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Report from Orlando: The Lost City of Epcot
"There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learned to separate them." ----J.D. Bernal, "The World, the Flesh and the Devil."
Others might have their own, perfectly good nominations, but my candidate for the saddest site in contemporary technology would be a wood-and- papier mache model that sits in a darkened a tunnel in a distant corner of Tomorrowland at Walt Disney World.If the tragic view of technology has a locus, this could be it.
To see this forgotten vision of the "Model City of Tomorrow," you have to go to the Magic Kingdom, to the Tomorrowland Transit Authority.
There is, of course, no Tomorrow in Tomorrowland, and there hasn't been any for years. Disney and his fabled Imagineers hitched this particular wagon to the Space Age, which died unaccountably some years after Disney himself in 1964.
Brilliant as he was, Disney never foresaw or imagined the Net, the Web or the Digital Age. The farthest he got in imagining networked computing were voice-activated stoves and other household appliances in his beloved "Carousel of Progress, " an attraction-in-the-round that was his personal passion, and which made its debut at the l964 New York World's Fair. It resides today, uncomfortably, in the farthest corner of Tomorrowland.
In California and in Florida, Disney's Tomorrowlands were always the most barren and joyless sections in his theme parks. Disney, in fact, personified the notion of nostalgia for the future. He was a genius at using technology to invoke the past, but like so many technologists before him, never quite accepted that the future was inherently unpredictable, beyond even his imaginative reach. He was so successful at rendering the imagined worlds of yesterday, it didn't occur to him how steadfastly technology refuses to do what it's supposed to.
As a consequence, Tomorrowland always lacked the imagination of Fantasyland, the corn-fed patriotism of Frontierland or the shameless corporate puffery of Epcot (Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow), in which the future and its technologies are leased and monopolized by giant companies.
It's impossible to know exactly what Disney would have made of Epcot as it took shape after his death, but the model in the tunnel gives us some clues, and the people who have studied his life bet he would have gotten some dynamite and taken Epcot down, one corporate showcase after another.
Tomorrowland is centered around 1950's ideas of space travel and their accompanying intergalactic blabber: Astro-Orbiters, ("paging Mr. Morrow. Mr. Tom Morrow. Your party from Mars is waiting"), the Carousel (more about that later) and the Tomorrowland Transit Authority .
The people running Walt Disney World seemed to have grasped the hollowness of this corner of Disney World, and are spending tens of millions of dollars to re-vamp it. They still don't see the Net as fun to ride, or even to invoke. It is conspicuously missing from the re-engineering of the future.
Maybe Disney's successors learned from his mistake, and decided to play it safe. The vision of the future taking shape in Tomorrowland is based not on the future, but on the past - a Jules Verne décor with a hodge-podge of unfocused rides, exhibits and hi-tech talking robots.
For now, at least, you can ride a couple of minutes on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority train, as it curls around and over Cosmic Ray's Café and past Disney's model community of the future.
But you better go soon: some Slashdot friends and e-mailers who work for Disney say the old model is going to be removed as the renovation advances.
And maybe it should be. It doesn't really belong there.
The Tomorrowland train is not actually a train, but another of Disney's fabled "wonders" - an electric, silent, environmentally clean "People Mover." Disney hoped the idea would spread, like his Monorail, and would end up ferrying people around crowded urban cores. But just like his Monorail, it never got out of Tomorrowland.
After a few twists and turns, the people mover rushes into a tunnel, then turns abruptly, and this startling model of a city suddenly pops into view on the side of the car, depending on where you're sitting.
If you're not looking for it, or facing the direction, or sitting on the right side, you can miss it completely, mistaking it for another one of the aging, cheesy inter-galactic displays (the woman of the future sitting in a hi-tech hair curler) that the train glides past.
On almost every level - visually and conceptually -- the model comes as a shock, popping up out of nowhere, whizzing by, completely out of character and context. It's behind a glass partition and it's huge - about 15 feet deep and perhaps 20 feet long.
I'd first seen the model a couple of years ago, writing about technology and Orlando for the website Hotwired. While there, I met a group of hackers obsessed with hacking the Magic Kingdom, and who collect and trade Disney techno-lore all year.
They tipped me to this model, whose existence is referred to in a few of the countless Disney biographies, and is known to many geeks and techno-addicts.
The model was evocative from the first, but especially so in the context of the tragic view of technology, a philosophy first advanced by the civil engineer, teacher and writer Samuel Florman, published in the Bicentennial issue of House & Garden in l976 and perhaps more relevant now than ever.
Florman wrote that technology was closely linked to life, and that people of noble character had an essentially tragic view of life. Tragedy, he wrote, is uplifting, depicting as it does heroes wrestling with fate.
The tragic view of technology, according to Florman, is the only one that makes any sense, the one that provides an umbrella philosophy, a helpful way to look at technology, perhaps the single most controversial subject in a muddled and divided world.
Florman didn't mean that technology was tragic in the pessimistic or disapproving sense. But when it comes to technology, the past century has seen plenty of hopes dashed. Technology represents both the human desire to improve the world, and the persistent human tendency to muck it up.
The tragic view of philosophy calls not for gloom, but for maturity, not pessimism but detachment and caution. The fate of most tragic heroes, Florman wrote, is hubris, or "overweening pride." Hubris isn't a weakness, but an essential ingredient of humanity's greatness. It's what inspires people to confront the universe, improve the world.
The tragic view, he wrote, doesn't shrink from paradox; it teaches us to live with ambiguity, technology's partner. Without effort and daring, we are nothing. But even with it, we are as likely to fail. Most of our disappointments with technology come when decent people are trying to act constructively - not the war of good with evil as the war of good with good.
If any public figure of the 20th century embodied this tragic view of technology, it was the compulsive, even fanatic techno-dreamer Walt Disney, whose hubris became an influential global economic, cultural and political force.
At the end of his life, according to biographers Steven Watts and Leonard Mosley, nothing mattered to him but building Epcot - the model city of the future built on the latest technology. To build a city of tomorrow, wrote Mosley in "Disney's World", that would be the last great challenge.
He didn't succeed.
Even if you are looking for the model, the train curves away so quickly you never get more than a glimpse. Even a fast look makes clear the thought and design that went into its construction.
It took me a dozen train rides just to pick up the announcer's taped words:
"The retro-metro historical society proudly presents Walt Disney's 20th Century model of the future! He dared to dream the perfect place to live, work and play."
It's a powerful kick just to see it. It has a hallowed, even reverential feel, like some sort of shrine or historic artifact. It was definitely a lost city.
Disney worked on this model for years, declared to friends and reporters that Epcot was the most important project of his life, the most important element in Disney World, the monument he meant to leave behind. He meant for Disney workers to live there, and for a Epcot to be a shrine to his nearly boundless faith in the power of technology to shape a better world.
But his successors had different visions. Disney's death coincided with the rise of corporatism, when idiosyncratic dreams of the future and fantasies about technology didn't sit well with stockholders and Wall Street analysts, and no single individual in any public corporate entity had the power to bull projects through the way Walt Disney did.
The company scrapped his plans and turned Epcot instead into a corporate World's Fair. Companies from Kodak to Exxon and American Express, which sponsors "The American Experience", host pavilions that presume to spell out the future and promote an indescribable global mix of capitalism, technology and a squishy brand of humanism.
The showcase of nations - a collection of distinctly-designed pavilions that sell the food and gew-gaws of various encircle around a man-made lagoon -- suggests a political idea so vague as to be safe and reassuring; If we can buy one other's toys, postcards, falafel and dim sum, we can find peace and celebrate the future hand in hand.
After Disney died - he never saw Disney World - the Epcot model was hidden away in the Tomorrowland tunnel, where it's languished for decades. Its positioning is clearly an afterthought, as if Disney executives didn't dare either to throw it away or display it. It's about as far from Epcot - its logical home - as it could be and still be on Disney World grounds.
