Mike Douglas and Twiggy receive a demonstration in holography in 1977 from Abe Rezny and Steve Cohen and their wonderful, wonderful beards.
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Tags: Abe Rezny, Mike Douglas, Steve Cohen, Twiggy
John C. Lilly explaining his 1954 invention, the isolation tank, in a 1983 Omni interview:
“Omni:
Tell me the circumstances that led you to invent the first isolation tank.
John C. Lilly:
There was a problem in neurophysiology at the time: Is brain activity self-contained or not? One school of thought said the brain needed external stimulation or it would go to sleep–become unconscious–while the other school said, ‘No, there are automatic oscillators in the brain that keep it awake.’ So I decided to try a sensory-isolation experiment, building a tank to reduce external stimuli–auditory, visual, tactile, temperature–almost to nil. The tank is lightproof and soundproof. The water in the tank is kept at ninety-three to ninety-four degrees. So you can’t tell where the water ends and your body begins, and it’s neither hot nor cold. If the water were exactly body temperature, it couldn’t absorb your body’s heat loss, your body temperature would rise above one hundred six degrees, and you might die.
I discovered that the oscillator school of thought was right, that the brain does not go unconscious in the absence of sensory input. I’d sleep in the tank if I hadn’t had any sleep for a couple of nights, but more interesting things happen if you’re awake. You can have waking dreams, study your dreams, and, with the help of LSD-25 or a chemical agent I call vitamin K, you can experience alternate realities. You’re safe in the tank because you’re not walking around and falling down, or mutating your perception of external ‘reality.'”
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“The tank was unusual in that it was vertical and looked like an old boiler”:
Tags: John C. Lilly
Aerofex in California is in the test phase of a new hovercraft vehicle. From the site copy: “Imagine personal flight as intuitive as riding a bike. Or transporting a small fleet of first-responder craft in the belly of a passenger transport. Think of the advantages of patrolling borders without first constructing roads. In pursuit of this vision, Aerofex is flying a proof-of-concept craft developed as a test-bed of manned and unmanned technologies.”
Mike Douglas and Alfred Hitchcock in conversation for 14 minutes in 1969. That’s Joan Rivers whom Hitchcock zings at the opening.
Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Joan Rivers, Mike Douglas
Tags: Patrick Tresset
At IEEE Spectrum, Dan Siewiorek of Carnegie Mellon imagines the future of smartphones. Timelines are notoriously difficult to predict, but he suggests nothing outlandish. The opening:
“It’s the year 2020 and newlyweds Tom and Sara are expecting their first child. Along with selecting the latest high-tech stroller, picking out a crib, and decorating the nursery, they download the ‘NewBorn’ application suite to their universal communicator; they’re using what we’ll call a SmartPhone 20.0. Before the due date, they take the phone on a tour of the house, letting the phone’s sensors and machine-learning algorithms create light and sound ‘fingerprints’ for each room.
When they settle Tom Jr. down for his first nap at home, they place the SmartPhone 20.0 in his crib. Understanding that the crib is where the baby sleeps, the SmartPhone activates its sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) application and uses its built-in microphone, accelerometers, and other sensors to monitor little Tommy’s heartbeat and respiration. The “Baby Position” app analyzes the live video stream to ensure that Tommy does not flip over onto his stomach—a position that the medical journals still report contributes to SIDS. Of course, best practices in child rearing seem to change quickly, but Tom and Sara aren’t too worried about that because the NewBorn application suite updates itself with the latest medical findings. To lull Tommy to sleep, the SmartPhone 20.0 plays music, testing out a variety of selections and learning by observation which music is most soothing for this particular infant.
As a toddler, Tommy is very observant and has learned the combination on the gate to the swimming pool area. One day, while his parents have their backs turned, he starts working the lock. His SmartPhone ‘Guardian’ app recognizes what he is doing, sounds an alarm, disables the lock, and plays a video demonstrating what could happen if Tommy fell into the pool with no one else around. Not happy at being thwarted, Tommy throws a tantrum, and the Guardian app, noting his parents’ arrival, briefs them on the situation and suggests a time-out.” (Thanks Browser.)
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When function reached its limit, Bell Labs focused on modernizing form. The landline, nearing its last gasp, 1977:
Tags: Dan Siewiorek
I can’t embed, but go here to see a short clip from “The Real Bionic Man,” a 1979 BBC show about the emergence of a new wave of “smart” prosthetics.
Maybe everyone except me knew about this? During the first moon walk, Pink Floyd was in studio at the BBC jamming along with the live televised event. From David Gilmour in the Guardian:
“We [Pink Floyd] were in a BBC TV studio jamming to the landing. It was a live broadcast, and there was a panel of scientists on one side of the studio, with us on the other. I was 23.
The programming was a little looser in those days, and if a producer of a late-night programme felt like it, they would do something a bit off the wall. Funnily enough I’ve never really heard it since, but it is on YouTube. They were broadcasting the moon landing and they thought that to provide a bit of a break they would show us jamming. It was only about five minutes long. The song was called Moonhead – it’s a nice, atmospheric, spacey, 12-bar blues.
I also remember at the time being in my flat in London, gazing up at the moon, and thinking, ‘There are actually people standing up there right now.’ It brought it home to me powerfully, that you could be looking up at the moon and there would be people standing on it.”
