the notion of an prototypical community. Walt had a vision of something called "EPCOT", just make something that people will pay money to see. Orlando is pretty tragic, though.. the traffic is awful. It has had a painful growth and it appears that the infrastructure just isn't there yet. I must say, though, that I enjoyed Sea World immensely and the Magic Kingdom was interesting to see as an adult, especially watching a little one run towards Minnie... *sniff*
Yeah technology is a real important whatchacallit... issue right now, huh?
Disneyworld is a creepy use of "technology" (remember the quotes for later) They put a glittery facade on things, they use gee-whiz stuff to put a gleam of interest to an otherwise shabby undertaking. (like the whole epcot advertainment complex). Disney has managed to take what should be a varied and at least somewhat random expierience (a trip to a theme park) and standardize it for everyone. Everyone will see at least 3 parades, those parades will feature at least 2 big name characters. Every person will see no less than three animatronic marvels (hillbilly bears, presidents) and there will be a gift shop in direct site at least 70% of the time. I've read stories about the massive tunnels under disney world, the survielance everywhere. The rapid response security teams. How they carved out of florida swamp a sterile intellectual wasteland etc.. I mean for christ's sake the place is cleaner than Nova Scotia.
Ok ok disney is in fact the technolgical dystopia that anyone with half an eye open would run screaming from, Duh! that ain't news katz baby.
But here are my problems with this article:
Really, what's so hi-tech? it's mostly smoke and mirrors, some walkie talkies and what have you.
Disney is at the cutting edge of social engineering, they are masters of human group pyschology. They know how to lay out a complex so that the maximum amount of dollars leaves the pockets of the maximum amount of passive people. They know that people don't want to see weirdos. They know what colors are least likely to cause people to freak out and run amok. I can think of a million ways that the people of disney have mastered the herd mentality and the ease of implanting consumer memes in a child's mind. But technology? really? What consumer gadgets? compusa
puts on a good show kid. Don't fool yourself, technology is the least important thing about disneyworld, especially new technology.. We've had closed circuit tv cameras and monorails for a while now.
And if anything I say is used in your open source book great, it's open source right? I'm gonna make my own distro. I'll let you know when to get in on the ipo.
Look, this entire issue can be summed up thus:
Man has a desire to control and change his environment to suit his needs/desires rather than change himself to suit his environment.
Technology? The result of someone wanting to change an aspect of an item normally out of their control. It is NOT tragic, it is a choice to take a different path with different consequences.
As far as all the hoopla about various Utopia being police states, if the people living there want to live under those conditions, who are we to look at them badly? Ok, so I can't wear my 'get rid of the dongle' t-shirt, but perhaps I'm willing to give that up if it also means that the red light district and porn shops no longer exist in MY environment.
Of course others will think I'm not really living, or that I'm raising my children in a barbaric manner. But who are you to deny me the right to change my environemt to suit my needs? If I own an island, I can prevent you from ever entering the scene. You have absolutely no reason to complain about my existance, because, in theory, it does not affect your environment. If you want the 'benefits' I have, you have to live according to my rules as well.
Technology is trading one future for another. Certianly the coal industry causes many deaths that otherwise wouldn't have happened, but if you look at the benefits and the deaths it prevents (steal, electricity, heat, etc) it far outweighs the detriment to society (looking at the few statistics we have at our command. We can't truly evaluate the impact on the atmosphere of the planet, but we know how it has affected the planet, and we can reasonably presume it will continue the same low effects it has for the past 100 years. And yes, we can measure that, Scientists have sealed bottles of air that are decades and centuries old.)
-Adam
P.S. There are serious safety issues concerning Hamburgers.
1. Hamburgers become unstable at high voltages
2. Hamburgers will not stop a high velocity bullet from 1000metres
3. Hamburgers will fail to restrain a crash victim at 120 km/hr
4. Hamburgers are inadequate as a ground proximity warning device in aircraft.
5. Hamburgers are known to have been eaten by 90% of fatal disease suffers.
The list goes on.......
Tragedy:
The Shakespearean tragedy occurs when a fatal character flaw means an unavoiadable
fated downfall. Does technology have a fatal flaw? If so, what is it? Will the
tragedy be a sci-fi style apocalypse? Or something less tangible and dramatic?
Would we be any better off without technology? Or is it humanity that contains
the fatal flaw?
Disney:
Disney Inc. now represents a capitalist regime. It produces cutesy films and a zillion
and one products related to said films.
Walt Disney, however, was an innovative and imaginative human. During his time, Disney
produced animation that was light years ahead. His passion was with the art and what
could be acheived. He bought the best equipment and artists he could find and he
risked trying new things.
Disney Inc. now regularly produces films, that are neither sparklingly imaginative, nor
innovative. Disney is no longer a man, unfortunately, its just another company that
wants to turn a profit.
Technology was used by Walt Disney to it's fullest extent. He pushed it to where he
wanted it to go-- which was on flights of imaginative innovation. Disney Inc, uses
technology, too... but merely as a tool for profit.
Orlando and DisneyWorld:
It's just another American city, with an American theme park. There is a stereotpe of
an American tourist abroad, the type that is generally despised. Not all Americans
are like that... it is a stereotype. But a good number are. They go to some place
in Europe, say, and photograph the tourist trap monuments, comment to eachother how
adventurous they are, and then go look for a McDonalds or Burger King to eat in. They
are not really interested in the country they are visiting. They want the themepark
version. Safe, popularised, and shallow. That is what DisneyWorld is. Orlando is a
city of contradictions... the restaurants are varied and represent flavours from many
parts of the world. (I recall a Lebanese restaurant that was stuck in a random strip
mall, but had extremely authentic and delicious Lebanese food). Beneath that sort of
cosmopolitan exterior was the same old story, though. For instance, in the time I
spent there, I saw only African-Americans working in the "menial" jobs. I doubt
that Walt Disney would be pleased with DisneyWorld or Orlando.
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
..
of the new Katz book.
"So in conclusion, the whole point of technology is to create really large and expensive shopping malls that you have to pay to see."
+&x
That sounds like a fascinating topic!
How about a modern day Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas...only it would be Fear and Loathing in Orlando. You could take a twisted deranged friend with you, load up on all of the high tech gear known to man, and of course take as many mind altering drugs as possible ( in the spirit of HST of course ) then you could compare your technology enhanced views of all of the freaks, lepers and cam-corder totin trolls with your drug enhanced perception... or something like that..
Might not win you any awards, certainly would not be PC, but it would make for an interesting read. Of course you could have the Katz-cam to document it for slashdot.
Just think Jon... you could be the first techo-gonzo journalist.... you could be the HST for the new millenium..go for it Jon..sieze the moment !!
if you need proof that disney does not equal technology ride horizons. Its in epcot right next to innovations.