But the model bears no resemblance to Epcot in any conceivable way. Disney, mythology has it, anticipated as much.
There are stories and rumors that he was so convinced his successors would mess up Epcot that he planned to use cryogenics to have his body frozen. Then, company myth has it, he would return and wreak havoc on the corporatists drooling over his demise. Disney execs better pray he isn't thawing.
This history makes the model all the more eerie.
Disney's original Epcot is a sprawling, roomy place with a distinct but small urban core.
There are four tall buildings in a small downtown, surrounded by lower structures that might be apartment houses, shops or office complexes.
An amusement park's tiny ferris wheel is visible off to the left, some sort of church-like religious structure in the forefront. In between are rail tracks, parks (Disney had all sorts of plans for submerged rail systems and highways), roads and housing.
One of Disney's many quirks was that even though he wrapped himself in Americanism and the flag, he was dubious about representative democracy and non-conformist individual expression.
His plan was that Epcot would be run by Imagineers and Disney executives, not elected representatives. He probably feared that the all-too-human inhabitants would ruin his technology.
Whatever one thinks about Disney and the things he did, it's hard not to be touched by what he wanted to do.
"For all our apprehensions," wrote Florman about technology in his House & Garden essay "we have no choice but to press ahead. We must do so, first, in the name of compassion. By turning our backs on technological change, we would be expressing our satisfaction with current world levels of hunger, disease and privation. Further, we must press ahead in the name of the human adventure. Without experimentation and change our existence would be a dull business. We simply cannot stop while there are masses to feed and diseases to conquer, seas to explore and heavens to survey."
Jon --
I like your work normally, but this stuff is more hot-air than red-hot. And there really isn't all that much to talk about here. There's got to be a REAL story worth writing about SOMEWHERE in Orlando.
One of Disney's many quirks was that even though he wrapped himself in Americanism and the flag, he was dubious about representative democracy and non-conformist individual expression.
Why not just say it plainly? The man was a fascist.
Nothing good ever came from Disney. Unless you count homogenized musical versions of world
literature and planned communities as good things.
Disneyworld is for people who can't cope with
the real world. It's an inane asylum.
K.
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-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
this wouldnt even rate.. ;)
only thing that I'm worried about is that through detereoration of human skills due to advancements in technology we will become plant-like
Here's a (rough) picture of the model
http://www.spacey.net/ts haw/Images/Epcot/OriginalEpcot.gif
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
You know, it could just be me, but Epcot's in a sad state of decline, as well. I go there once every year, and the whole place just looks more worn out every year. The buildings are getting old, and the exhibits are, too.
Frankly, I don't blame the sponsors one bit. It's almost impossible to keep up with technological trends and dream about the future. AT&T pretty much knows where communication technology is going, so they've done a good job keeping Spaceship Earth up to date, but that's about it. GM tore down their "World of Motion" to put in place the "GM Test Track," which has little, if anything, to do with their dreams for automotive technology.
Even worse, United Technologies pulled their sponsorship from the "Living Seas" exhibit, and the whole thing's falling apart because nobody's even paying to maintain it anymore. I guess the whole "Seaquest" sci-fi dream is a thing of the past.
I guess that could be part of the problem. People go to EPCOT for the fantasy of a possible future, and our desires for what that future ought to be change so dramatically over the years. I mean, in the early '90s, it was the dream of a 100% environmentally friendly society. Now it's the dream of what the Net can do next. Nobody knows for sure what it'll be in five years, so why waste money on an attraction in a theme park that nobody will want?
Sighhh....EPCOT's what made me dream of innovation when I was a teeny little geek, and it's so sad to see it both falling apart and succumbing to pure commercialism.
I'm not sure I understand the point of all this disney schlock being written by Katz lately. Is it supposed to be shocking that after Walt died the vultures stopped circling and started tearing his ideas to shreads? Of course Epcot didn't turn out the way he wanted, it wouldn't have made any money that way. It seems that Walt wanted to create some sort of gleaming fascist utopian universe in Disney World, unfortuanetly for him the profiteers took over shortly after his death. And now the technology, (and I really hate using that word now), is geared to creating an environment where the consumer can't help but spend his money. The current leaders of Disney try to keep up the gleam and glitter of Walt's promised land, but only for profit's sake. However, I don't see how this is surprising, this is America after all. A country built on capitalism and the all mighty dollar.
The article provided me with a whole bunch of info concerning the construction of Epcot that I did not realize. It's been some time since I've gone to Disney World so I only have faded memories to go by.
It is interesting to point out that the article indicates that commercialism caused Epcot to move away from Disney's original dream for a land of tomorrow. I think in many regards, that is true -- the over commercialism of our society is rather annoying and saddening.
If I ever go visit Epcot again, I'll have to remember to take another look at Tomorrowland and Epcot in general.
Providing us with a link to a photo of the model?
Really. Well now there's a surprise.
Didn't I already read this article? I didn't notice anything in this one that wasn't in Katz' original article from before he went to Orlando.
or maybe I just need to go to sleep now...
Intolerant people should be shot.
The "C" in EPCOT means community. Walt Disney wanted a futuristic town grounded in 19th century small-town moral values. The town Celebration is a implementation of that dream. Celebration has been a mixed success as a couple recent tell-all books and articles have described.
"Most of our disappointments with technology come when decent people are trying to act constructively - not the war of good with evil as the war of good with good."
I see. The real tragedy isn't that the NSA is using technology to spy on me, but rather that Katz is so bored he has nothing better to do than visit Disney?
I would think the 100 million+ people killed this century by evil people utilizing technology would be a much bigger tragedy (and even then the tragedy is not the technology but the dark side of human nature).
We live in a world where hundreds of millions of people don't get enough to eat and the thing that keeps Katz awake at night is EPCOT? Give me a break.
Really. Probably all that earth on his coffin was obscuring the view.
Oxymoron, or just moron?
Check out the article in hotwired from 1996 that Jon mentions he wrote. At least he's recycling!
I know politics is a difficult concept to grasp for your americans, but fascism and communism, tho both extremes, are on opposite sides of the political spectrum.
So since he called the guy a fascist, he definitally is not making him out to be a total communist. Fascism = evil, Communism = evil fascism = communism, is not valid here.
Beware of Wight Supremacists!
This has to be Katz's strangest article to date. Re rambles on about Disney's utopia like it is the Lost Ark. I think that Walt Disney was a great man, innovator, and dreamer. I think that Katz has missed who Walt really was.
A dreamer is a person who comes up with new ideas. That person would love to see those come true, but ultimately knows that they may not. What Disney created in his EPCOT was a perfect future world. No man can expect such a thing to actually come true.
Take a look at Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry made up a wonderful world where money and power have little or no value. Do we get all misty-eyed when we watch an old episode? I hope not.
Dreams are just that. I applaud Disney and his team of imagineers. But, I do not feel a loss that his EPCOT never became a reality. I instead feel love to see what he came up with and cherish his ideas as one of the greatest men of the twentieth century.
Oh, and one point of clarification. Disney was not alive to see the completion of Walt Disney World, but he was there to oversee the early stages of the project.
Actually, sometimes "The Future" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The architect (I forget his name) who popularized rounded and wedge shapes on buildings with assorted protuberances (I actually first became acquainted with the shapes as the background of The Flash's visits to the future) had a strong influence on today's architects. Materials, functional requirements, and expense affects actual designs but the influence is visible.
Flying cars were popular in the future of the 1950's. The founder of Moller has been striving toward it ever since, and test flight of the four-seater Skycar prototype is scheduled this year.
