From: Scott Badger (wbadger@psyberlink.net)
Date: Tue Aug 03 1999 - 07:02:13 MDT
O. Razor <o_razor@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I just saw a commercial for a television program entitled "Brave New
World."
> It will air Thursday, August 5th at 10 PM Pacific / 9 PM Central (I
don't
> know what this means for the rest of you), on CBS. During the commercial
an
> interviewee says to an interviewer, "You'd rather be dead than alive in a
> stainless-steel mind?" Though this was the extent of the commercial, it
> sounded Transhuman enough that the program itself probably deserves some
> attention.
I saw the first in a series of 8 of these last week. It was about the
quirky human fascination with time-saving devices. Like how orange juice
went from being packaged in a half gallon paper container with the tear open
side to a container with a twist off cap on the side to a container with a
pull-tab opener. Another example was how manufacturers of cd players were
now including a feature where one can reduce the usual 3 seconds between
songs down to 1 second. Why wait? You have better things to do with your
time! I'm not so sure we're as fascinated with saving time as we are
manipulated by corporate product managers who feed on our obvious desire for
"new and improved" products. Ted Koppel made a paternal-like appearance at
the end of the show and voiced his opinion that we are caught in a
technological tyranny.
The show was produced in a somewhat more entertaining fashion than other
versions of Primetime, but was seriously lame in parts. Still, they intend
on devoting some of their future shows to superstring theory, the liklihood
of human extinction, and some other topics that sounded fairly interesting.
Cheers,
Scott
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