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The Imagineer Who Came In From The Cold
"Why is it that the philosophy of technology has never really gotten underway? Why has a culture so firmly based on countless philosophical instruments, techniques, and systems remained so steadfast in its reluctance to examine its own foundations?" -- Langdon Winner.
ORLANDO -- Good question, one I'm trying to answer in a magazine article, and if that pans out, maybe a book. I came to Orlando because I couldn't imagine a better place to look. I asked for help on Slashdot the other day and got a great outpouring of help, links, ideas, questions (including a lunch invitation from a local Linux group) and a striking e-mail from a man who identified himself as a genuine gee-whiz Disney Imagineer.
Even by the reckonings of my own spectacular relationship with technology, this encounter was odd: a genuine, in-the-flesh Imagineer working (for the moment) in Orlando, who is a fanatic Linux geek and regular Slashdot reader. The Net is a world of surprises.
The Imagineer had e-mailed me after I posting my column asking for help in what I consider an open source writing experiment. The Imagineer reeled off the details of an impressive career. He is responsible for some pretty impressive stuff, none of which I can describe.
"Why Linux?" I couldn't help asking. "I'm bored with everything else," he e-mailed. This, I well understand by now, is an enduring geek strain: the eternal fight to fend off boredom.
The Imagineer loved talking about technology, he said, but he was sure I understood that The Mouse was "touchy" about unauthorized encounters with journalists. And yes, they did seem to know almost everything that went on in their world. He needed a promise of strict confidentiality.
So we met in the best clandestine manner - on a concrete bench halfway between Exxon's "Universe Of Energy" and the closed "Horizons" pavilion. The only people going by were the kids on their way to the "GM Test Track," and they couldn't have cared less about a couple of middle-aged men sitting on a bench trading official secrets. Strange, Enya-like New Age music poured from a cactus.
The Imagineer recognized me, as we had arranged, from my fading Yankees baseball cap. I spotted him by his ... well, I can't say how I spotted him.
The meeting reminded me of one of those scenes in the LeCarre Cold War thrillers where spies gathered across from "Checkpoint Charlie" and at other secret rendezvous' in pre-90's Berlin. The scene was strange to begin with: uplifting Millenial music, as many wheelchairs as strollers, and hundreds of each; Monorails whispering overhead, cars roaring froma nearby test track; a babble of diverse races, nationalities and origins. The space had the feel of a 50's vision of an Intergalactic space station. Nowhere is nostalgia for the future more evident than here.
So there we were, sitting across a manicured, empty stretch of EPCOT center, munching strawberry fruit bars, gassing happily back and forth about books we'd read and ideas we'd heard, disturbed only by a lengthy column of electric wheelchairs with flashing lights and red flags carrying the inhabitants of a Kissimmee, Fla. nursing home. They'd made a wrong term, the group leader advised us: they were seeking the World Of Imagination.
The Imagineer politely pointed across the vast concrete plaza, around the flood-lit spouting and dancing fountain. Then, for the third time, he went over the ground rules again: he would talk with me, but I couldn't describe him or his work in any way, and he wouldn't talk about Disney or its work in any detailed way.
This was okay with me, as I don't want to write about Disney World, the Disney Corporation or its inner workings. Writing about Disney is like writing about Microsoft - everybody has intense feelings, and they've been expressed so long and so often there's almost nothing new to add. But as for Walt himself, that's another story.
I assured The Imagineer that I wanted to write about technology, and to some degree, Disney's original visions of technology, especially trying to come up with the missing philosophy about the subject that people could use, maybe even desperately want.
"Walt Disney would have had a philosophy. He was a complete geek," said the Imagineer. "He just had this oh-mi-gosh quality about anything to do with technology. He especially got the hold technology has on people's imaginations, even though he hasn't fared all that well in history," the Imagineer added. If I wanted to see what he meant, he said, get on over to Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom and check out the "Carousel Of Progress." He said it was Walt's favorite exhibit. Disney had unveiled it at the 1964 World's Fair, and brought it to Disney World. It was the perfect expression of his view of technology. I said I'd check it out.
