[Swprograms] The "future" of radio [Confounding Machines: How the Future Looked - New York Times]

[Daniel Say <say@xxxxxx>]

----- Forwarded message from say@xxxxxx -----
Subject: Confounding Machines: How the Future Looked - New York Times
X-URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/weekinreview/28edid1.html?ei=5090&en=2952cb8633c4f633&ex=1282881600&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

   [2]The New York Times.  Week in Review 
   _________________________________________________________________

   August 28, 2005

                  Confounding Machines: How the Future Looked

   By PETER EDIDIN

   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.
   [wireless.gif]

   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.
   [armstrong.gif]

   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.
   [theremin4.gif]

   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.
   [radio.gif]

   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!
   [edison.gif]

..... [ deleted the 140 lines on newfangled Film, and radio-mit-bilder 
	         called Tele-vision  ] .....
   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. 
	[ deleted tv and film references ]
_______________________________________________
Swprograms mailing list
Swprograms@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://dallas.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms

To unsubscribe:  Send an E-mail to  swprograms-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.