I worked at epcot innoventions keeping a bunch of their floor systems operational. Innoventions is a superstore and the cast members are sales people thats it. The most impressive thing there is the SGI exhibit, because you get to stand in the presence of a dozen ONYX's
If you want to see some technology in orlando head over to the reaserch park (next to UCF) all kinds of highend simulation stuffs there.
after being dissapointed with your disney experince make sure you make way to islands of adventure and ride the roller coasters and stop at Pat O'Briens before you head to church street.
1. Did I really mispell "tragedy?" Oy. I'm increasingly orthographically challenged. I blame my cell phone.
2. If the question is "what is the least labor intensive way to eat?" then grubbing for wild tubers loses to popping a tray into the microwave. However, if grubbing for wild tubers is the core shared activity of your community, something that you do with your family and friends; if it is the basis of the annual Tuber Festival, and you are participating in building a wonderful effigy of the Great Sacrificial Tuber; if your back and arms are strong from tuber gathering, and the local girls notice and appreciate it; if you can look with satisfaction at a fine tuber, know what type of ground creates what kind of tuber, then... then I would say that you may not, in fact, be made unqualifyingly more happy with the microwave/caffienated peppermint solution.
That is how a problem->technology approach differs from other stances towards life. It isn't about the stuff, it's about the relationships between stuff and people.
The problem is not the technology - even Jon knows that - it's how the evil humans use the technology. Kind of like blaming the guns for violence (no, please - let's not start on gun control.) It all comes down to how humans apply the technology. To anthropomorphize technology into "evil technology" just doesn't cut it.
I left the aerospace industry to work in themed entertainment in 1989 and have since then worked on numerous theme park projects for Orlando, California, and overseas. I can say without fail that the technology involved in 95% of what you seen in a theme park is truly unremarkable and uninteresting compared to an average satellite or jet air craft. Others will certainly disagree, but I am bored to tears with the lack of innovation people even consider when designing new theme parks and attractions. Disney, much more than the others, makes the attempt, but certainly never comes up with anything spectacular.
Motion picture special effects aside (Terminator 2- 3D) everything else still appears to be new applications of tried and true, existing, technology.
In the case of a theme park that's a good thing. Let's remember that these things have to run for at least 12 hours a day - every day. New technology doesn't like to work on a consistent basis or be cheap to repair. Just ask anybody who worked on SARCOS figures for the first five years.
I think you're working on the wrong assumptions for where you're going, but have fun and don't look at the ceiling!
Jack
The camera's that is. I'm from Richardson, but now I live in Fort Collins, CO, where they now have cameras all throughout the city including parked, unmarked police vehicles that take snapshots of speeders and mail them tickets.
oh, and Disneyworld(TM,c,a,t) is very much it's own country. Walt got the state of florida to bend way over when he showed them how much money he was willing to invest and would eventually add to the states economy. IIRC they even have the right to build their own nuclear reactor. here's a quick link
+&x
If I recall my English lit classes, the tragic hero has some sort of tragic flaw. Often it's hubris (Macbeth's belief in his right to rule and his invulnerability), or ignorance (a simple DNA test could have saved Oedipus so much trouble).
Capek's R.U.R. might be the best literary example of techno-tragedy; humanity's downfall is a combination of hubris (believing it can create life better than God or Nature) and ignorance of the consequences of it's invention.
Maybe that's what makes for techno-tragedy - pride made dangerous by ignorance. "Look!" says Man "I have invented refrigeration! Food and medicinces can be preserved! Hot buildings can be made comfortable! Isn't this wonderful!" And it is wonderful - but meanwhile, unknown to him, his refrigerant is eating away the ozone layer that shields him from ultraviolet rays.
Maybe it's technophile hubris to think that the human condition can be fundamentally improved by technology - "we cannot get grace from gadgets," as someone once put it. But on the other hand, we are now developing the technologies that can change what it is to be human - genetic engineering, bio- and nano-tech, cybernetics, things that will not lead to incremental change in the human condition but quite possibly to the end of humanity as we know it.
Maybe we'll just destroy ourselves; but maybe we'll just break out of the chyrsalis and become something more than what we are. Remember that birth to the butterfly looks like death to the catepillar.
The end of our story with technology isn't written yet - it remains to be seen whether it is tragedy, comedy, or romance.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I have yet to see a Katz article that deals with something besides tragedy. The tragedy of being a geek. The tragedy of technology. The tragedy of religion. The tragedy of society.
I've never seen Katz treat a subject objectively. There's always a slant; some bias that leaves little consideration for opposite ideas.
Ok, Rolling Stone thrives on this kind of literature. It's not a mag for the objective-minded person. It is targeted more at the revolutionary whose value system is based in some form of hedonism. It is a place for the contra-voices to vent their ideas when they have been rejected by the people as a whole.
This kind of writing doesn't provoke thought. It provokes emotions. Anger, paranoia, amusement, accord, discord. It is propaganda more than anything else.
If Katz wants an "open source" writing project, he will have to be satisfied with using other people's ideas. It isn't a "Jon Katz" article anymore. It won't have the same feeling. It won't convey the same ideas that Just Jon would convey. It might say things that he doesn't agree with. It might come to a conclusion that he doesn't agree with. And he can't be the only one who decides what gets written and what gets left out. Ultimately, he can't even claim it as "his" work. The writing, compiling, and publishing must be guided by the core contributors.
Well, I don't see any reason to call technology tragic, but Disney (the man) sure is.
Think of it... The man spends his life building a truly creative, magical company -- but when he dies, the company morphs into a media marketing conglomerate, smothering its own tiny creative division to keep it from competing with its own past output.
I didn't realize the extent of its hatred of creative competition until the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension came up. Disney pushed it... hard. The main reason is presumably to keep the image of the Mouse from entering public domain. The side effect is to keep *anything* from entering the public domain for at least 20 years. The cruel irony is so many of their works (Pinocchio, Little Mermaid, Hunchback, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc...) came directly from stories which had been copyrighted, but become free for public use. Well, no more.
And of course Disney's crowning failure came at the very end of his life. The attendant physicians misunderstood his last request, and (alas) instead of preserving his magnificant brain, we now have "Disney on Ice!"
(sorry, couldn't help it!)
Interesting subject you'ev got to play with!
h /search.d2w/Details?&mediaType=Book&prodID =51468039
Part of the problem is that idealism doesn't sell, and idealists don't make good marketers. Selling people what they need is doomed. Selling people what they want is tricky. Selling people what YOU want to sell them is modern business. This is why I fear for linux--selflessness (i.e. OSS) makes it hard to achieve market penetration, and selfishness (i.e. marketing, big money, etc.) tends to warp the product being sold into something that can be easily packaged and written up in a press release.