Transit methods such as the Disney monorail have also been around for a long time. Personal Rapid Transit devices have assorted designs, of which Taxi2000 is my favorite. 3-4 passenger vehicles which take you from your station directly to your destination station. No schedules, and a tiny overhead track. These PRT technologies have actually greatly gained capabilities with microcomputers, as now automated guidance and control is much simpler and cheaper.
And I recently read of a cellular wrist phone...
Jim Stoner really has significant insight.
Anyone interested in this subject should check out http://www.waltopia.com/
Thanks Jon, I enjoyed reading it.
I think Katz makes some interesting observations about EPCOT, and Disney in general.
;) Under these displays were old TVs, showing looped tapes of Walt Disney's Tomorrowland TV specials -- where Uncle Walt would show us how we'd get to orbit as easily as we got to Grandma's place in Florida.
:)
;) (For those of you watching the movie, that would be the "Floating Hairbrush" scene...)
I'm no Disney apologist (the Mouse in its current incarnation is a pseudo-fascist front, I'm convinced), but in Walt's time, his visions (and the visions of others he sprinkled throughout the Disney parks and legend) stirred the imagination of a lot of people.
I used to work in a space museum, and couldn't spend a day without walking past huge enlargements of old 1950s Collier's covers, all garish Technicolor visions of a spacefaring society. Round trip tickets to Mars and weekends in low Earth orbit seemed only a decade away.
This, for all intents and purposes, WAS Tomorrow(tm), according to popular culture. Wearable wireless internet appliances, nifty end-all-be-all PDAs, and a universally wired society are OUR Tomorrow(tm), if anyone reads certain modern garish rags *ahem*.
So Walt didn't see it coming. Good. If he saw that coming, and his corporate crony types had followed up, our computer mice would have big black ears right about now.
EPCOT will never be what Walt Disney intended it to be -- another experiment in Utopia. His successors are trying it out down in Celebration, FL (see also, Stepford). Every generation thinks they'll finally get it right. Every generation fails. That's how it works. So EPCOT would have been run by Imagineers and executives, big deal. You'd choose to live there, just as we choose to live in apartment complexes, condos, and other "planned" communities, or cooperative buildings, or Celebration -- following the myriad rules and regulations. Happens every day.
But EPCOT, in its eventual form, was a showcase for the little geek in me as a kid. So I can't complain too loudly.
Our reach exceeds our grasp. Count on it. Our visions and plans for the future never work out the way we plan them. Is that anyone's fault? Not really. In EPCOT's case, we'll blame the suits. I'm still pissed that we're not living in LEO yet.
We can't blame the suits forever. It's fun for a while, but sooner or later, we've got to do some changing for ourselves.
Almost off-topic, does anyone else remember how Arthur C. Clarke wrote in the 2001 novel about how Dave Bowman's mom lived in a nursing home in EPCOT, Florida?
A human being is the best computer available...the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. - Wernher v
http://www.si.edu/ndm/exhib/disney/start.htm .
One of the most striking differences between Disney's Main Street/Epcot and, say, the model future city of the World's Fair of 1939 was the presence or absence of the automobile. Disney was a radical in the 50s and 60s simply by going against the car-dominated suburban/highway development effort; his cities, like his theme parks, were pedestrian-oriented, with environmentally sensitive methods of transport for longer distances. His work definitely echoed Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian prarie cities in terms of community, self-sufficiency and transportation issues. Well, when they thaw him he's gonna be pissed.
Well it was that or going for the first post again.
It's much more honest and interesting than a lot of his previous efforts. It's got me genuinely curious about Disney/World.
Good work. Keep going.
**>>BELCH
Is anyone else here reminded of "The Gernsback Continuum" by William Gibson (shortstory in Mirrorshades)?
I think Katz' argument is interesting - that there's something noble and tragic in the story of Disney.
However, a very different argument has already been made by Gibson. Katz writes:
Gibson proposes fascism is inherent in that view of technology - in that romance of technology. He wasn't looking at Disney, but at Hugo Gernsback and contemporaries. Gibson wrote, through late 20th century eyes, of what the idealized future of "The Gernsback Continuum" looked like, and it was wholesome, squeeky-clean and fascist to the core.
This story is also an explanation of why Cyberpunk happened to science fiction. (That's why it's in the front of the anthology.) That utopian view of the future was so politically naive and inhumane, that younger writers were loathe to embrace it. Dystopia was an antitode to the sugared poison of a "utopia" of an efficient tyranny.
Katz is advised to take this under consideration.
----------------------------------------------
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Quite a good question, actually. Was the purpose of this article to justify a trip to Orlando? I suspect that this could have been easily written without the trip. ANSWES!
what on earth are you going on about? and is this really, "news for nerds, stuff that matters"?
what a complete waste of time. this article's strong point was all the sarcasm comments posted about it. does katz really have nothing better to do than post about stuff nobody cares about?
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This Post has been brought to you by the letter "E".
You can filter Katz out, you know. Why don't you try it?
Walt would have been very happy with the way EPCOT turned out...an imaginary small town run by corporate uber-bosses who know better than the rest of us.. The plain simplicity of Walt's small town ersatz 19th century view of the community was only intended to be a feel-good think small don't make waves world view for the lumpentroliat.
No no, Walt was a self professed facist and anti Semite who at his core believed that EPCOT was for the majority of acceptably-raced people who needed to be taken care of while the undesirables toiled in the underground tunnels maintaining the whole thing.
Brilliant as he was, Disney never foresaw or imagined the Net, the Web or the Digital Age.
Internet the Ride!
It revolutionized the way we communicate. Now it's the world's ultimate thrill ride!
Marvel as you fly through the T3 pipe at blazing speeds! Feel your stomach churn as you hit the 56KB bottleneck. Sit back and enjoy the show as Microsoft battles all comers in a battle for the very soul of the Internet! Lose yourself in the maze of Usenet and IRC. Wander through the Hall of pr0n (seperate admission, adults only). Experience the thrill of watching as server after server is brought down by the dreaded Slashdot Effect!
Bigger than than Steve Jobs' ego, faster than the Linux development cycle, scarier than debugging Windows 2000, wilder than a steel cage death match between Richard M. Stallman and Eric S. Raymond it's Internet the Ride!
Does this
Here are some links to NPR's (Real Audia) essays on the subject:
On a related note, there have been several mentions of Walt being frozen. I read recently that this is another one of those great myths, and that he actually was cremated. Not sure where I heard this, can anyone confirm it? It's gonna be pretty hard to put old Walt back together from a handful of ashes...
A better pun would have probably be: "Redundant or just dumb?"
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I took the time to read both articles and I've got to say that this newer article is a refinement of the older article not just recycling a story. It takes an informational article and uses it to illustrate the inherent tragedy of technology. I just hope he didn't get paid travel expenses to see this model which he already wrote about.
Well since everyone else seems to have some sort of hatred for Walt Disney and/or Katz I figured I'd just note that I found this article interesting. The point that capitalist vultures swooped down and turned Disney from being about inspiring people to making money is incredibly sad. Sure he probably didn't think his vision of the future would come true but I've always felt that Walt Disney was one of those people who changed all those he came in contact with for the better and left the world a little better for his being here. If I could go back in time to meet one person Walt Disney would at least be very high on my list when I was considering who to meet. Disney I think would be a huge OSS fan. Lots of innovation and idealisms at work as people make the world better for themselves and others.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Katz:
", which died unaccountably some years after Disney himself in 1964. "
The actual death was near the end of 1966.
It's never too late!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A country where corporate interests control the government at the expense of the people...hmmm....sounds like the US.
...is tech heaven.
...and hell.
One of the great geek shopping experiences. Need an LCD? Laser optics? Discarded missile parts? Anonymous chunks of machined aluminum? Oscilloscopes? Wave-solder machines?
It's all there, from time to time...