Tags: David Gilmour, Pink Floyd
The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who for some reason thought he was the messiah, just passed away at 92. In this 1972 video, he’s interviewed by wiseass conservative social critic Al Capp; they were both strong believers in couples getting married instead of shacking up.
Tags: Al Capp, Rev. Sun Myung Moon
E.M. Forster probably isn’t immediately associated with techno-dystopia, but that’s the subgenre of his 1909 short story, “The Machine Stops.” As the title suggests, the tale is concerned with our increasing reliance on technology. This video is the 1966 BBC adaptation.
Tags: E.M. Forster
A two-minute clip from “Human Aggression” by Stanley Milgram, author of the controversial 1962 “Obedience” social psychology experiment.
Tags: Stanley Milgram
Glenn Gould, in 1969, predicting that new technologies would allow for the sampling, remixing and democratization of creativity. Perhaps we’re only at the beginning.
Tags: Glenn Gould
A 1962 episode of I’ve Got a Secret in which Paul Lipman played the theremin.
Tags: Paul Lipman
I’m of two minds about Stephen L. Carter’s arguments in his new Bloomberg essay, “How Bobby Fischer (Briefly) Changed America.” Carter recalls the Fischer-Spassky chess matches of 1972, which became a national sensation, as the last time Americans were interested in complex ideas. There are by far more U.S. citizens right now than ever before who are interested in and capable of complicated thinking, though there are probably many more focused on the basic function of tools rather than challenging content they can deliver. The piece’s opening:
“This summer marks the anniversary of an extraordinary moment in U.S. history: the 1972 match in which the American genius Bobby Fischer defeated the Soviet wizard Boris Spassky for the chess championship of the world.
The battle probably should have been just one more headline in an eventful three months that saw the Watergate burglary, the expulsion of the Soviet military from Egypt and the humiliating dismissal of vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton from the Democratic ticket. Somehow the story of Fischer and Spassky and their epic match, which ended 40 years ago this month, captured our attention in a way that no struggle of intellect has since.
The two best players in the world were playing 24 games in Iceland, and everyone paid attention. Strangers who had never picked up a chess piece discussed the match on subway trains. Newspapers put out special editions announcing the results of the games, and vendors hawked them from the corners, shouting out the name of the winner. Book publishers were signing up chess writers by the dozens.
Chess is a very hard game, and what is most remarkable about that summer is that people wanted to play anyway. They wanted their minds stretched, and were willing to work for that reward. The brief period of Fischer’s ascendancy — he quit chess three years later — was perhaps the last era in our nation’s history when this could be said.”
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Mike Wallace’s excellent profile of Fischer in 1972, just prior to the showdown with Spassky. Lewis Cohen, the 12-year-old prodigy who loses a game of speed chess to Fischer, may be this guy.
Tags: Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Lewis H. Cohen, Mike Wallace, Stephen L. Carter
How cool: Ray Bradbury visits Merv Griffin in 1978 to discuss Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the future of humankind. He also reads one of his poems.
Tags: Merv Griffin, Ray Bradbury
When I posted not too long ago about the reasons why women’s sports have experienced such a boom in America over the last four decades, I was remiss in not mentioning Billie Jean King. In 1974, the tennis star founded the Women’s Sports Foundation, womenSports magazine and became the first female to be a founding partner of a major sports league with World Team Tennis.
Tags: Billie Jean King
A 1965 NBC special hosted by John Chancellor about the science of Cold War spying. You could argue all the gamesmanship, all the information gathered during U.S.-Soviet stalemate had very little effect on anything.
Tags: John Chancellor
Asimov and his blazer (wow!) interviewed by Bill Boggs in 1982. Have I ever mentioned that I have read almost no science fiction? ‘Tis true.
In 1984, Boggs welcomed Heller, who will always be remembered for Catch-22, but should also be remembered for Something Happened.
Tags: Bill Boggs, Isaac Asimov, Joseph Heller
Awkward and private, Robert De Niro was never a fan of the talk-show circuit, especially in his prime when he was turning out one indelible performance after another. But he relented for Merv Griffin in 1981, the year he won Best Actor for Raging Bull. De Niro also discuses the next movie he and Martin Scorsese were collaborating on, The King of Comedy.
Airplanes have been inflatable for decades, but what about robots? DARPA, which loves you to death, has the answer. From Ars Technica: “A DARPA-funded research project at Massachusetts-based iRobot has developed a series of prototype robots with inflatable parts. The robots, developed with researchers from Carnegie-Mellon University and inflatable engineering company ILC Dover, are part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s program to create more mobile, more capable, and less expensive robots for the battlefield.”
Vintage 1968 AT&T film about breakthroughs in computer graphics, filmmaking, etc. The incredible and unsettling score is completely computer-generated.
George Schuster, driver of the Thomas Flyer that won the New York-to-Paris “Great Race” of 1908, appears on I’ve Got a Secret five decades later. Prior to Schuster’s trek, no “automobilist” had driven across America during the winter.
Tags: George Schuster
Gore Vidal visits Merv Griffin just days after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.
Tags: Gore Vidal, Merv Girffin, Ronald Reagan
So strange and wonderful: In 1972, Rod Serling introduces I’ve Got a Secret host Steve Allen to the home version of the video game Pong. Begins at the 15:40 mark.
Tags: Rod Serling, Steve Allen