This is only _specifically_ relevant to technology inasmuch as society is primarily concerned with technology over more traditional markets/values/objects. Let's face it, our society today is almost a technology unto itself.
Before doing any writing, though, you have to read "The Real World of Technology," by Ursula Franklin. Ms. Franklin is a physics prof who gave a series of lectures on the good, bad, and neutral facets of technology and how they are used in (and are affected by) the real day-to-day world. Fascinating and informative reading.
The Real World of Technology:
http://search.borders.com/fcgi-cin/db2www/searc
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
There is a book that delves pretty deep into this subject already -- it is called "Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World".. I read it at Barnes and Noble one day. Both the author and I are Orlando locals, so the book (and Katz's thoughts above) definitely hit home. The book can be purchased from Amazon here. For those of you who have read 1984 and Brave New World, this is (in some ways) a real-world complement.
BTW, I think that calling Disney's technological advances "tragic" is true in many senses.. You really have to have lived in Orlando (esp. in the south west areas) for a number of years to realize this. Everything is so overcapitalized that all sorts of buildings and roads get thrown up very rapidly, leading to a poor infrastructure and just a weird feeling of the place in general. Everybody's just realized that there is a lot of money to be had, so quantity (not quality) seems to be the focus.
In essence, it's not that the technology is tragic, but more that the effects of it are. For lots of examples of this, please get the book above -- it's a very interesting read.
-- Does Rain Man use the Autistic License for his software?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
It isn't about the stuff, it's about the relationships between stuff and people.
Hrm. Take your elysian example; it sounds great. But how about this? Fragging demons is the core shared activity of your community; it is the basis of the annual Quake festival, and you are participating in blowing the shit out of the Big Boss; if your trigger finger grows strong from excessive use of the shotgun, and the local girls notice and appreciate the fact that you were the last to die -- and therefore everyone else pays for your pizza...
Gambolling through the fields may be good fun, but it's not the *only* good fun. Nor is it inherently superior to tech-based fun; it's just been around for longer.
Hey Katz! Welcome to Florida! Say, while you're here: if you hear firecrackers going off - those aren't firecrackers! Hit the dirt!
We have a phenomenally high murder rate down here, in part thanks to Floridians's deep love of guns, in part thanks to our legislators's even deeper love of campaign contributions from the gun-manufacturers's lobby. Tourists (in the colorful native patois we call them "victims") have been murdered inside Disney World before, as well as in every other part of our lovely state, from the rest areas of North Florida to gas stations in Miami, and you can well imagine how severely that impacts corporate profits. The business sections of the local newspapers always print a few articles whenever some punk offs a high-profile tourist (i.e. a foreigner, nobody gives a damn if, for example, an Ohioan gets whacked, we Americans are numb to this sort of thing these days). All the Chamber of Commerce types start calculating the $x-billion potential economic loss to Florida's important tourist trade, and they usually do things like fire up an ad campaign to minimize the public-relations impact of the latest murder. Anyway, in response to all that the Disney World management very reasonably stepped up the surveillance.
In Florida if you want to buy a gun from a gun dealer or a pawn shop, you have to present identification and then wait five days while the Florida Department of Law Enforcement checks to see if you might, for example, have a record of convictions for armed robbery. So far so good; but our legislature built a loophole into the law; so-called "private owners" can sell guns with no ID, no background check, and no wait period. They can do this from their houses, but that's kind of inconvenient for shoppers, so you see these big gun shows, held in public arenas such as the Manatee Civic Center, filled with dozens of booths and tables where these "private owners" practice their quaint cottage industry, legal-loophole gun-running. You can walk into one of these gun shows with the sawn-off halves of the handcuffs you escaped in still on your wrists and a pocket full of cash, and walk out with enough weaponry and ammo to keep the busiest career armed robber in supply for years - well, months, at least.
Have a nice vacation!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
PS: I always feel sorry for those poor tourists who come all the way to Florida and all they get to see are those ghastly, abominable theme parks. Katz, when you've had your fill of brightly-colored plastic, at least try to fit in a few days at one of our beaches. I don't know the Atlantic coast that well; on the Gulf side I recommend Treasure Island and Anna Maria Island. And leave your laptop behind, you won't need it at the beach.
Every time the copyrights on Mickey Mouse get close to expiring, the copyright law is changed to extend the copyright on everything another 30 years or so. They bought up the rights to Winnie the Pooh when it was close to expiring. Then they shook their lawyers at the London Zoo for having the nerve to erect a memorial to one of its own inmates, the original Winnie the Pooh, an actual bear that inspired the stories. They copyright the characters of the public domain stories and thus turn public domain into private property. Interview the Disney people and ask them to open source Mickey Mouse.
Their business operation is known as backward in software, too. They have such a lengthy and bureaucratic software acquisition and approval set-up that they run moldy versions of everything.
As they scrape the bottom of the barrel in kids entertainment (The Hunchback of Notre Dame for kids??? Pocahontas with history completely rewritten??? Bible stories???), they have been branching out into a wide variety of product that you couldn't even get on the TV at a hotel in Disney World. It is scary that these guys control a major network new organization.
For a tragedy of technology, consider the following: When Disney World opened, it used a high-voltage electric fence to keep the deer away. The creator of Bambi kept out the deer with high voltage!
As for "bringing in" alcohol, it predates written civilization. Every culture has discovered it on their own long ago.
I agree with everything you said except this. Native Americans did not have alcohol until we came to North America.
That's why there is a higher percentage of alcoholism, in europe people with bad alcoholism genes were most likely just bred out of the gene pool over hundreds of years.
... but I do not think this is an attempt to be misleading at all. No one is being taken advantage of.
If you do not want to contribute... then don't.
Easy solution.
I do agree that within the confines of our particulary technological abilities, there are avenues for community etc. I like your choice of metaphor.
And, please understand, a Technological stance is not the same as existing in a technological-rich environment. One can have the technological stance and access only to simple machines, or alternatively, as you've described, one can inhabit a world as found in a technological era with a stance that is more human scaled.
Some major differences are this:
1. in your scenario, we are talking about a recreational activity that is designed to be amusing, but is probably of limited duration, is partitioned off of the world of work and sustinence. It doesn't actually encompass the horizon of your activities (from the perspective of what I brazenly, in light of the response I suspect it will get here, will call a post-modern episteme, this could be seen as a feature, not a bug); it's more analogous to a high-tech game of kick-the-can.
But I still see you as not distinguishing between technology as local problem-solving, which of course exists as much in tuber-gatherers as in Quake Clans, and Technology as a redemptive stance.
The potato analogy is interesting here: I'm Peruvian, you're Irish. We gave you the potato. You're welcome.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
not that close to first post!!!!