Disney has, in fact, suffered in the decades after his death, branded a middle-brow shlock-meister, mass-manufacturer of kitsch and junk, and a mean-spirited bigot and lousy employer.
"He died before he could complete some of his most beloved projects, and the company is so big it's disturbing to people, although there are many echoes of the original spirit. Lots of us work here because it's the best place for people like us to work. Where else would you go if you loved technology? But when it came to technology, no one could touch Disney, and no one ever really has. From animation to architecture, movies and design, he understood the beauty and power of technology at its purest; that's why all of these people come here from all over the world.
"Some of them literally have to crawl here, and lots of them spend every penny they have to get here. But nobody makes them. This is the place they want to be, no matter what the intellectuals say. Disney saw technology as something that could render imagined worlds. These worlds varied wildly, but at the core, he believed technology could fix the world, save it, solve it's problems.
"These parks are all rendered worlds. They use technology to invoke visions, past and future. Maybe it was naïve, but it was profoundly moral on Disney's part, maybe his most profoundly moral part. He thought EPCOT could light the way for the world. Now, there's a lot of blabber here about pan-global humanism and all, which everybody understands is about money, not brotherhood."
"Disney was a businessman, but not when it came to EPCOT. That was from the heart, at least his original idea for it, and that vision is still everywhere here, and in a lot of other places, if you know how to look for it."
And you do have to look for it. When Walt Disney announced his plans for Disney World in the mid-60's, he promise it would be more than an "entertainment complex." Most important, he told his friends, was a planned city of the future, a place where Disney employees could live, a real town that included commercial and residential areas, a thousand-acre industrial park, and a highly sophisticated transportation system. He died before this city - he called it EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) could be built, and it was transformed by his successors into the corporate techno- World's Fair it is now.
Disney said his experiment - he sounds like Steve Jobs talking about Apple - was "the most exciting and by far the most important part of our Florida project, in fact the heart of everything we are doing in Disney World."
But not for long.
The Imagineer talked about how unbelievably important the Web was becoming, how it had exploded ("we didn't imagine it, none of us, not for a second") Silicon Valley, Microsoft, and about the difference between Gates and Disney, mostly in terms of their visions of technology (Gates didn't fare too well. "Walt Disney was a visionary. Bill Gates makes software.")
He talked about Linux and open source, and about hand-held computers and wireless modems, and about the explosion in "dot.coms" and "junk appliances." He was smart and funny, nothing like the Imagineer of my imagination, in a white smock with butterflies coming out of his ears.
I pointed out my surprise that EPCOT didn't yet reflect the Digital Age. Other than a mention or two at the AT&T pavillion, and some jazzy interactive exhibits for kids, the network barely came up at all. Was EPCOT being overtaken by technology in the same way Tomorrowland was left without any "Tomorrow" when the Space Age fizzled?
He nodded, and agreed and said that that was understood, and in the process of being corrected.
He repeated that nobody foresaw the explosion of the Web and the stuff around us took a long time to design and build. He talked for awhile about Disney and how Walt would have viewed the Web.
"He would have been obsessed with computing," said the Imagineer. "He would have loved the Net; Good Lord. Every kid who came here would be crawling along a Motherboard. He would have grasped its implications right away."
We talked on that concrete bench for a couple of hours. I was reminded again of what a strange place the Net is. I was talking to a person whose existence I normally wouldn't ever even have known of, let alone gotten the chance to meet through a website.
I was on the right track with my earlier column, the Imagineer said. Technology was inherently tragic. "It's the only way to see it," he said. "At the core, some of us want to improve the world, and people look to us to improve it. No matter how hard we try, we only get so far. We spin our wheels. Unforeseeable things happen. It doesn't ever quite work out the way we expect. That's the first rule. That makes technology heroic and doomed at the same time, which is why it's tragic. Because it serves human beings, and they are tragic. They do horrible things, horrible things happen to them, and they're all going to die."
The Imagineer and I said our goodbyes, and exchanged e-mail addresses, and I walked the length of EPCOT's World Showcase Lagoon, winding between restaurants, stores, food carts, juggler and bands. The circuit reminded me of my talk with the Imagineer. He knew what he was talking about.Why We Won The Cold War.