My extended family spent a week at DizKnee Whirled last November. I could have killed for a falafel, but I couldn't find any at EPCOT. It is nearly impossible to find a meal at EPCOT for under $10 that does not involve frozen reconstituted chicken nuggets or a hamburger. At least at Frontierland in the Tragic Kingdom you can find a big honkin' smoked turkey leg to gnaw on. But as a 90% vegetarian, I mostly went hungry.
To be fair, there are theme restaurants at EPCOT that feature authentic regional cuisines, but you need to make reservations early in the morning and prepare to shell out Big Bucks.
As to authenticity, "authentic" is the word most likely to be heard coming from the myriad loudspeakers at EPCOT, the word most likely to be read in the brochures. The idea that EPCOT is in any way, shape, or form authentic is laughable at best, and Orwellian at its heart.
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
I remember the Carousel of Progress well when it was first introduced in Disneyland, and years before it was packed up and shipped to Disney World. And the model of the future city was wonderful to see on the way out, and as a kid I always enjoyed seeing all the little model cars and transportation systems running all over it. The smile on face right now is from remebering the model and the entire ride. One of the problems the ride had and would have today is how fast technology is changing and trying to keep the last part of the ride an actual "imagination" of the future, not a reflection of the present.
The late 60's early 70's Disneyland Tomorrowland filled me with visions of the possible future and spaceflight that I thought would be more routine today.
With Walt gone, and the future less clear with US space program slowed down in the post Apollo time, tomorrowland lost the "tomorrow" and the retro look is refreshing if nothing else. In another 15-20 years they will have to give Tomorrowland another remake and perhaps they'll have some more futuristic ideas then.
The problem is, I can't filter those people out, but you can filter John Katz out, so do it and shut up.
Damn I forget.
Seriously though, I found the article devoid of any content. It is nothing more than a rather poor exercise in pretty prose. My flaming was a direct comment on this!
More Sarcasm
I think it relates to how people perceived the future and, more off topic, a man's dreams and aspirations
Ever considered being a Miss World contestant *rofl*
The Tragedy of Technology
by Jon Katz, summerized by Anonymous Kev
There's a cool model, but Walt died and they didn't do it that way.
The End
Is that about it? Come on Jon, I don't totally buy into the opinion that technology's a tragic thing. But surely there's a thousandother valid subjects that would better illustrate your thesis. I'll list a few off the top of my head.
Technology is tragic because:
- It produces data that makes us less intelligent. The flood of information brought by technology has led us to avoid processing it. We scan over something and reach a knee-jerk opinion instead of reading and reasoning carefully.
- It produces new excitements that make us more boring. The new entertainment media have reduced us all to cocooned geeks will little people skills and with little to converse about (except for, "Hey, is the new Quake out yet?"
- It enables us to talk to different cultures, which destroys what's unique about other cultures. As more and more people communicate and learn from each other, the more all cultures become homogenous. Once we're all part of the AfroAngloEuroAsian Culture, life will be fairly boring.
- It provides greater (easier) mobility, allowing us to break family ties and move farther away from our "support groups".
- It provides medicines to extend our lives, so we can live our additional years in lonely isolation (related to the reason above).
Anyway, there's a few off the top of my head. Like I said before, I believe technology is a Good Thing(tm). But, Jon Katz, if you're going to take a view, please take a view. Don't just pander on about Walt's model. Yeah, that's sad. But doesn't make Technology tragic.Oops! Here's my boss... Now there's a tragedy of Technology ... productivity monitors on your computer!
Anonymous Kev
Exactly! It's not the technology that's the problem, it's the delusion that more technology will solve our problems, make us happier, and keep us safe.
What will accomplish these goals is a basic shift in the mind-set of humanity. We need to stop thinking short-term selfish goals and start looking at the effect our decisions have on the next seven generations.
Only when we support our community and our community supports us will our problems diminish, personal satisfaction (required for true happiness) increase, and justice and equality reign.
"We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence.
But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly imposible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence."
- Gandhi
Past the Tragic Kingdom, outside Dismal World, away from the architectural atrocities of the Swan and Dolphin hotels, beyond the dozens of parasitics and tourist traps, outside the Zone of Total Destruction in far southwest, past I-Drive, lies a very nice city and the most beautiful state in the Union, not quite all of which has yet been paved. It's too bad that so many visitors to Orlando never see it. Disney only ruined a small part.
but have you noticed how a load of articles recently have been having only 40 or so replies by people? that's pretty poor by slashdot standards. why is it? because the articles are 'latest update in the linux blah blah distribution version 3.4.2.2.2x released' or something pointless that noone cares about, like this. and i get fed up how katz refers to everyone on slashdot as 'geeks'. i'm not a geek, but i do have opinions, and a technology forum (where my interests lie) is the natural place to voice them. i'm also female, so i was pretty offended by some of that roblimo crap posted a while back on 'how to pull'.
or maybe i've got this all wrong, and its just the garish colour schemes that are putting people off.
I read 'The Gernsback Continuum', too, and I know what you are talking about. The future could've been worse than it was - it could've been perfect.
I also remember going to EPCOT as a little geek and seeing all the shiny cool rides and toys... sometimes it's nice just to have a place to forget about the world for a while. I fear that modern cynicism is draining the joy out of things - I fear that my own cynicism will drain the joy out of my own life.
One must take solace, and perhaps hope, in the notion that in every way that matters, the future is a thing we make. We are subject to the currents of history but free to steer as we will. We get the future we build, whether we realize it or not, and whether we want to or not.
In the 50's they saw people in the 90's using flying cars, space hotels, and voice-activated toasters. And in the 'real' 90's we got the Internet. That's not a bad thing, but it's the thing we made. The vision of the future is always colored by the present.
My point is this, then: We must not let the cynicism of today darkly color our vision of tomorrow. So many people fought to give us the right to [try to] be everything we want, but these days it seems trendy claim the right to be nothing. This is not the way to build a bright future.
The space hotels and flying cars and warp drive may get here yet. Or maybe the super-PDAs or the bionic implants or even a dark future of famine, plague, and war. Realize that which one we get depends largely on which one we choose to put our efforts into... if we don't put our efforts anywhere, we're not going to get what we want.
I have noticed, working in the toy industry, that the thing that keeps neat technology items out of the hands of consumers more often than not is not that it is expensive, or rare. the thing that keeps these 'innovations' from reaching us is product liability. companies will not put out a product they think has the potential to be dangerous to the consumer. a voice activated stove is all well and good.. but what if some 6 year old accidentally turns it on and burns the house down. I think this is why the web has developed so fast. A company can put whatever they want there and it can't really cause physical harm. No one ever broke a leg because a web page crashed, and it is hard to sue over offensive web-content, although it ahs been done. I spend several hours every week sitting in the confrence area, discussing what we ( the design staff) think would be fun, and then having the ideas shot down, one after another, with the words " Product Liability".
Most characters you meet on the street on no more than walking protein packs that need recycling.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
As a pro-space travel kind of guy, I'm a little disturbed by the thought that I see in this article: that the Space Age is passe. Hey! In my opinion, the Space Age hasn't happened yet! We didn't look at the telegraph and call the Old West the Information Age, did we? We humans have taken our first few faltering steps into space. We haven't gotten very far, and we've gone in space ships that haven't been very good or reliable (it amazes me that we haven't had more disasters with them.) The Space Age was not the 60's, even though the people in the 60's thought it was. (I'm sure some people in the 1860's thought the telegraph was the be all and end all of information technology.) The Space Age will be when the average person can travel from one planet to the other. I'm hoping for an Interstellar Age (I'm not sure it is possible), but I think we will eventually have a Planetary Colonization Age. I hope so, at least.
The reason why the Space Age, the real one, hasn't happened yet is that human technology hasn't reached the point where this kind of travel is easily within reach. Eventually, we'll get there, and if it is to be sooner rather than later we have to hear less discoraging talk about the Space Age as a "dead vision of the future."