It is rather tourist-centric to equate Disney and Orlando, and completely ludicrous to choose Orlando as the place to study the "tragedy of technology." Not that Orlando doesn't merit study. It's a disaster of a place in so many ways; chain restaurants and strip malls and traffic and subdivisions and sprawl in every direction and basically no capital-C culture to speak of. This has little to do with technology and a lot to do with money, the South, and politics.
I don't know much about heterotopias, but panopticon, it definitely is. Quick gloss on the term, for anyone who's not familiar-- a panopticon, or panoptic system, is basically a place where you might be under observation at any time, but you can never truly know. Foucault took the word from the prison design work of Jeremy Bentham, who proposed a prison architecture where all the cells were arranged in a huge cylinder around a central observation tower. The prisoners couldn't really see each other, and they couldn't see into the observation tower, but anyone in the observation tower could see into any cell at any time, and in great detail, with the aid of binoculars.
So what happens is, you encourage a sense of constantly being watched in the prisoners. They might not be being watched at any given moment, but they always could be under observation. So they would tend to be self-policing, thereby reducing the number of actual guards you should need.
This general trick has been pulled off in many different contexts, including of course, Disney theme parks. Hence the rumors that the guys in costume might be security, and the fact that there are... or could be cameras watching every square inch of the parks. Whether there are or not doesn't even matter. It works as long as people believe they could be under observation at any time.
This is probably also familiar to many of you as a main feature of society in 1984. The population was totally self-policing because they simply believed that they could be under observation at any time. And with just a little bit of effort, the authorities could easily maintain that impression.
Jon, if you really do plan to write this book, you're going to have to make a herculean effort to make it worth reading. Many people who are way smarter than you have dealt with this topic before, so please don't waste everybody's time by writing up a little vacation and pretending you did something worthwhile.
Be sure, especially, you've read Jean Baudrillard's pieces about Disney, including The DisneyWorld Company, and... umm, he has a book that is primarily about Disney, I think, but the name is escaping me.
Anyway, good luck.
----
Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of colors shapes and sounds
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Too many people with the root password -- now THAT'S a problem!
The only thing more tragic than technology is the lack of technology.
After your trip to Orlando you ought to vist at least two other places, a second world country like Korea, where they have technolgy, but not as much of it as Orlando, and your favorite country in Central or 1Northern Africa where they have little.
Technology is a huge force for good in the world, and all you have to do to see that is go somewhere where they don't have it. At least read "Holidays in Hell" by your colleuge P.J. O'Rouak.
You've hit on the other "tragedy" in technology, at least as it's applied here: It makes life better for those who have it, but in many cases worse for those who don't. Technology is elitist in many ways, and that is part of the tragedy.
----- Leghorn "Not responsible for program content"
I understand that nearly everything I do and don't do affect you in some way or another. But the point I was making in that paragraph still stands true:
For instance, there is a small island in polynesia which has its own society and governing system. Should they choose to limit the availability of microsoft product, given that it is an island of under 200 people, it will have an insignificant effect on you and your environment.
So little, in fact, that you would have little reason to try and change their environment. We can assume that if they choose to change their environment in a way that crosses boundaries (physical, social, political, cultural or other) then it will affect other's environments. This is the case when you state, "burning toxic waste in your fireplace does affect your neighbors."
-Adam
But I still see you as not distinguishing between technology as local problem-solving, which of course exists as much in tuber-gatherers as in Quake Clans, and Technology as a redemptive stance.
That's because I'm not convinced that there is a difference. Technology as a redemptive stance (if I understand you correctly) is a manifestation of our never being happy with what we've got; problem solving is essentially the same thing. There's no point in solving a problem unless you get something out of it, be it a potato, a new car or a feeling of smugness. And however smug you feel, you know that it's only a matter of time before some smartarse eclipses your wonderful achievement, and you've got to do it all over again.
And I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but if we'd had better spuds 150 years ago, there's tens of millions of fewer Americans claiming to be Irish despite having never been nearer to the republic than Nantucket.
sounds interesting. it makes me think of the Charlie Chaplin movie "Modern Times". In the long term, humanity will stop being slaves to technology - perhaps live in harmony with it. Theres a big cycle of natural existance with and withcou tech, we're stuck somewhere in the middle.
Technology is a name we give to the greatest achievements of the human race. It is the physical manifestation of an incredible evolutionary process, our own creativity and intelligence. Technology has marked the upward surge of mankind since we first learned to heat our caves with fire.
The downside is that fire burns people too. Steel can be made into bridges or swords. Splitting an atom results in energy - to run our computers or to destroy our cities. This dichotomy is the tragedy Mr. Katz alluded to.
I have been fascinated with all things technological since before I can remember. I fully embrace technology. In my opinion, a civilization capable of the thought required to create a personal computer or a space shuttle has a fighting chance to survive the inherent dangers. To this end, I remain optimistic.
Walt Disney World is a fascinating microcosm. It what happens when you apply capitalism to a pure idea... for better or for worse. I can't wait to read the book.
What is 'flamebait'? And why do you all tolerate a clueless poser, like this Jon Katz fellow? Reminds of John Dvorak!
"When you feel the winds of change, build a windmill, not a windbreak." "When you feel the winds of change, build a
Authors in whom you might be interested are David Ehrenfeld and Wendell Berry. They approach the technology issue from a slightly different direction, which also applies to tourism. Technology demands that people travel and depend on far flung sources for education, food, just about everything. This expansion of individual worldview has some excellent side effects - people learn to accpet new cultures, overcome bigotry, branch out. Unfortunately, it also severs connection to place. This has greatest effect on developing countries since the materials they produce, often at high health and environmental cost, are shipped to consumers who have no concept of their origins. How does this relate to Disney? It adds a new dimension. Where do those who run Disney live? What kind of connection do they have to Orlando? It is no wonder that Orlando has become a tourist town. Disneyworld and EPCOT were plunked down into the swamp, like foreign objects, and thus the community that grew around them was inherently foreign to Florida. Having driven through Florida, I have been startled by the transitions - pig farms and migrant workers one minute, thrill rides and shows the next. Disney, the man, had a beautiful vision that you could build utopia anywhere. Add the right elements into the machine and 'plunk' out comes a community. Technology obscured the fact that strong communities grow from native elements, while transplants die in the new soil. Just an idea
King Gillette (Gillette razor fame) planned a Utopian like city based around the 'new' technology of hydro generated power.
A quick visit to the 'Falls' and you can see the results.
One of the first modern corporate towns was also attracted to the seemily unlimited supply of new technology. That town is known as Love, of love Canal fame.
Will 'our' new technology fair any better? The one common historical thread seems to be that the grand ideas were all egocentric, based on one mans vision. Perhaps because 'our' new technology can enhance the knowledge and power of the masses, we may see a collective force emerge pushing us to new Utopia. Then again we could just see more banner ads.