The man standing in line next to me waiting to board AT&T's "Spaceship Earth" at the entrance to EPCOT asked me where the line began, and shuffled his nervous wife behind the ropes. It was, he said the first time he'd ever left the Ukraine, and Orlando was the first place he'd always wanted to come.
He looked up at the giant dome, whose roof was sparkling with a giant "2000" sign and various assorted Millenial electric twinkling, and climbed into the moving blue seats that take visitors up on a tour of the history of communications.
In EPCOT, all of humankind's experiences are sponsored by corporations. Communications is brought to you by AT&T (my favorite is "The American Experience," which is brought to us by American Express).
The old Russian and his wife exclaimed repeatedly as the train climbed quickly past Hebrews and Greeks, the invention of fire, papyrus, the printing press, paper and roads, and the destruction of Rome.
"This!," he exclaimed, poking his wife and speaking towards me as we headed down the other. "This is why you won."
I asked him what he meant.
"I don't know how or why, but there's more amazing stuff in this dome than in my whole country," he said. "The Communists just could never do it like Mr. Walt Disney."
The New Thing.A few minutes later, I found myself standing next to an elderly woman in a wheelchair, as a Parade of trans-global drum- beating puppeteers wound its way around the World Showcase Lagoon. It seemed the worst kind of Millenial Blather - "let's walk hand in hand towards a better world," intoned some remote Orwellian voice that seemed to be - and was, in fact - coming from the trees.
One of the puppeteers maneuvered his 10-feet tall, wooden and cloth, vaguely Asian-like butterfly figure down the parade route. He spotted the woman, who took the puppet's hands and welled with tears.
Surprised and moved by the look on her face, I sat down next to her. She was from Texas. She was frail, and even breathing seemed a struggle for her. I could only guess the toll the trip halfway across country had taken.
I thought of the book I'd bought which had referred to Orlando as the "new mecca, " the world's number one destination.
Maybe they were on to something.
Why had she come to Orlando, I wondered?
"The science, the technology. I'm going blind so I can't get on the computer, but I wanted to see the technology. I think it's here if it's anywhere. I want to see the new things. My mother dropped dead hauling water from a lake in Texas to our house - she had to do it every day, because it was before electric power and the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority). I think often how long she might have lived if they'd had dams. So I told my son I wanted to see what they've done before I die. It's amazing, just amazing?"
In his book "The Whale and The Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology," Langdon Winner puzzled over why, in a culture riddled with ideologies and philosophies, there wasn't one for technology. In the United States, he wrote, we are a culture of technological somnambulists.
Samuel Florman, the civil engineer, wrote that there was, in fact, a philosophy of technology, and it was inherently tragic - technology represents the best of the human desire to understand and improve the world, and the relentless tendency of humankind to screw the world up. If we really grasp this and apply it, then we can perhaps relax a bit about whether technology is a good or bad witch. It's both, always.
That was the only way, Florman believed, that one could possibly come to terms with technics in a society literally engulfed by technology, but riddled with passionate moral and other disagreements about it.
From the 1939 World's Fair well beyond World War II, technology and engineering were golden - the country loved all of its new conveniences and wonders, from electric power to TV and cars, to toasters and the Space Age.
But the 60s ended America's unambivalent love of technology. Intellectuals in particular began blaming technology for ruining the environment, threatening catastrophic conflict and destroying classical culture and civilization.
Many have hated technology ever since, along with a broad and growing array of allies: nervous Boomer parents, exploitive politicians, unknowing journalists, professional religious fanatics and political moralists.
But the tragic view of technology eliminates this silly argument. It holds that while there is plenty of evil in the world, the essentially tragic fact is not so much the war of good with evil as the war of good with good. If anything, Disney's dreams and Utopian fantasies seem to support that idea.
Among other things, Orlando - at least the theme park part of it -- is a testament to the fact that these elites are, as they've always been, disconnected from the masses of people they profess to serve. The stream of people who come to Orlando dearly love, even worship, technology and - just like the Imagineer said - flock at all costs across great distances to get just a glimpse of the imagined worlds on display.