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
JonKatz: the lost city of Epcot... way the fsck OFFTOPIC!! Not even interesting.
First, let's get the KatzBash out of the way: "would you quit babelling on relentlessly about the 'tragedy' of 'technology'? Geez!"
OK, that said: All this tragedy and feeling sorry for ourselves about the lost dreams of old Walt have nothing to do with America's lost dreams. It has everything to do with the bottom line and thus the stock price of NYSE: DIS, and how operating and upgrading theme parks and especially high-overhead Disney theme parks has fallen out of favor lately.
And I would be willing to bet that the reason why technology representation at Disney theme parks has not kept up is, quite simply, it costs money to upgrade them.
No matter how much we cry about it, until we take some dollars out of our pockets and visit these places, and then communicate our wishes for upgrades to management, DIS the 'Biz will have no reason to upgrade their parks to better reflect today's technology.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Isn't the real point here that a single point of view, whether it's the view point of Walt Disney the man, Disney the corporation, or the govts of the USSR or the USA, or MS, regardless a single point of view is not rich enough to see what the future will bring and to plan that future for us.
Second was a month ago. Wow.
I will sound like I'm echoing Katz, here, but I came away thinking "The corporate sponsorship is just nasty." Even the neat stuff was marred by it. People often comment that the magical sounds and voices from nowhere in Disney (I think they have speakers in the trees?) can be neat, like having your own reallife soundtrack. But one night, before the big fireworks show, the magic voice came up and said "Ladies and Gentlemen. Because GE brings good things to life, the fireworks will begin in 5 minutes." ARGH!
Did get to see backstage Disney, though, which I understand is rare. We brokedown in the ride near the Mexican restaurant, and after 15 minutes of listening to a tape loop tell us to come back soon in ancient Mayan or something, they finally led us all out a fire exit, where we found ourselves on a bare street and realized that it was behind the scenes. There was a row of ushers (or whatever they call themselves) lining it to make sure none of us wandered off. :)
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Really. How perceptive.
Isn't the real point here that a single point of view, whether it's the view point of Walt Disney the man, Disney the corporation, or the govts of the USSR or the USA, or MS, regardless a single point of view is not rich enough to see what the future will bring and to plan that future for us.
(Christ I hate Explorer and Windows. Let's continue.)
If we want a rich, multi-textured future with nooks and crannies that appeal to what is individual in each of us, we have to continue to keep as much power as possible out of corporations and governments. Sure it is easier to hope that the US govt will solve your personal problems, and tempting when a politician promises you that, but what the US govt will actually deliver will be some bizarre caricature of reality, with as little match to reality as Tomorrowland matches the real world.
"Disneyworld is for people who can't cope with the real world"? Is it possible you are unaware the Disneyworld is in fact a THEME PARK? What on Earth do you want, a theme park that's just like the real world? Amusement rides are SUPPOSED to be different from reality.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we've removed all the roller coasters from the Disney and Six Flags parks because rides are for people who can't handle reality. Instead, we've replaced them with concrete strips which perfectly simulate walking along an ordinary sidewalk. Visit Cubicle World, where you can spend 8 hours taking tech support calls. Marvel at Lawn Mowing Land, where you can mow a large segment of ordinary lawn. Don't forget to visit Stuck In Traffic, which perfectly simulates sitting in an immobile car on a hot LA freeway for three hours."
I thought Katz piece was worth reading. Disney
movies/land/stuff has always given me the creeps.
I have an off topic question. Last month a woman
sitting next to me on an airplane said that the
department of defense had some large underground
installation at ?Dinseyland? I took it as an
indication that she was a kook, but later my
girlfriend said she had heard about it too.
Is there something to this? Is it urban legend?
Or am I just dealing with kooks?
My Speculative Fiction prof (if you're well-read in short SF, you might know her by her pseudonym--Sally Caves), told us about an exhibit that she saw at Disneyworld once: the House of the Future, or some such.
Imagine a house where everything's plastic and metal. Smooth curves everywhere, something out of the Jetsons.
Instead of discussing Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum" that day, we reflected on how technology was supposed to change the world, make it into a utopia.
Have any of you wondered why those futuristic settings rarely have any non-futuristic buildings in them? Disney, as did many thinkers of the time, saw a future filled with impossibilities made substantial by the bountiful god of Technology. Nobody would be left behind. Everyone would get a shiny new building of plastic and steel and light.
Today, I type this in a room with hardwood floors, in a building older than my parents. Outside, I see asphalt, cars, and people braced against the cold. They wear natural-seeming fabrics, not aluminum foil Intel bunny suits.
Maybe we're seeking to recover the natural world we've pushed away from us. Or maybe the dream just left us behind.
-W-
Is it all journey, or is there landfall?
--Ellison & van Vogt, 'The Human Operators'
I'm obviously not as clever as I thought *grins*.
I think we've seen it about three times now. It wasn't even a "story" in the sense of "news" the first time. The horse is DEAD, Katz, you can stop beating it now. The horse is most of the way to being glue at this point.
Could it be? An article by JonKatz that doesn't chalk everything up to post-Columbine paranoia, or try desperately to be nonconformist (a la the Blair Witch contradiction)? Wow. This is good. Keep it up!
grep -ri 'should work'
Jon Katz - the literary equivalent of 70's progressive jazz *grins*.
Reminds me of the Dr. Who episode "Paradise Towers", where a guy known only as "The Great Architect" built these gleaming tall towers in which were apartments, cinemas, shops, and all the conveniences of a big city. Dr. Who visits them, only to find that the towers have been turned into a kind of "Escape from New York" setting: there are gangs of teenagers roving around wreaking havoc, and the few crackpot tenants left alive live a strange, twisted existence. The pool on the roof is inimical to life. Machines eat the residents every so often.
In the end, it turns out that The Great Architect built the towers and then went into hiding after the towers became inhabited in order to wipe the inhabitants out because they were destroying his gleaming clean creation.
It's amusing to imagine that under the "Model City of Tommorow" lies Walt Disney -- The Great Architect -- frozen until he can utilize all the wonders of modern technology to subvert the rides, displays, and omnipresent gift shops to start killing people in gruesome, messy, technological ways.
The Teacup Ride will start demonstrating the miracle of centrifugal force, first hand. The cars on the GM Test Track will crash into each other and explode, while the robotic assemblers in the waiting room will start installing car parts into the patrons.
The engines on the spaceship that R2D2 and C3PO are working on in the Star Wars ride will suddenly belch fire. And the big AT&T ball will release itself and go gallavanting through the parking lots.
In the midst of all this havoc, the statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse on Main Street, USA, will suddenly start laughing.
Oh, and thanks for that link *grins*
Katz, leave Disney World to those who understand it.
Sound Familiar? Well it's not EPCOT. That is a decription of the 1938 World's Fair.
It isn't irony, it's just plain inevitable that Disney couldn't see into the future.
The Disney operation capitalizes on appropriating, dessicating, and ultimately sealing us off from the past. The Disney empire does this with our folk traditions, and it does it with our real history whenever possible.
The people who I know who are most enamored by Disney productions (movies, games, etc.) are those with the most artificial sense of reality. People who live in rarified worlds, some trapped in a drug-induced fog, some just people who decided to never grow up.
It's hard for an organization that invests so much effort in lying about and distorting the past to be successful in doing so with the future. Because ultimately they will be proven wrong.
I think your shift key is broken *giggles*.
Chuck on remote assignment
Not sure when the change occured, but it is now known as "Epcot Center."
You'll notice that it's not capitalized anymore, so as not to imply it's original acryonym and adds the word "Center" to the name.
Neat, eh?
That is all
Epcot never went away, it just got a new name.
The Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow is better known today as the city of Celebration, Florida, located in the southern part of Walt Disney World's property. While it doesn't have the art deco and sterile feel of Walt's original vision, it does attempt to embrace his original concepts of a forward-thinking town with a strong sense of community. The homes are all wired together, and public Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs)can be seen zipping about the town. It might not be the perfect embodiment of Walt's vision for EPCOT, but it's as close as can be expected for now.
When Walt died, his brother Roy wanted to bring the EPCOT vision to pass. However, the technology required to construct such a city simply did not exist, and Roy just wanted to get the Florida property opened with the new Magic Kingdom. Once WDW opened to the public, attention turned to building the EPCOT community, but the technology still was not around, so the Disney Co. settled for the "World's Fair" concept that Epcot is today. Epcot (the theme park) has been moving away from the "prototype community" association for a few years now. A couple years ago Disney made a change so that "EPCOT" is now "Epcot", and has no acronymn associated with it (since the park is not a "community of tomorrow").
No internet attractions at Epcot? Well, perhaps you missed the one that was there. It's not very big, but as you exit Spaceship Earth, AT&T has set up a "Ride the Net" area where you stand in a rocking tube synched to a video in front of you. It's not much, but it is an internet-based attraction. If the Disney Imagineers could actually come up with an exciting attraction about the Internet, then they have my modest appreciation. I just can't see how anyone could make routers, packets, and high-bandwith pipes into a thrill ride.
What about Tomorrowland? When Walt Disney created the original Tomorrowland that was to showcase all that Epcot currently represents. However, the attractions were never updated to reflect changes in thought, and when Epcot opened, it basically took the place of Tomorrowland's original function. When Disney decided to go through a complete rehab and change Tomorrowland into a Jules Verne-esque themed area, I thought it was brilliant. By taking this new approach, Tomorrowland would not have to worry about being outdated. They also eliminated the haphazard grouping of attractions by tying them together to form a "town." Next time you're there, notice how all the buildings are supposed to be structures in an actual city. The only attraction that really seems out of place anymore is Space Mountain. Somehow a future look at high-speed FedEx delivery just doesn't cut it.
So remember, Tomorrowland isn't supposed to showcase the actual future, Epcot is no longer regarded by Disney as the "Community of Tomorrow", and Celebration, FL is the best embodiment of Walt's vision to date. Disney isn't really behind the times, they just haven't put the old city model in the dumpster, yet.
Are you volunteering to have your misanthropic ass reduced & reused?
"Disneyworld is for people who can't cope with the real world"? Is it possible you are unaware the Disneyworld is in fact a THEME PARK?
You're right, I failed to make my point correctly.
Theme parks, in general, are for people who aren't
able to cope with the real world. Instead they
want a carefully-controlled experience similar
to the real world but with all the messy bits
taken out.
You make the mistake of thinking that the real
world is just the drab and dreary urban
existence people seem to get themselves stuck in
nowadays. It's not. From that viewpoint, I'd
imagine that Disneyworld would look like an
excellent holiday destination.
Also, I'm not talking about rollercoaster parks.
Disney rides tend to suck by comparison (at least
any I've been on).
K. (Visit a fscking museum already)
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Restaurants in the World Showcase pavilions are generally branches of high-end restaurants from their "host" countries. The Italian restaurant is Alfredo's (of Fettucine Alfredo). The Mexican restaurant's other location is in Mexico City. The Japanese restaurants and store are run by a company that's been around in Japan since the mid-1600s. And so on. This doesn't mean the restaurants are automatically good, but Disney can't be accused of not making an effort to get the real thing.
Actually, Disney restaurants in general--particularly the ones outside the theme parks in the resorts--are well-respected. They may not make "10 Best in America" lists, but one or usually will make "100 Best in America" lists; the California Grill (in the Contemporary Resort) and Artist Point (in the Wilderness Lodge) are consistently among the top-rated in Florida.
As to Epcot's "authenticity" in general, I don't recall that word coming up in the brochures nearly as often as you seem to. The World Showcase pavilions are run as showcases for the tourism offices of their respective countries (Morocco even has a branch of their tourism office there). What do you expect? A "great slums of London" exhibit in the British pavilion? The museum in the China pavilion to be showing an exhibit titled '100 Years of Repressing Human Rights: A Retrospective?"
His plan was that Epcot would be run by Imagineers and Disney executives, not elected representatives. He probably feared that the all-too-human inhabitants would ruin his technology.
And he would have been right.
(interesting piece Jon)
- geethree
To be totally honest, there's two things wrong with the complaint that there is no internet envisioned and that there is no internet attraction at Epcot.
a) Computers were still the size of the WOPR when Walt died. Hmmm. Walt's idea probably did envision a network, but not the kind we have today. Computers inside the building were probably to be networked to these "voice activated appliances" (sounds resemblingly like embedded devices that attach to networks). The idea of a personal computer was so far off back in the early 60s that an Internet simply would have meant being able to start your stove from work.
b) How exciting is the internet? Why have an attraction at Epcot then? Yes, to me and you it's exciting. To most people, the internet is scary and uncontrolled. It's not the end all be all. Recently, there was a news story about a town that finally got wired into the phone system. If a group of people can go 100 years without the phone, then surely you realize that there are millions of people that live a daily life sans internet.
Sorry to say it, but in the end, it's exciting to us cause we do the software and hardware.
Plain and simple.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
You probably didn't like them because they weren't targeted at angry, bitter elitists.
a) The location for Walt's refrigerator I usually hear as under Space Mountain, rather than the Pirates of the Carib. I like to think of it that way, too, every time I ride the Mountain.
...;)
b) Yeah, I read the Straight Dope piece about that too, but c'mon! If the man was in a freezer somewhere, it'd still be easy enough to come up with some ashes to avoid the "where's he buried?" scrutiny. There are plenty of empty or mislabeled graves on the planet. So C. Adams coming up with a location for some ashes wouldn't put a dent in any *serious* cryogenic theories. Only tearing up the whole park and failing to find the freezer. Even then
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Er, so if someone wants a day or two out of the real world seeking controlled entertainment there's something morally corrupt about them?
Do you play computer games? Do you read science fiction, or any other sort of fiction? Do you go to cinemas? Plenty of controlled sanitised experiences and escapism there.
Or do you spend your days coding and fighting for human rights with only the occasional visit to a library (textbooks and non-fiction only) or museum for inspiration to continue the struggle?
I doubt it.
Lighten up. If you don't like Disney's stuff, like the violence in Tarantino's movies, don't go.
The problem with this article and comments like yours is searching for some deep meaning in a corporate theme park. There isn't any. Live with it.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
If you haven't been to Celebration and won't have a chance to go in the near future, go see the movie "The Truman Show". While "The Truman Show" was not filmed in Celebration, the feeling is the same. Everything is just a little 'too perfect'... to the point of being downright eerie. It's not a bad place to catch a movie, though.
The cost of a home in Celebration is high, but not astronomical. There are, however, some very restrictive policies you must agree to in order to live there. I don't know if I could deal with having the same yard as all of my neighbors.
Judging from the other responses to Katz's musings, the nature of prediction hasn't changed much since Chesterton's day, and the novel's take on the fate of such prophecies is both enlightening and extremely funny.
For the book-lovers out there, here's another recommendation for Napoleon. John Crowley quotes those Introductory Remarks in his World Fantasy Award winner, Little, Big.
If you want a quick skinny on Chesterton, try G. K. Chesterton
We must teach the 'Net to use diacriticals!
I got curious about Disney's "utoptian" planned community (read prison). So for those of you who would rather read something than listen to what NPR has to say about Celebration, here's a link. Disney@xone.network: Celebration, USA.
People don't pay for more reality. I can walk down the street for free. I can (indeed, will) get stuck in traffic without ponying up to Disney. Things that are commonplace do not require a park. Things that are extra-ordinary, different, outside the norm, that require effort to create, can be found in Disneyworld. That doesn't mean we should look down on anything that isn't real, everyday stuff. The world needs imagination.