Made in the Dark -- mitd@mitd.com
mitd -- Made in the Dark
"One good thing about spam... You don't gotta answer it"
I'd say that societies are basically non-uniform and therefore have conflicts within themselves. As the group dynamics change over time you'll see that the living culture changes with its surroundings. This shifting reflects itself in its architecture, building planning and so forth.
Seeing Epcot a few years back reminded me strongly of a high-tech version of the big city expansion plans in the early nineties that everybody basically detested, but moved into because property was cheap.
Nowadays these city parts are emptying out as more people feel they need a sense of individuality, a way of living that expresses themselves instead of the ideas of the architect that planned the whole area.
I find something very amusing about Kats.
It has to do with the way he forms paragraphs.
I've never read any of his literature outside of slashdot so I don't know if it's just an internet thing.
However, I have never seen so many poorly choosen paragraphs before.
Ohh well.
--[shangodee]
If you want to see technology maybe you should go to LA or San Jose. It seems like all the few IT people who actually survive in Fl*rida want to do is wear business suits and write with gold plated pens but it is by no means a technology hub. With all the credit Orlando gets for having all kinds of multimedia attractions there are really no jobs in computer multimedia anything out here. I have a feeling everything you see in Orlando is developed in LA or San Jose and trucked to Fl*rida where MSEE's staff the ticket booths and CS PhD's serve the hot dogs.
NO JOHN!!!! dont go!!! florida is a myth, old people run off the south end of georgia and into the sea like lemmings. dont get caught in the tide
Give katz a break perhaps he has adopted Sun's licence:)
"There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics and religion, by convincing others we convince ourselves" -Junius
The problem is, you Irish just took ONE variety of potato and planted it everywhere: the variety that has the biggest yields, but is the least tolerant of drought.
In Peru, there are well over a hundred varieties of potato, adapted to different types of terrain, climate, and altitude. The various Andean people there learned over time and communicated via lore the advantages and disadvantages of all the different varieties, and also means of preserving potatoes for years of famine (such as freeze-drying.)If the Europeans had actually dealt with the Andean people as an authentic culture, instead of as a nuisance people that temporarily stood between them and a resource they wanted, and had actually bothered to *learn* from them, then the Irish potato famine might never have happened.
(I also recall there being geopolitical factors in the famine, but I suppose you could elaborate on them better than I could.)
So, dont blame us!
The above anti-gun diatribe is neither factual nor on topic. ( Yes I too think the moderators are biased)
Federal Law (Brady Bill, etc.) has the most effect on FL gun sales.
And since Florida gun sales laws are similar to California's, then what does say about DisneyLand vs. DisneyWorld?
Therel Moore
Austin,TX
Reality is just a clever Hack, and the Planck constant is the refresh rate.
A better word than tragic might be "trade-off". All engineering is a trade-off, whether it be design decisions or the all-things-considered utility of a product. If utopia is somehow equated with a "free lunch", then there is no utopia. All technologies have associated problems, but as for the big picture, as the previous poster implied, it's too bad we can't all walk a mile in our ancestor's shoes so we'd better appreciate what we have now.
I went out to eat at a greasy spoon in Orlando, when I was attending SIGGRAPH in 1994.
In some ways it was a typical ma & pop family diner. Our waitress looked like Flo's grandmother, chubby, big white hair, greasy apron.
The place was accented in orange and brown, and had awful yellow lighting to make everything feel just right. Sticky vinyl seats, and textured vinyl table cloths. There was a cigarette machine in the lobby and slow moving ceiling fans up above, but it was still stifling hot even though it was raining outside.
The strangest dichotomy was that this old woman who was serving us took our order using a wireless handheld keypad that communicated directly to the kitchen.
It was the highest tech in an extra low tech restaurant. It was cool, and this old woman showed us the handheld unit without interest. To her it was just this THING.
All the wait staff had been using them for years, and to her it was no different than a check pad and a pen, but to our gang of technical gear heads eating at the restaurant, it was definitely the coolest thing since sliced cheese.
All that, and the food tasted no better, and the service was no faster than any other greasy spoon.
This leaves those of us who both feel and think in a strange situation, of course. I can't help feeling that "Disneyland" and its ilk (the earliest, I think, may have been Coney Island's theme parks?) is a peculiarly American phenomenon; as is the idealization of sentimentalism. (Being sentimental is a sin: being satisfied with i.e., feeling sorry for someone instead of going further and helping out with the situation.)
No, sorry -- come to think of it, I believe there were pleasure gardens in Copenhagen, and some part of London, during especially decadent ages in which, as in our own age, those who couldn't afford to live an amused life were felt to be inferior.
Also, please consider, the problem with almost all utopian-dreamers is that they start from "scratch." There's always just been a nuclear war, or they're somehow marooned on a desert island, or something. It's a lot harder to get where we want to go -- if we even know where that is -- from where we actually are!
So, it's no coincidence that only certain persons are entirely welcome at places like Disneyland. But technology, although it comes in waves for different strata of society, is generally *intended* for social use, by persons generally. There seems to be some dichotomy here... does Disneyland (et al) have "users?" Technology is also, once absorbed by all strata, "transparent" to its users. But this would never even be acceptable at Disneyland, et al.
When you say tragic, I have the feeling you're talking more about Greek Tragic than Plane-Crash tragic.
I think this is precisely right. He's saying, if I understand, that Technology has a price and great Technologies have great prices. With every new way, and old way comes to the end. To say something is "tragic" is not necessarily a simple negative value assessment.
I disagree with Katz, but (apparently unlike a lot of people) not because I don't understand or because I think he's slighting Technology.
I am willing to agree that technology is tragic only via the equation " Life is tragic. Technology is an abstraction of life."
"Life" used above means "The Human Condition". It is impossible to separate Technology out of The Human Condition. The Human Condition (according to many philosophers and poets) is tragic; ergo Technology, as a reflection, an expression, an abstraction of the Human Condition, must be tragic.
We are what we do; we are how we do it. We are our Technology.
P.S. I don't see how Katz is going to find endings and beginings in such a carefully timeless place as Disney.
----------------------------------------------
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Disney's most visible technological showpieces often had to do with transportation. He understood that packing too many humans into a small space caused problems; that people weren't tempermentally suited to it. His generation's solution to the problem of overcrowding in the cities was to spawn suburbs (i.e. dilution). The resulting transportation problems begged for technological solutions... and his visionaries produced.
Disney then displayed these technological marvels in parks where people were packed into a space too small for comfort with thousands of strangers. Instead of applying the "suburb and transportation" model inside the parks, Disney used far more subtle technologies to allow people to rub up against one another with less friction, less rage.