Next: Walt's Carousel of Progress and his lost model of the city of tomorrow.
I'm sure Jon didn't just rely on a baseball cap. Surely you used passwords as well.
"The penguin flies higher than the mouse"
"Yes, but who will be the leader of us all?"
do they still exist? I keep hearing cool things about previous fairs and was curious...
I'd agree that there isn't a well thought out philosophy of technology, but I think that there are some elements of it already in existence. If you go to a sci-fi/trekker con, you'll find hordes of idealistic people who are obsessed with technological progress and space travel. On the other hand, I have a sister who ardently believes that technology is a virus that is strangling mother earth. Personally, I believe that technology and computers are so pervasive that its hard to consider them on their own. How do you separate them from their context? Technology is a tool. Can you really look at it without looking at WHY its used?
The most impressive technological advance to come from Disney this century is by far and away that new Beta Tracker that Walt Disney Jr. and Bill Gates came up with!
Goodness, Since forwarding that message to all my friends and family, I have received hundreds of dollars and free trips to Disney... I tell you, the possibilities of that there Beta Tracker are limitless!
This article evoked all sorts of thoughts. First was that of the difference betweend Disney's vision and the commercial enterprise that Disneyworld is today. Would a man who rode around on a miniature train in his back yard condone a theme park bearing his name that sells frozen candy bars for $5?
It also brought to mind the question of the significance of all this technology. Specifically, the woman whos mother had died hauling water was very provoking. (Great writing, Jon!) Isn't the purpose of technology, in the end, to make life easier in general? To save effort such that it may devoted to other, more "human" pursuits? That leads to an inevitable question: does the world's lust for technology really ease human suffering?
See you, space cowboy...
"Strange, Enya-like New Age music poured from a cactus."
Don't you just *HATE* it when that happens?
--
rJames.org - illustration
What would be the constituent parts of a technological philsophy? Morals, laws, human relations, captial relations? All of these are changed by technology.
What I am saying at heart is that our philosophy, our institutions, our society can all only follow what technology does. We can attempt to apply current social values to new technology but that is vanity and folly. If there is any enduring 'philsophy' we can apply it boils down to one phrase - The dynamic of change.
Z@mzm1.demon.nl
"Walt Disney was a visionary. Bill Gates makes software."
A perspective I can already see echoed in that nebulous 'article and maybe a book' Katz is talking about. But how fair is it really? Was Disney really a starry-eyed big kid who would've used Linux to run his MP3's if only both had been invented at the time? Was Gates really a snide poser whose vision of shoddy upgrade-driven software and world domination crystallized at the age of 3?
If we judge both men by their actions, we see they are remarkably similar. Disney did not invent the cartoon, nor the amusement park, nor the notion of breathless technofairs that cozen corn-hucking families of four in a glittering tin foil vision of the future. But Disney did formulate the concept that these familiar sideshows could be brought together for the common man, in one place by one company. To judge him purely by his actions, Disney believed in the common spark of delight, and he wasn't above turning that ageless need for pleasure into a buck or two for himself.
How does Gates really differ? The Imagineer wasn't entirely wrong: Gates makes software. That, and that alone, is the significant difference between Disney and Gates. Disney recognized the golden possibilities in bringing cartoons and technology into the average home. Gates realized the seas of green to be made bringing computers to Everyman's den, and fabricating software that Everyman would want to use.
We readily accept the statement above from the "Imagineer" because we work in the computer industry, and so we inherit a memory of the time when Gates clawed his way to the top. We remember that there were others who shared Gates vision, and others who could have just as easily assumed that monopolistic throne. So we give Gates no credit at all. He was one face in the crowd, distinguishable only by a pair of goofy glasses, a bad haircut, and a signed IBM contract stuffed in next to his pocket protector.
