NYT
Confounding Machines: How the Future Looked
By PETER EDIDIN
Published: August 28, 2005
SMALL children and prescientific peoples, it is said, employ magical
thinking to deal with a world they can't understand or control.
But magical thinking isn't limited to children or those who are
indulgently seen as childlike. In an age of technology, which
produces a constant flood of incomprehensible phenomena, such
forms of thinking may be an occasional necessity for everyone.
In the August issue of Wired, for example, Kevin Kelly celebrates
the 10th anniversary of the initial public offering of Netscape
stock, which he takes as marking the start of the Internet revolution.
The Internet, in Mr. Kelly's evangelical eyes, is alive, overwhelming,
sublime and, finally, magical. It has created, he writes, "a
new type of thinking - part human and part machine - found nowhere
else on the planet or in history."
Three thousand years hence, he concludes, historians will say: "The Machine provided ... a new mind for an old species. It was the Beginning."
One way to look at such a claim - a common one among Internet enthusiasts - is through the writer Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law, from his 1962 book "Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry Into the Limits of the Possible." It states: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And in fact, Mr. Kelly's reaction has been preceded, over the past 100 years or so, by similar reactions to the introduction of motion pictures, radio and television. Each in turn so astonished those who encountered it that magic - black or white - seemed the only explanation.
In fairness to the human mind, each of these technologies was, and is, uncanny. Nineteenth-century audiences gasped when a beam of light conjured an onrushing train into existence, and there was something even weirder about radio, which millions saw as a miracle that plucked sounds and voices out of the "ether."
Another common response to technological innovation has been to predict where it will lead, which is also an assertion of control over it. But as the following excerpts show, the crystal balls are almost always cracked. With some startling exceptions, prognosticators are usually dead wrong.
This is something worth remembering in the midst of today's revolution - the rise of the Internet and the rapid spread of broadband connections. These technologies have already had a profound effect on everything from presidential elections to the music business to the doctor-patient relationship. How far they will reach and to what extent they will alter the terrain of daily life is anyone's guess, but it's a fair bet most of the guesses made by the growing industry of pundits and consultants will be wide of the mark.
RADIO
1920
M. J. Caveney, "New Voices in the Wilderness."
I am in a log shack in Canada's northland. Only yesterday to be
out here was to be out of the world. But no longer. The radiophone
has changed all that. Remember where I am and then you can realize
how "homey" it is to hear a motherly voice carefully
describing in detail just how to make the pie crust more flaky.
1921
Velimir Khlebnikov, Russian poet, "The Radio of the Future."
The Radio of the Future - the central tree of our consciousness
- will inaugurate the new ways to cope with our endless undertakings
and will unite all mankind.
The main radio station, that stronghold of steel, where clouds
of wires cluster like strands of hair, will surely be protected
by a sign with a skull and crossbones and the familiar word "Danger,"
since the least disruption of radio operations would produce a
mental blackout over the entire country, a temporary loss of consciousness.
1922
Bruce Bliven, "The Ether Will Now Oblige," in The New
Republic.
There will be only one orchestra left on earth, giving nightly
worldwide concerts; when all universities will be combined into
one super-institution, conducting courses by radio for students
in Zanzibar, Kamchatka and Oskaloose; when, instead of newspapers,
trained orators will dictate the news of the world day and night,
and the bedtime story will be told every evening from Paris to
the sleepy children of a weary world; when every person will be
instantly accessible day or night to all the bores he knows, and
will know them all: when the last vestiges of privacy, solitude
and contemplation will have vanished into limbo.
1923
J. M. McKibben, "New Way to Make Americans."
Today this nation of ours is slowly but surely being conquered,
not by a single enemy in open warfare, but by a dozen insidious
(though often unconscious) enemies in peace. Millions of foreigners
were received into the country, with little or no thought given
to their assimilation. But now the crisis is upon us; and we must
face it without a great leader. Perhaps no man could mold the
120 million people in a harmonious whole, bound together by a
strong national consciousness: but in the place of a superhuman
individual, the genius of the last decade has provided a force
- and that force is radio.
1924
Waldemar Kaempffert, "The Social Destiny of Radio."
It so happens that the United States and Great Britain have taken
the lead in broadcasting. If that lead is maintained it follows
that English must become the dominant tongue. Compared with our
efforts at mass entertainment and mass education, European competition
is pathetic. All ears may eventually be cocked to hear what the
United States and Great Britain have to say. Europe will find
it desirable, even necessary, to learn English.
1928
The New York Times on how radio might affect voters.
It is believed that brief pithy statements as to the positions
of the parties and candidates, which reach the emotions through
the minds of millions of radio listeners, will play an important
part in the race to the White House.
1930
Martin Codel, "Radio and Its Future."
That anything man can imagine he can do in the ethereal realm
of radio will probably be an actual accomplishment some day. Perhaps
radio, or something akin to radio, will one day give us mortals
telepathic or occult senses!
FILM
1895
A journalist in Paris after viewing the premiere of Louis Lumière's
films.
Photography has ceased to record immobility. It perpetuates the
image of movement. When these gadgets are in the hands of the
public, when anyone can photograph the ones who are dear to them,
not just in their immobile form, but with movement, action, familiar
gestures and the words out of their mouths, then death will no
longer be absolute, final.
1896
The projectionist of the first Lumière screening in New
York.
You had to have lived these moments of collective exaltation,
have attended these thrilling screenings in order to understand
just how far the excitement of the crowd could go. With the flick
of a switch, I plunge several thousand spectators into darkness.
Each scene passes, accompanied by tempestuous applause; after
the sixth scene, I return the hall to light. The audience is shaking.