Besides, if I visit a museum, all I'll see is a bunch of art and paintings- art is just a reflection of life, not the real thing. It's for people who can't handle reality. So are literature, movies, TV, computer games, plays, and in fact any form of entertainment at all. Or at least, that seems to be the thrust of your arguement. Just because someone may want to view or experience fantasy once in a while doesn't mean they "can't handle the real world".
Utopia or dystopia, overtly fascist or not, the results would be tragic in any event. People change. Utopias don't. And that's assuming the technologies that went into creating it work, which they do slightly more than half the time. When things don't work, it's even worse, since everyone has to pretend they do. Happily, real societies are sloppy, because we are sloppy. That strongly suggests the future will be sloppy as well, which is all any honest person can expect. Only death is perfect. That's my philosophy and I'm sticking to it. It's not quite the opposite of tragic, but it's a comfort knowing I (probably) won't end up trapped in someone else's utopia or--worse yet--my own. Anyway, we don't need a utopia to deliver the goods. We have the internet, penicillin, and a few good Goth bands. People on Mars? We'll get there, though life there may be by turns hilarious and depressing, a la Philip K. Dick's "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch." But that's the future for you. The above has been partly inspired by "World of the Future," made by Ivan Stang of the Church of the Subgenius, and "We're All Bozos On This Bus," by the Firesign Theater.
In my little circle, Bithlo is referred to as "The Nightmare Before Christmas". I have to admit, though, that I have never regretted my decision to move from the Pacific Northwest down to Orlando. The people, the city, everything about this place is - well, not *perfect*, but who'd want a perfect place? Let's just say it's a nice fit. :) Hmm... I wonder if O-Town will be "slashdotted" with visitors after all this talk...
This almost made up for the pain of reading Katz's article.
I like Disney too, but Katz's article is revisionist history. The early (50's) DisneyLand in Anaheim, built under Walt's direction while he was still alive, had corporate sponsered exhibits and rides. Most of the rides in Tomorrowland had a sponser. This is from day 1, not some corporate sea change that happened only after Disney died.
I think it's sad that people here feel you can't be a visionary if you're in it for the money. Because those are the only kind of visionaries who actually get to execute on their vision. The rest are washed up dreamers.
Wow, that last bit really blew me away:
:)
Picture old Walt Disney, in failing health, with a clear vision of the future.
He wants a community of people, working together, as an example of what the future will be like, to make the world a better place.
He also knows that the current people will screw up his vision of the future. He thinks that cryogenics might work, but that he'd be revived too late to repair the damage they've done to his vision. (correctly, I might add. No one is reviving frozen old people yet, and his vision has already been messed up)
So he makes videos to be shown after his death... Anyone else think old Walt read Foundation one too many times?
Listen, Katz. *That* would have made a cool story. News for nerds.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
of the reason why I read Katz religiously. While negativists neigh about his lack of horse sense, I read valid sociological and historical insights in this article. that;s not to say I agree with all his conclusions, processes, or premises...I just think that articles like this are far more interesting than painfully myopic techno-weenie things like EMACS vs. VI or How-Gateway-Sabotaged-Amiga. This is reporting because it starts with primary source material, expounds upon ae, and delivers conclusions of subjective merit.
If virtue is its own reward, jsut imagine what vice offers!
Katz talks about the tragedy of technology. I'm not sure quite what he's getting at, but I think it IS tragic that Wall Street has found billions of dollars to pour into cyberspace, but can't seem to find the few millions needed to make viable some of the companies REALLY looking at revolutionizing space travel.
/.: here on Earth we're on a single planet, with no redundancy. The Earth goes "down" for very long, and we're finished. Getting into space is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for the long-term survival of humanity. And that's pretty important in my book, anyway.
Space.com actually has pretty good news on some of the latest companies and technologies. I think the Rotary Rocket idea is the most interesting, though I suspect they may have run into some technical issues relating to angular momentum conservation... But there's also Kistler Aerospace and many others that promise to reduce costs to orbit by a factor of 10 or more. There are 17 entrants in the X-prize $10 million race to be the first single-stage-to-orbit vehicle. NASA has some nice new ideas too, but the bureaucracy makes that agency close to useless.
Anyway, even a single $1 billion internet entrepreneur involved in this business would be a huge boost. Most of the companies are scrounging for financing at the $10 million to $100 million level - some are getting it, some are not. But there's clearly not nearly enough money being put into it yet to take full advantage of the new materials and other revolutionary ideas that are just itching to be put into space vehicle design.
The NASA dream died when the argument went around that this has no relevance to solving our "real problems" - poverty, etc. etc. Well, I think the argument Arthur Clarke made about this recently should resonate with the techies here on
Energy: time to change the picture.
The Metro-movers used in downtown Miami, Florida are larger versions of the Peoplemover (Tomorrowland Transit Authority). They share a similar style, probably because they are made by the same manufacturer, Westinghouse.
Although not many realize it, the real effect of the 'Net will be to make hierarchical structure unnecessary, though it may take a couple more decades. I'm also fond of saying that, in years to come, certain econometricians (who currently use a rather small subset of mathematics to model what they conceive of as "the economy") will finally realize that the economic function of the 'Net was to introduce the concept of limits into economic practise.
Disney World opened in Orlando a month before I was born, and it was a 3-4 hour drive away. When I was a kid, my parents took me two or three times a year. Tommorowland was inspiring. Adventureland was kind of cool, Fantasyland never did much for me, I didn't really appreciate Main Street until I was older, and the rest of the Magic Kingdom still doesn't do much for me. But the first place I wanted to go as soon as we arrived was Tommorowland. The architecture was unique; you couldn't see anything like it anywhere in the world. The retro renovations are kind of neat, but I do miss those tall, spiky fountains at the entrance. I'm not sure I'd call that tragic though. I never really bought into the utopia thing -- from the Carousel of Progress to the 80's ideas of underwater colonies shown off at EPCOT, it was a little too idealistic. Even as a kid I knew that. But you can dream without getting cheesy, and Tommorowland kicked off lots of dreams for me. It was a showcase for technology and creativity, and THAT was cool. I always liked the monorail system much more than the Peoplemover, because it was useful. It took you from the parking lot to the entrance to hotels, and later to EPCOT. Peoplemover just went in a big loop around Tommorowland. Now of course the lake the monorail carries you around/across was manmade, put there to physically and psychologically separate the Magic Kingdom from the real world, but it did serve a useful purpose. When we look at the future now we do it through different eyes. We know there's a lot of potentially really great science and technology coming down the pipe -- but we see the dark side of it too. Maybe cyberpunk did that for us?
Here is a perfect example of what happens when people from California try to use words from Mississippi...
"The showcase of nations - a collection of distinctly-designed pavilions that sell the food and gew-gaws of various encircle around a man-made lagoon"
First, they would be "Geegaws" according to Webster's unabridged. Also to be noted in the Mose Allison album Geegaws and Gimcracks. Secondly, is there a word missing from the sentence above?? "of various encircle" sounds like an REM album. Do they pay you for these stories??
And finally, Walt was a facist. Well, most "Utopian" societies actually were. The ones that weren't made the assumption that eventually we'd get over this whole "agression" thing. Read Dostoyevsky's "The Devils". THat might also give you an opportunity to read an author who really could predict the future. (once)
~Jason Maggard
Go away. You suck.
Looks like he failed here, too. I dunno about the Imagineers, but it certainly looks like the execs didn't do a very good job.