Disney worked in entertainment, and most of us are unfamiliar with that world. We accept readily, at face value, the claim that he was original and that he was first. The notion that he was a titan with unheard-of ideas seems reasonable to us within our limited sphere of experience. But ideas, great ideas, are always "in the air". From evolution to calculus, from airplanes to money itself, the ideas that transform society have only rarely been the original fruit of one brain. Did Disney pen the first cartoon? No. Did he tighten the screws personally on the first carnival ride? No. Did he hold the first bonanza of Future Tech. No. What he did, and what Gates did, was realize that there was money to be made in the combination of many elements that already existed around him. They were opportunists, both of them. They were also original thinkers. To suggest otherwise, whatever your personal hatred for Gates or Disney, is spiteful.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Did it ever occur to you that this might be more of a reason for your "clandestine" meeting than any real monitoring by "The Mouse"? It sounds more like a couple of middle-aged guys who want an excuse to play spy (NTTAWWT).
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
...and I do mean "underlying".
The last time I went to Disney World, there was a neat exhibit at EPCOT (which was only a few years old at the time) in the central pavilion, not big enough for a pavilion of its own. It was sponsored by Sperry. No, not Unisys (the bastard child of the Sperry-Burroughs merger), the mid-80's mainframe Sperry. At the time, a significant amount of Disney World's computing power ran on Sperry hardware, and my father (a Field Engineer who had been with the company since it was Sperry-Univac) got us VIP access. The exhibit was literally a window into one of the computer rooms that controlled Disney's technology.
Walt Disney World is like an iceberg in that the vast majority of it lies underneath the surface, where few people ever get to see. Personnel facilities, changing rooms for the "actors", maintenance tunnels, and the computers that operate the rides, shows, and everything else. I've heard that Disney took great pains to hide the underlying workings of his "Magic Kingdom" in order to avoid breaking the illusion he worked so hard to create.
I don't know how much Sperry hardware still exists in the warrens beneath central Florida (there may still be quite a bit of legacy hardware). I wonder if there is still an exhibit like Sperry's anywhere at WDW, that gives visitors a glimpse of that strange underworld. I also wonder how Disney would have felt about letting outsiders see the technological underpinnings of his magic.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
Modern science has shown that a virus is incapable of a strangling (or much of any other) action. However, it is an expert at embracing and extending.
Viruses are most proficient at embracing and extending...themselves. Often at the expense of their hosts. True, they're not capable of doing much of anything on their own, being merely a snippet of genetic material w/ a protein coat and all. But that genetic material is stealthy! It sneaks into its host's cellular apparatus and gets the host to do all the work that the virus is incapable of by itself. Like making more viruses and maybe even strangling the host.
Now technology is, of course, not a virus. It has no genetic material and no protein coat. But sucessful ideas and complexes of ideas (like technology) are frequently compared to viruses. They're analogous to viruses. They seem to propagate throughout the human population in the same way that viruses do. By inducing their hosts to replicate them.
This is neither good nor evil. It just is.
So Katz is upset because the official vision Walt Disney had is not alive anymore. Allow me to ask: So what? This seems to be the fate of any successful enterprise: you have a good idea, you innovate, you grow, you grow some more. All of a sudden you find that you're no longer a little company that can turn on a dime but a conglomerate which is subject to corporate VPs strategies, shareholder values, (expected) growing profits, pressure from the stock market and who knows what else.
How is this different from Apple? How is this different from Netscape, Sun, Oracle, etc? How is this different from so many other technology companies who started out with a vision, a desire to change the world and a few years later found themselves struggling to meet wall street earnings estimates and foregoing all principlies/vision in the process?
The fact that Katz is actually complaining about this, just drives home the fact that many of his essays seem to be situated a bit far from reality.
Interestingly enough, the only company which seems to have endured (actually prospered) and held on to it's (somewhat greedy) princicples, seems to be Microsoft. Then gain (fincancially speaking), they are in a league of their own.
There really a large existing body of work concerning a philosophy of technology, whether you're in for the "Philosophy as it Should Be" (at the philosophy department of your local U) or "Philosopy as it Is" (the engineering department of your local tech company, the sales rep at your local quik-e-mart). I would actually be very interested in a reading list or beginners bibliography pertaining to either subject.