Cries ring out.
Maxim Gorky, on seeing the Lumière Cinématographe
in Nizhny Novgorod.
Last evening, I was in the Kingdom of the Shadows. If one could
only convey the strangeness of this world. A world without color
and sound. Everything here- the earth, water, and air, the trees,
the people-everything is mad of a monotone gray. Gray rays of
sunlight in a gray sky, gray eyes in a gray face, leaves as gray
as cider. Not life, but the shadow of life. Not life's movement,
but a sort of mute specter.
Their movements are full of vital energy and so rapid that you
scarcely see them, but their smiles have nothing of life in them.
You see their facial muscles contract but their laugh cannot be
heard. A life is born before you, a life deprived of sound and
the specter of color - a gray and noiseless life - a wan and cut-rate
life.
1913
A Universal Studio advertisement at the creation of Hollywood's
star system.
What is the earthly use of showing pictures posed by amateurs
and unknowns when you can get the very best known stars of the
screen by using that Universal program? ...
The photograph of any star on this wonderful list if displayed
in your lobby with the words "Here Today" is positively
bound to boost your receipts.
1915
The New York Times, from an interview with D. W. Griffith.
The time will come, and in less than 10 years, when the children
in the public schools will be taught practically everything by
moving pictures. Certainly they will never be obliged to read
history again.
Imagine a public library of the near future, for instance. There
will be long rows of boxes of pillars, properly classified and
indexed, of course. At each box a push button and before each
box a seat. Suppose you wish to "read up" on a certain
episode in Napoleon's life.
Instead of consulting all the authorities, wading laboriously
through a host of books, and ending bewildered, without a clear
idea of exactly what did happen and confused at every point by
conflicting opinions about what did happen, you will merely seat
yourself at a properly adjusted window, in a scientifically prepared
room, press the button, and actually see what happened.
1921
James Quirk, Photoplay magazine
We talk of the worth, the service, the entertaining power, the
community value, the recreative force, the educational influence,
the civilizing and commercial possibilities of the motion picture.
And everyone has, singularly enough, neglected to mention its
rarest and subtlest beauty: "Silence."
TELEVISION
1925
The reaction of a London schoolgirl after watching a demonstration
of television.
And then we all clapped politely because we were all rather frightened
of television. I think the trouble was that we believed that,
if they could make this film, they could see into our houses.
We could see them; they could see us.
1936
Rex Lambert in "The Listener."
Television won't matter in your lifetime or mine.
J.C. Furnas , "The Next Hundred Years."
It is my hope, and I see no reason why it should not be realized,
to be able to go to an ordinary movie theater when some great
national event is taking place across the country and see on the
screen the sharp image of the action reproduced - at the same
instant it occurs. This waiting for the newsreels to come out
is a bit tiresome for the 20th century. Some time later I hope
to be able to take my inaugurals, prize fights and football games
at home. I expect to do it satisfactorily and cheaply. Only under
those conditions can a television get into my house.
1939
David Sarnoff, the chairman of RCA, at the televised opening of
the RCA Pavilion at the World's Fair in New York.
Now we add sight to sound. It is with a feeling of humbleness
that I come to this moment of announcing the birth, in this country,
of a new art so important in its implications that it is bound
to affect all society. It is an art which shines like a torch
in a troubled world.
The problem with television is that people must sit and keep their
eyes glued to the screen; the average American family hasn't time
for it. Therefore the showmen are convinced that for this reason,
if no other, television will never be a serious competitor of
broadcasting.
1946
Thomas Hutchinson, "Here is Television: Your Window on the
World."
Television means the world is your home and in the homes of all
the people of the world. It is the greatest means of communication
ever developed by the mind of man. It should do more to develop
friendly neighbors, and to bring understanding and peace on earth,
than any other single material force in the world today.
Samuel Cuff, general manager of WABD in New York.
There are certain people who have maintained that the American
housewife would turn television on early in the morning just as
she does the radio, and leave it on through the day and most of
the night. That, of course, is hardly so, because the benefits
of television can be derived only when you are looking at it directly
and not doing anything else. The housewife will not very long
remains a housewife who attempts to watch television programs
all afternoon and evening instead of cooking or darning socks.
1963
T.S. Eliot
It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people
to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
Sources Radio: “Radio Voices,” by Michele Hilmes (1997, Minnesota University Press) ; “The King of Time,” by Velimir Khlebnikov, edited by Charlotte Douglas (1985, Harvard University Press); “New Media and Popular Imagination,” by William Boddy (Oxford University Press, 2004); “Radio Lessons for the Internet” by Martin Spinelli, in Postmodern Culture, January 1996. Television: “Television: A History,” by Francis Wheen (Century, 1985); “The New York Public Library Book of 20th Century American Quotations” (Wiley, 1992); “A Pictorial History of Television,” by Irving Settel and William Laas (Grosset & Dunlap, 1969); “ ‘A Godlike Presence:’ The Impact of Radio on the 1920’s and 1930’s,” by Tom Lewis. (OAH Magazine of History 6, Spring 1992); “Here Is Television: Your Window on the World” (Hastings House, 1946); The New York Post (Sept 22, 1963). Film: “Birth of the Motion Picture,” by Emmanuelle Toulet (Abrams, 1995); “Kino: A History of Russian and Soviet Film,” by Jay Leyda (Princeton University Press, 1983) ; “From Peepshow to Palace: The Birth of American Film,” by David Robinson (Columbia University Press, 1995); “The Parade’s Gone By,” by Kevin Brownlow (Knopf, 1968)