It appears to me that the urban plan of the future is to re-centralize cities. Better and better roads/rail/etc. have just caused more sprawl and the result is that the capacity of those roads/rails/etc. has been saturated, usually as soon as they are built. Now the move appears to be the other way. For example, the techniques of traffic calming (at least how it's practiced in this corner of Canada) seem aimed at making the commute sufficiently intolerable that it will discourage folks from seeking "the good life" in the 'burbs, thus reducing traffic, pollution, etc.
Personally, I usually find crowds to be intolerable. I found Disney{land|world} to be crowded, but tolerable. But on my last trip to Disney, on a hot, August afternoon, I took a break and ate in a (simulated) New Orleans cafe with (simulated) stars in a clear, (simulated) sky, while (live) music played softly from a balcony and (live) people in boats drifted by on a (simulated) stream. Despite the presence of the (simulated) swamp, nearby, there were no (simulated or real) mosquitoes. It was a beautiful example of total environmental control (light, season, location, sound, temperature, insects, etc.) not dissimilar to the contrived environments at the Museum of Civilization (Hull, Quebec) or the Museum of Natural History (Winnipeg, Manitoba).
They had produced an environment that calmed. That soothed. That manipulated me into thinking that I wasn't in a crowd.
And it did it by applying some heavy duty (and nearly invisible) technology, and applying it well.
-Eldurbarn
If you really watched Matrix 20+ times, I don't think you'll actually enjoy the book, because it is not about the themes you probably liked about the movie.
Essentially, it's a sociological text about the proliferation of pseudo-experiences to replace real experience - of the creation of Lollapaloozas to replace Carnivals and festivals, of the use of media to replace the normal patterns of desire and fulfillment. It's rather cerebral, a bit obscurantist in its style, and probably not that interesting to most techie-geeks, unless they are already interested in and reasonably educated in the liberal arts.
The relationship to the movie is that it postures the film as a criticism of a mediated society.
If, by some quirk, you are interested still, I also recommend the works of the Situationist International, particularly Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle.
Visiting Disney to get a view of Orlando is like visiting New Jersey to get a view of Wall Street.
...except Newark is closer to Wall Street than Disney is to most of Orlando.
If you want a high-tech theme park, go to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. The Spider-Man ride, for example.
If you want high-tech business and a look at how people will be working a few years from now, go to a large trade show at the half-mile-long Orange County Convention Center and get a look backstage.
You also need to see Lake Eola. Late afternoon. Part of the reason Orlando got that "City Beautiful" nickname. Go see it, then have some dinner and hit the club scene on a weekend. (Not Church Street- the club district north of there).
Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971) is the case you're probably thinking of. In Cohen, the court ultamately held that the government had no business regulating the "manners and taste" that an individual chose to express himself, absent a compelling gov't interest (i.e. Cohen's desire to incite disobedence to draft registration).
I had a friend whose child started crying because she wanted to go on a certain ride, and was not allowed to. Within seconds multiple "undercover mouse police" (as we here in florida like to call them) surrounded him and his daughter, and rushed them into a van. They were then interrogated and released. Also, there are many hidden security devices, such as video cameras with facial recognition. Don't believe me? Commit a major felony and just try walking in there! Many more people than you think actually work for disney.
Another one who thinks just because he sleeps in a certain location every night that its "HIS" town. Hey buddy, you ever hear of relocation? Take a tip for life: Practice tolerance and understanding. This is the one whos gonna call the police because someone just walked funny across his nice, fresh cut grass. Go back to the rock you crawled under.
I lived in Orlando and the surrounding areas for close to 20 years. It's a strange mix of moderate intellegence and backwater livin'.
I'll definately have to read this when it comes out, to see how accurately (in my eyes) Mr. Katz can portray the Orlando/theme park/research park metro area.
Ah man...why you gotta talk about your brother like that?
while technology is important, I think Katz overstates it's importance by calling it the "most powerful...driving social force in the modern world." It is just a tool Jon, unless you meant society's overblown preoccupation with and dependance on technology(I doubt it).
My advice, do your reseach but make sure you get plenty of fresh air and some genuine fun while down there. I think in a few years books about technology will be overshadowed by books about the timeouts in between checking e-mail, debugging code and getting the Encyclopedia Shaternica from Amazon, i.e. the parts of life you have to hold technology at bay (not ebay) for a while to catch your breath.
If I had more time, I could write a shorter post
well...
...you can do the math for yourself.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
> Given our current ways of doing things, we can't manufacture *anything* without those problems. That's not so much a problem of "technology" as it's usually understood as a problem of social organization. Anyway; the Viridian project is an interesting attempt to repair technology's fatal flaw. It's worth looking into. http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/index.asp?=go%21&t =13 _
>
1 &t=13
Given our current ways of doing things, we can't manufacture *anything* without those problems.
That's not so much a problem of "technology" as it's usually understood as a problem of social organization.
Anyway; the Viridian project is an interesting attempt to repair technology's fatal flaw. It's worth looking into.
http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/index.asp?=go%2
_
Two recent things on Celebration strike incredible humour with me...
1) Celebration was designed to be this nice, homogenised community of the future...and reportedly the school system is in an uproar because two groups of parents are darn near ready to go to fisticuffs over how the school system should be run and whether the style of education being done there is good or whether they should go back to a more "traditional" form of education rather than hands-on stuffle.
2) Celebration was basically built from a swamp and designed basically so humans could "rise above nature with the hope of new technology". And many people are VERY pissed because, well, it seems Celebration is now being overrun with (ironically, of all things) mice. Thousands of mice, in fact. To the point where people are trapping upwards of 20-70 mice PER DAY. The Health Board in Florida is very worried that a breakout of some nasty mouse-borne disease like Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome ("Four Corners Disease"--something like 80 percent of people who get it die, usually from suffocating in their own lung fluids...not fun). Most experts think between a swamp being drained, refilled, the massive development in the Orlando area in the past 20 years, and a rather bad turn of weather including droughts, it's driven the mice in proportions near a mouse-plague right into Celebration and other communities nearby...in other words, Walt Disney and co. helped throw things JUST out of balance enough that the "community of the future" is being overrun by *snicker* MICE.
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
You can't get paid for the article and you can't get paid for any book that might come from it. Not only that, but you have to provide the notes to your essay and book and pay for their distribution to anyone and everyone that wants them. That would be Open Source writing. If ya don't like it, go to China... oh, wait... Esperandi
Well, I live very close to Orlando. My family moved here before I did, back in January. For our local phone service, we have Sprint instead of Bell South, which struck me as kind of odd. My family told them we needed three phone lines installed in the house. When they finally moved in, they found out that not only hadn't the three phone lines been installed, but no phone line at all. My mother managed to make a call from a neighbor's house and complained to Sprint. It turned out that Sprint had no idea how to install three phone lines in one house, so they just didn't try. And they didn't bother to leave a note or anything. Ain't that a tragedy of some sort? Anyway, my mother bitched at them and got them to come out and at least install one phone line in the meantime while their engineers figured it all out.