As it stands, here are a few resources I have found interesting and useful:
This is a damn good book chronicling a slice of the rise and fall of CAD/CAM mania in the 80's- There are a lot of visions that parallel Mr. Katz's vision of Uncle Walt's vision, and some of the realities that conflicted with/resulted from that sort of thinking. This is a reallly in depth study of philosophy type B (quik-e-mart)
This is an essay of the other type (phil. department) and it is heavy- It took me weeks of reading and re-reading to get a foggy notion of what was going on, and my notion is still probably pretty foggy ("Engineers don't need that liberal-arts garbage" thunders a someone at a curriculum planning meating in my distant past...) But It has really changed the way I think about the work that I do in a fundamental way.
(Drifting off of the topic, I would really, really, *really* like to see a "philosophy department philosophy of technology for the rest of us" somewhere- maybe even here at /.???)
Its the Ideology(tm)!
I mean this is Disney World we are talking about, not the NSA! It's not like the guy is giving away secrets of the H-Bomb! Why is this Disney employee so afraid of revealing his identity?
regular people could watch real science being done.
:)
Hmm, I can imagine it now:
VO from announcer: And here we see Dr. Flurm engaging the particle accelerator. Watch as he types in the commands into his keyboard. This is an exciting moment particle physics!
Look! There it goes! Aaaaaand it's over!
Now let's look on the big screen to see if muon-decay was achieved...
Bored kid in the audience: What happened? This is stupid! Mom!!! I wanna go on Space Mountain!!
Etc.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
You are claiming that technology is "tragic" because unforseen, negative benefits flow from it. But this implies that technology has some kind of volition: it "wants" to do only good, but because it violates the Will Of The Gods, or The Natural Order, or whatever you want to call it (I'll call it "the Gods" from now on), the Gods hurl their lightningbolts at the transgressor, and reveal its folly. Technology doesn't care how it's used, so there is no inherent "tragedy".
You might as well say that *any* human artifact (religion, culture, nationalism) is tragic, because sometimes the Gods throw their lightningbolts at them too. But this is also wrong. Many things have been tried throughout history; those that have a net positive benefit (eg capitalism) tend to spread; those that have a net negative benefit (eg slavery) tend to disappear. Put 'em together: that's Progress. It's in those areas where the benefit is uncertain that are the most interesting; nationalism comes to mind. The books are closed on technology -- it's good, and more is better.
Do you think that old woman's mother would have argued with this? Would she have been disturbed that an "unnaturnal" metal cylinder was laid between the lake and her house? Or even that her new, longer expected lifespan would be a wee bit shorter because the pipe was made of lead? I don't think so.
Ironically, sometimes the thing that tells us our technology is harming us is -- more technology!
This is obviously a work in progress, as Jon tries to make clear in his intro. Hang in there. Sometime the best journeys are those where you don't know where you're going to end up.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Why would it matter? Early on, Jon says:
Sounds pretty safe to me.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I am not a huge fan of Walt Disney nor do I care for Katz, but every indication I have had is that Walt had a vision which he sincerely believed in. He strove for excellence, not just the bottom line. Gates on the otherhand, strikes me as artless. He is certainly a smart and very driven man, but I've yet to see any evidence of him as a real visionary. I believe he is driven not so driven by a firm destination, but rather a desire sit on top of everyone else, regardless of how many people he must step on to stay there. In short, an opportunist and a bully.
Please name something that Gates has really BROUGHT forth into this world. MSDOS? BASIC? Windows? And no, I'm not talking about mere invention. I am of the belief that merely inventing a concept is relatively minor part, a first step. Though I'm not a huge fan of say Steven Jobs, I respect him for MAKING the GUI (amongst other things) happen even though PARC technically invented it. Just as I respect Ford, and many others. They made definite contributions to this world by force of personality, willingess to take risk, vision, perseverence, and other such qualities. If Gates ever had such a sparc, it was in his early days (e.g.: Altair) and long since gone. The lack of significant improvement in his product line, his business practices, and his desire to do the most expediant thing speak directly to this.
I disagree, I believe you have misinterpreted the claim "Technology is tragic". As you say, Technology itself can't be tragic, technology itself, as yet, doesn't give a damn how it is used, it has no way of fulfilling the requirement of attempted good followed by failure due to weakness.