-Eldurbarn
While a grad student in Urban Studies at UCLA in the 70's, I attended a small seminar given by John Hench (then Disney pres) and Martin Sklar (then head of WED Imagineering on the subject of EPCOT. The purpose of the lecture was to present the urban planning aspect of the original concept Disney had for EPCOT -- an actual community for people to live in on a rotating basis. We had the rare privilege to view the last film that Disney narrated giving the details of EPCOT and the Magic Kingdom. The film was made for the Florida State legislature in order to garner support for Disney to, in effect, become his own municipality and write his own zoning regulations. In fact, this is exactly what was accomplished with the Reedy Creek Improvement District (if my memory serves correctly). In the film, there is extensive use of the model that your are referring to in Disney World. A memorable film that is worth seeing if only to see how far EPCOT has departed from Disney's original vision.
What is wrong with all of you people? For a community of people online who I /thought/ were supposed to be relatively mature, intelligent, sensitive, etc., there is this disgusting idea that it's really OK to be a judgemental asshole. What's wrong with you? Were you made fun of as a kid? Did your girlfriend/boyfriend dump you?
Whatever the reason(s), it really isn't necessary to be an asshole in a weak attempt to seem intelligent or tough or whatever you're aiming for. So Jon wrote an article you didn't like. No one made you read it. So some people have made comments you don't agree with. You don't know them and they don't matter to you, so flaming them won't accomplish much. So Disney might've been a fascist and all of that other nonsense. Disney World was still my favorite place to be when I was a kid, and I'm sure it was for a lot of you too. But, of course, that doesn't matter, because now you're all grown up, smart, tough-guys.
There's negative aspects to everything, but a *huge* amount of people have enjoyed their trips to Disney/Epcot and indeed TomorrowLand too. I for one remember a fabulous time, at the tender age of 6, when I visited DisneyLand. Who cares that it doesn't agree with the future. Who cares that Disney's founder wasn't correct. What only matters is that people have a good time. Disney isn't so much about being right, but about being a fun, _entertaining_ fantasy land. And I think they do a good job. just my 2 cents
This summer, I became well acquainted with the model as I rode the people mover about 3 times to wait out the Florida rain. Because I knew nothing of the history of the model, it was only sad because it seems that spiders had made homes between the lamp-posts. Now nostalgia has really taken hold of me.
However, In my opinion the most tragic developments at Disney are still associated with the Tiki Room facelift with those annoying birds from recent movies.
"Don't forget to visit Stuck In Traffic, which perfectly simulates sitting in an immobile car on a hot LA freeway for three hours." They have that at Disneyland, only they call it "the line for the Rocket Rods"
For some time now Disney World has been changing items around in it's park(s). I was admittitly saddened by the lose of Mr Toads Wild Ride considering that to be a staple of the park. However this is a buisness decision and possibily a sound one if it is not getting any visitors on it's ride it is wasted space. I am not thrilled with the idea of these things disappering but I am even less thrilled with the idea of WDW disapperring due to a lack of business. Remember we use to have to have E tickets for the good rides.
I remember the Epcot centre.
There was a robot in Tommorrowland that asked you questions. Its voice-recognition software couldn't understand my rather neutral aussie accent replying either "yes" or "no" so it just ignored me and moved on to the next kid. When it came around again I affected a more, shall we say, acceptable accent and it decided I was worth talking to.
Now who said Disney were cultural imperialists?
Isn't it funny when someone deliberately confuses fascism with communism on a msg board and triggers a million replies? Including this one, of course.
It must be the textbook definition of an inflammatory post.
So fascism and communism are similar, eh - did the HUAC ever ask anyone if they were, or ever had been, members of the Nazi Party?
--Ok, I've been trying very hard to give Katz the Benefit Of The Doubt (BOTD), but this is basically just a rehash of the '96 article.
PaTheTic.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
> Things that are extra-ordinary, different,
> outside the norm, that require effort to create,
> can be found in Disneyworld.
> That doesn't mean we should look down on
> anything that isn't real, everyday
> stuff. The world needs imagination.
When exactly does Disneyworld require you to use
your imagination? It's all there in primary
colours.
What exactly is outside the norm in Disneyworld?
It's all just toned-down rehashing of elements
of history or popular fantasy.
> Besides, if I visit a museum, all I'll see is a
> bunch of art and paintings- art is just a
> reflection of life, not the real thing.
If you go to a museum and pay attention to what
you're seeing, you may come away with a
better understanding of some aspect of life,
even if it's just a glimpse into the artist's
head. Disney has nothing to offer. You come
away out of pocket, and if you're lucky, with a
generic set of committee-created magical memories.
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
I know what the Greek sense of tragedy is, and I don't particularly care what Alanis M. thinks is ironic.
The "gives this, takes away that" format of my list does present a more ironic tone. But I'm afraid you're the one who has his eyeballs in backward. The only tragic element missing from the list is an explicit mention of a "struggle against an inevitable conclusion with a sad ending". (Please take time to look up the exact definition in your Lit book and get back to me). However, I think the tragedy is implied.
I do, however, apologize for the mispellings in my original post.
Anonymous Kev
When does Disney require me to use my imagination? Many of the attractions use a shadow, a hint, or what they want you to believe, at let you fill in the rest. I call your attention to having dinner in the Blue Bayou, or riding Space Mountain. If you have never done these things, this discussion is over because only one of us has meaningful information on the subject at hand. Disneyland also has a great deal of the imagination of other people put into it, and by going one can see their work and their dreams. Imagination is a two way street- a book should be read, a movie watched, a theme park experienced. Otherwise, why bother making them at all? For your own edification? That eliminates the possibility of using them to connect with your fellow man, to show what's in your heart and perhaps inspire something in return. If you think Disneyland is souless then that's your right, but I see beauty in the artwork in "Alice In Wonderland", I see adventure in the "Pirates of the Carribean (sp)", I see wonder in "Space Mountain", and I see incredible technical skill in "Star Tours". And don't even get me started on how much more Disneyland has to offer to children, who can really believe, who can meet Mickey Mouse and think they just met Mickey Mouse.
As for museums, I wasn't putting them down. That last paragraph was sarcasm, intended to highlight that most of the arguements you put forth concerning Disneyland also apply to other forms of entertainment, including the Louvre. They're not valid arguements in either case.
In any event, I'm done. I'm gonna go throw Katz in my killfile before he reprints this article for a fourth time.
How come I have the impression that most people don't bother to read what Jon Katz has posted, but just go straight ahead to their numb-skulled "Shut up, Katz", "Katz is a loser", "Katz got it all wrong" routines? Are people here so biased in that everything Jon Katz says must be bullshit because Jon Katz wrote it and he can't use Linux cause he's too damn stupid and he's generally a loser that they must automatically prove time after time that they don't even care about what he writes, as long as it's Katz-bashing time? Makes me sick. If even half of you had bothered to actually read Jon's article you'd have noticed he's written quite an informative article, and I can't wait to read the entire story when it's finished. I just wish some people would get their heads out of their asses and read for once. OK, it's not Linux-relevant, if that's what you want, but nobody's forcing anybody here to read what Katz has to say. And not every article that doesn't mention Linux is a bad article (I've used Linux since 1994, and I would indeed be a sad person if all I ever read was about Linux). So, grow up, people, and use your brains for once. And to you, Katz, keep it up, you're doing a good job.
I know I'm flamebait with this one, so fire ahead!
you never know - reality may leave beta-test today!
They got some FBI files on Walt Disney over at APBOnline.
There is what you might call a large underground installation at Walt Disney World, but the Department of Defense has nothing to do with it. The Magic Kingdom is built over a maze of utility corridors (utilidors in Disney parlance) which contain the service facilities for the park. They are not actually underground - that would be silly, since Florida is a swamp. This means that the entire Magic Kingdom is on the second floor. One of the stranger experiences I had as a cast member was entering the Magic Kingdom via the utitidors. You go in through the back at ground level, walk through wide noisy tunnels lined with pipes, turn a few corners, go up two flights of stairs, open a door and voila! Fantasyland! -fran@well.com