I lived, worked, and studied in Orlando for six, too long, years. Then one day. I suddenly woke up and realized--OH My God where am I!!!! Orlando is a very very strange city. The actual city of Orlando is relatively small, its really surrounded by a couple much larger counties where most of the fun stuff takes place. But for the sake of this post, lets call Orlando and its surrounding countines: Orlando. Please for give the odd fragmented style of the post, I'm half asleep.... I suggest before you go to Orlando you prepare yourself for a major ontological and epistemological reorientation. Orlando is not Disney. But yet it is not totally different. As far as technology is concerned, there is very little hi-tech in Orlando itself. But rather, most of the hi-tech can by found in the surrounding counties. East of Orlando you have the University of Central Florida, the UCF-Research Park (IST, SEIC, At&t, Westinghouse), Lookheed-Martin, STRICOM headquaters (army simulation guys), and vairous other smaller development houses mostly contracters and people involved in the simualtion industry.
You want _me_ (as a reader of Slashdot, not 'me in particular') to help you write an article for Rolling Stone, at which point you'll traipse off to Orlando, weep into your powerbook at the horrors of obsessive Disney street-cleaning, and attempt to parlay your imaginary counterculture status into increased status and influence with Rolling Stone? ;) )
What's wrong with this picture? I'll tell you, as _another_ person who has seen print all over the world (and yes, I was read in Australia before I was posting to the internet- as an audio writer). The problem is simply this: if you expect to deserve such massive distribution, you had damned well better have something of your own to say. Period. If the best you can do is troll for story ideas on Slashdot, the Stone will spike your proposal in favor of new Spice Girl gossip, and so they should. This is the turn of the millenium, and the people you talk to at RS are quite capable of trawling Slashdot themselves, finding people who write more clearly and passionately than you do, and sending those people to Orlando in your place. I'm sure there are at least eight Slashdotters who could do a better job writing a feature on turn-of-the-century plastic communities, and I daresay I'm one of them. (Can't go, sorry Jann
Jon Katz, if you have to ask us Slashdotters for ideas on your Rolling Stone article proposal, you don't deserve to write one. You don't lack for hot air, why on earth are you turning to Slashdot for more of it? Is it that you intend to pitch the feature idea to Rolling Stone with a heavy emphasis on its being 'open source writing'? If so, you're not merely a fool, you are scum, trying as hard as you can to exploit the Slashdot community for personal gain. God help you if that's the truth: certainly your previous exploits would tend to suggest it. Are you in fact going to these people, these publications, saying 'Hire me, give me some articles- I speak for the geek community, I have write access to Slashdot.org, I am their _mouthpiece_'? Are you in fact pitching these ideas to the editors on the basis that it's not just you, but that they are buying a whole website worth of unpaid geek underground? To what extent does your access and affiliation with slashdot get used in these talks?
No dystopian tour of Central Florida is complete without a visit to "Xanadu", located on US 192 near 535, in Kissimmee. It was built in the mid 70's as a vision of what the house of tomorrow might look like. Today, it's just one of the many wasted, decaying tourist traps along that rotten thoroughfare. It's been closed for almost ten years, you can't go in. You can still marvel at it's extremely dated spray-on foam dome construction, and perhaps peer in through the windows.
While you are there, check out the Big Bamboo lounge, across the street. Though it's in the heart of tourist district, no tourist would dare enter this place. It's decorated like a Philippine whorehouse from WWII. Disney "cast members" have adopted it as their own, the walls are covered with oval name tags. No food is served there, but if you buy enough alcohol, they'll let you order out for pizza.
Have you read the book Technopoly, by Neil Postman? A bit overzealous but very appropriate to what you are thinking here. The book describes the social changes brought on by the rise of technology, and the positive and negative things that have arisen from that. The author makes some very provocative points.
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
I've lived in Orlando for a while -- hate to burst your bubble, but you're overreacting, overstating, and blowing (way) out of proportion what Orlando really is. A book? Try a 5 paragraph essay. Why not go to Vegas instead?
I think maybe 'tragedy' is in the eye of the beholder. Heat and electricity are good, but go to the "WORLD'S LARGEST MCDONALDS!!!!" in Orlando, and watch the aging Brits wait in line after line for a fetid quarter-pound of meat on a stale bun. The tragedy is that the idea of "WORLDS LARGEST MCDONALDS!!!!" is more important to these people than edible food product. The same is true of everything in O-town. It's all hype, whiz, glitz, etc. At the end of the day people didn't really have a lot of fun; but they have a little litany of words and photos to impress the folks back home. And sadly, the folks back home *are* impressed, so next year they'll be here, standing in line, fighting for next year's crop of McMeat.
Witness also the tattered "T-2" billboards on I-4. It was such a huge project; the massive "T-2" ride at Universal (or MGM or whatever studio-thrill-ride-company). It's still there, depreciating away before the accountants' eyes, but nobody gives a rat's ass about T-2 anymore... after the hype-fest is over, it's just another aging hunk of junk.
If you want to see how much the mouse has effected people and landscaping just drive west on I-4 from Orlando to Tampa. Pay close attention to the High-Tension electric poles....THEY ARE IN THE SHAPE OF MOUSE EARS!!!
Also, if you are a resident of FL you can get the custom mouse liscense plates from the State of Fl, remember that these are legal liscense plates and not a souvenir.
Disney even has their own laws and the park is governed separately from the actual city of Orlando. They have their own laws, their own fire department. I know this first hand. A friend of mine got pulled over by the mouse land police, who by the way have mouse ears included as part of their badges. My friend was going 65mph in a 60, and his ticket was somewhere around $95, that was to be paid to the mouse and not the city of Orlando. When he went to pay the ticket at the mouse land police station, it was a replica of the castle in the Magic Kingdom. Isn't that taking it a bit too far.
Anyway, if you get away from the mouse long enough to enjoy Orlando for what it is. (a party town) I think that you will have a good time. If you get the chance Katz, try to make your way up to the corner of University Blvd. and SR 436 and stop by the Orlando Ale House. Go in order a beer or whatever you like to drink, and get the Chicken Nacho's to eat. When you are done eating, get all GQ'ed out and make your way downtown on Orange Ave. and hit the clubs. If I can suggest one it would be Firestone or Zuma Beach. Trust me, if they are still the hoppin places that they used to be you will have a good time.
-have fun in O-Town
force_ViNnY
http://www.computer-gfx.com
If you want a high-tech theme park, go to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. The Spider-Man ride, for example.