However I believe the point is that the combination of technology and humanity is tragic.
How many of you programmers out there have started out writing some great piece of software, only to eventually give up because of a design issue you couldn't forsee?
How many dams were built by dependable, intelligent engineers trying to make the quality of life of people around them better, only to have the resulting weakening of the downstream flow cause masses of wildlife to die through a string of consequences no-one saw coming?
How many cryptographers around the world are wondering at this very moment whether their lifes work is letting child pornographers get away with hideous crimes?
It is this very relationship, our inability to predict the consequences of our technology, our nothing-but-good intentions in its design and construction, and the pain we suffer and give to others apon failure, that is Tragic.
Every day, every hour, our capabilities expand. Our ability to perform tragedies has well exceeded Shakespeares', and there is no indiction of any letup any time soon. With the generation of masses of nuclear weapons, we and our technology, for the first time ever, presented the opportunity for a Tragedy that would cost the lives of every one of us.
This has only become easier since then. I sincerely hope that we learn to minimise the Tragedy from our symbiotic relationship with technology, for otherwise, we die.
You can't win a fight.
Disney's people broke just about _all_ the ground in cel animation. Hell, Disney was doing 'layers' like you get in Photoshop in 1937!!! I'm talking about the famous Multiplane Camera- just about every aspect of this multimillion dollar monster required massive innovation in every way.
To behave as if Disney was equivalent to a Gates is very stupid. He was the guy pushing for all this. That said, the Disney cartoons (especially the comics!) put across a _very_ strange worldview, and the ones intended for foreign countries actually have capitalist propaganda put into them (really!) or at least had- dunno if Disney still makes those comics. Particularly at the height of the Cold War, Disney comic books were outright 'a war effort' trying to subvert other societies. That's fair to mention. But don't be dissin' the incredible dedication and technological innovation of pre-WWII Disney! (or indeed after- Disney pioneered the Xerox photocopying process _for_ _cels_, as used in 101 Dalmatians and Robin Hood, and pioneered a version with _grey_ lines for The Rescuers).
I visited Epcot Center a number of years back, knowing nothing of Disney's original vision for Epcot Center. Partway through my first day there I noticed something very odd. Most of the pavilions were of the people-mover variety which I have been known to characterize as "slow rides to nowhere for people with IQs in the single digits." Then there was the Universal Products pavilion The Living Seas. I was staggered by that place. Gigantic donut-shaped Lexan salt-water tank several stories high. You walk right through the middle of it.
I later asked someone who was presumably in the know, why this pavilion was such a technological triumph and all the others were kiddie rides. It was explained to me that Disney's original conception of Epcot was of a permanent World's Fair, with each company putting its major technological triumphs on display. Not just dioramas, but real technology. However, there was a disagreement about how that was to be done. Disney wanted the companies to pay for the big displays, and the companies wanted Disney to pay for them. When it became clear that the companies were the stuckees, only Universal came through and did it right; everyone else built dioramas and people movers.
It has been quite a few years since I've been to orlando, but I don't know if I agree with the "Crawling on the motherboard" thing. You should visit the computer museum in Boston, MA for something like that.
Disney is about Fantasy, not reality - Going to disney world to seek out technology is like seeking out a piece of coal in a diamond mine. You are not supposed to see the fantasy, not the hidden gears of technology that drives it. The reason you see it at all is because you are activity looking for - trying to avoid the builtup facade of reality around you. The geek in us asks "How?" instead of "Why?"
The reason Disney is not the bleeding-edge technological paradise you are looking for is because it is not required. What Disney lacks, it makes up for in imagination.
The biggest difference I can see in society is that of mass-production. It seems that in the past, most workers were more directly connected to the results of their efforts than they are now. Just a thought.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
When I have kids, and someone throws a baby shower for me, I'm going to make sure they know NOT to get me anything with cartoon characters OF ANY SORT on it, and I'll try to keep the kids away from the stuff as long as possible. I don't care if it's Mickey Mouse, Big Bird, or Pokemon.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Well, Disney owns ABC, so I suspect that particular case goes a little deeper.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."