Ah, yes, Spider-Man. Ride vehicles on a motion base and on-board audio coupled with sophisticated 3D film, fire and water effects, and a simulated 400-foot freefall. It's the best theme park ride I've ever been on.
Technologically incredible it is, but it's also astonishingly temperamental. This past weekend I rode Spider-Man twice -- it broke down three times while I was there (two times while I was waiting in line, once while I was actually riding.) The third time I tried to ride, the whole thing was shut down "for at least a half an hour" according to the college student guarding the entrance. She admitted to me "there's a problem with the ride they've never seen before." On one hand, this is a new kind of ride and there hasn't been any real precedent for it, so they know not what to expect, but on the other hand, witnessing the truly aggravating downtimes can affect guests negatively. On the third hand, it's just a freakin' incredible ride .
The rest of IOA's ride complement is equally amazing. The Dueling Dragons coaster features two trains that are weighed as they are dispatched and the lift hill speeds adjusted accordingly, so that they leave the top of the lift at the same time. This is no "dispatch one and wait a few seconds" guesswork here. This is on-the-fly. And when the trains drop at the same time, they're set up for three near-misses on the track layout. As an added bonus, if you stand at the right place outside the ride, you see all three near-miss points perfectly lined up.
The Hulk coaster uses a tire drive to launch the train with an acceleration nearly topping that of an aircraft carrier's launch. Tires!
(I'll add right now that the major roller coasters at IOA were designed by Bolliger & Mabillard, a Swiss firm whose innovative coaster designs are exceptional. They're pure geniuses from an engineering standpoint. They devised the first inverted coaster, the first "floorless" coaster, and almost all of their coasters ride glass-smooth.)
IOA is an example of how to use technology in an entertainment context for the forces of good. IOA doesn't claim to manufacture precious family memories, as Disney wants to do (really - watch the Disney commercials. All they want to do is make sure you exchange enough money for family togetherness and "magical memories that last a lifetime.") That's new-age bullshit. Islands of Adventure takes your money and lets you go crazy in a fully-immersive themed environment.
Some might argue this isn't right, that this kind of artificial reality is not needed. And in a way, they're right. Disney's artificial reality strives to be real - the World's Fair schlock that is EPCOT, the "African safai adventures" of Animal Kingdom. This from the company that fully believes that when a college student puts on that Donald Duck suit, he or she is, for all intents and purposes, THE Donald Duck.
IOA has artificial reality, but it's different. It strives to be fantastical. This I can deal with a bit more, seeing as how I've never personally been in a comic book or a bustling Greco-Arabian-Medieval marketplace. The only place they really do blur the line between escapism and controlled artificial reality is at Jurassic Park, where they sincerely want you to believe the dinosaurs are alive and can be replicated through DNA techniques already in place. This is quite dangerous and IOA blows it in that regard -- the first "dinosaur" we saw on the River Adventure this weekend was broken and just sat there, unmoving, in the water.
Other effects at IOA, though, are astounding. A group of my geekier friends sat around after witnessing "Poseidon's Fury" and discussed the details behind the swirling water vortex you step through and the show's ending, which for the sake of spoilers I'll say involves a very very extensive set change in a very very short amount of time. Silently.
All in all, it's one heck of a place, and just watching them iron the kinks out is fascinating. Disney is being given a run for its money -- finally. The Mouse House was lazy and complacent, secure in its #1 ranking. IOA's expensive technological marvels are grabbing at Disney's bottom line. You can see Disney try to recoup this gap in thrill rides by adding the Rock & Roller Coaster to their MGM Studios park (speaking of MGM, the ride program on the Tower of Terror is changed. I'm impressed by the fact that the drop sequences can be rearranged on whim, and randomly selected for each ride. It's fun.)
But right now, in terms of sheer amusement value and complex technology being used just to entertain, IOA rules. There are a million other things to do in Orlando, some of which don't involve giving a red cent to the tourist trade. But on the other hand, I went expressly for the theme parks and the experience they could provide. At Universal, I wasn't disappointed.
FEED magazine had an article (one of their Deep Read features) some time ago on this very subject. The article addressed the contention that tragedy as a persuasive literary form has been eliminated from modern day literature (everything since Shakespeare's King Lear) due to the influence of technology. One definition of Tragedy, according to the literary types who study this stuff for a living, is at its core related to deistic beliefs: In tragedy God's (perhaps uncaring) shadow falls over Man - the results are tragic. The Greeks celebrated the tragic form in theater, King Lear, according to some, is the last great triumph for tragedy. Technology's obvious role, according to this line of reasoning, is the diminuation of deistic beliefs and the belief that God(s) do(es) not influence our daily lives. This has been an open source of contention between technologists/scientists and the Church(es) since before the days of Gallileo (though he is a famous example).
Following this line of reasoning, one can argue that today, tragedy has been reduced to bumper sticker slogans like "shit happens" rather than King Lear's, "Like flies to wanton boy are we to the Gods. They kill us for their sport." One can argue that this change in world view is due to a coarsening of the level discourse in society, but in my view its really a reflection of influence of technology and science on the worldview of mankind.
Is this a loss for mankind? I dunno. I don't feel a personal sense of loss and I think there's plenty of tragedy that needn't involve God. But perhaps the flavor of modern day tragedy is different than that of King Lear or Oedipus. Perhaps our view of the universe as an essentially stochastic process alters (harms?) what lies at the core of our humanity.
This is a very interesting topic that you have chosen. But I'll be 100% Honest, if you want to know the true story of Technology and Disney, you need to talk to people that have Lived in Orlando for Years, and People that used to work for Disney (Which are a dime a Dozen).
... good luck driveing there tourist! ... lock and load ... :) ] But if you look at downtown, we are Very underdeveloped as far as technology goes. Orlando is usually the last major City to get anything. We are a bandwagon city. For some reason the Corperate world is afraid to test market us, we just have to wait till it works other places first.
They will tell you about the Mind washing, and the Little things that Disney does to you to get you to 'BUY MORE!' and 'KEEP COMING BACK' etc. Some of these concepts even tho they are so simple, they are very shocking. The underground Towns for the workers, and the security.. I guess thats where all the technology has gone in the last 10 - 15 years.. But, I hear these stories every day, and they have grown old, But I think that is where you'll find the ture teschnology.
HOWEVER, Disney is NOT in orlando, orlando is a 10min Rollar Coaster on I4 away or a 1hour Parking lot on I4 away... [
Another thing you totally forgot to touch on in your article is NASA. The Cape is Just as far from Downtown as Disney is. And UCF is Just down the road there to. They are the leading reasearch facility for Lasers, and fibre optic communication [CREOL] . Thats where the technology is, not in some mouse hole... So What I'm Questioning, is your article on Disney, and why when you go back there your not as amazed as when you were a Kid... OR The city of Orlando and Technology.