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The Magic Highway


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#1 Ms. B. Havin

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Posted 25 December 2007 - 10:25 PM

Just for giggles, do take a look at this 1958 (Disney) film on the highways of tomorrow: Magic Highway USA.

Scary? Yep. Hilarious? You betcha.

Here's a quiz, boys and girls: what's the most startling feature of this "future vision"?

Go watch the wondrous film and then come back to this page for the answer.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Intermission

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The answer: A near absence of people. The population density suggested for this multi-billion-dollar extravaganza of high tech highway travel and ultra-scientific road building (where "father" disappears into his office and "mother" goes shopping at the mall) is near zero.

There are no traffic jams or snarls, no congestion whatsoever. That's because there are no people.

Interesting, really. The techocrats' dream, it seems, is that technology will somehow (magically?, yes, magically!) pay for itself, and that it can all be done without pesky people getting in the way.

Of course it can't.

Without sufficient density (enough people), you can't do anything. No people power, no nothing.

Jeez, have we learned nothing from google? (= edit that: Jeez, let's hope we're learning from google et al.)
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#2 Nparker

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Posted 25 December 2007 - 11:08 PM

Now that have finally stopped laughing at this "Jestons-esque" vision of the future, I have to agree that it seems to propose a world mostly devoid of density - hell almost entirely devoid of people. How did those "malls" stay in business with just "mom" and her pre-schooler as shoppers? Even in places densely populated in the 1950s (India, Egypt), it appears that the "magic highways" will eliminate most of the world's population "in the future".

What is never addressed is how this "utopian" future is going to be financed? Clearly "in the future" there will only be one income earner per house (and a huge suburban house it is too), and yet every family will own amphibious hover cars and special vacation vehicles.

When today's society cannot even maintain its infrastructure, I have little faith that such a "carefree" world lies in the near future.

Having just finished watching the "Minority Report" I wonder if our visions of 50 years hence will be just as innacurate? Oh well, I suppose it doesn't hurt to dream a little.

#3 D.L.

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Posted 25 December 2007 - 11:53 PM

I was wondering why there were no obese people shown in that video, since now people don't even need to walk because of moving sidewalks.

That video is absolutely ridiculous. I'd say that the producers at Disney who put out that video knew full well that everything promised in that video was shear bullshit and pipedreams, but they wanted people to imagine living in the fantasy land of tomorrow, to detach them from reality and their true in-the-moment selves. Disney deliberately gave people an orgy of false dreams in order to traumatize them.

The sun symbolism at the end of the video is very revealing. When leading people down the road into the future, which is what that very scene shows, the power of light must always be shown brightly in the people's eyes in order to keep them blinded and in a trance, and to put all other (reasonable) possibilities into darkness. Super-light the one destructive path to the traumatized viewer and in their delirium they will stumble your way.

That future we're being given isn't friendly.

As far as I'm concerned, Disney can go to hell.

#4 G-Man

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Posted 26 December 2007 - 11:00 AM

What I found scary was that a large portion of the tech's of the future are here now.

- Surburbanization of the continent
- Highway making devices in long train
- Video rear mirror
- self driving cars are just around the bend

#5 Mike K.

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Posted 26 December 2007 - 11:04 AM

Striking similarity between that video and today's televised automobile commercials, isn't there?

And by Jove, it looks like they've solved our mainland<->Island fixed link issue with that submersible highway thingermajig.

#6 UrbanRail

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Posted 26 December 2007 - 08:28 PM

Cute video,


landscapes devoid of nature and the destruction of the nature environment
ancient sites destroyed by vast super highways
skys filled with concrete overhead highways
the complete waste of space
nuclear powered tunnel drills (yeah, gee dear dont worry about the intense radiation in the tunnel, it will disappear in about 10,000 years)
walking is completely not tolerated
I like how they show no traffic (completely not realistic by todays standards, heck even less than 10 years after the first highways were built in the 50s, they were nearing congestions levels)
hmmm cities devoid of life without any hint of human interaction

the scary thing is, some of what this film predicted has come true; video rear view mirrors, GPS, automated cars (apparently there is a car that can park itself and I think Toyota has built one), suburban sprawl, moving sidewalks.

Nice Future, but not one I support.

#7 VicHockeyFan

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Posted 26 December 2007 - 08:40 PM

^ It's a Lexus that parks itself.

#8 UrbanRail

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Posted 26 December 2007 - 09:16 PM

^ It's a Lexus that parks itself.


Here is a utube video of it

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=IkEu-PdVlK0

and a video from the official website

http://gizmodo.com/g...view-196551.php

I personally dont see the point of this feature, except it makes the lazy people even more lazy

#9 D.L.

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Posted 26 December 2007 - 10:24 PM

People use technology to replace those parts of themselves which they have lost.

#10 VicHockeyFan

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Posted 26 December 2007 - 10:52 PM

People use technology to replace those parts of themselves which they have lost.



If you are unable to parallel park a car without a reasonable degree of success, you should not have a drivers license.

#11 UrbanRail

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Posted 26 December 2007 - 11:26 PM

If you are unable to parallel park a car without a reasonable degree of success, you should not have a drivers license.


I totally agree

#12 UrbanRail

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Posted 26 December 2007 - 11:27 PM

People use technology to replace those parts of themselves which they have lost.



Now unless its for those who are disabled, then maybe I can see a reason, but not for the general public.

#13 Ms. B. Havin

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Posted 27 December 2007 - 12:37 PM

I just saw that Gordon Price posted "Magic Highway" first, on December 21 -- somehow I missed it there, and I picked it up instead via Land + Living on Dec.25 (who got it via Craplinks). I guess it's like a meme, traveling through the blogosphere!

But what I really wanted to get back to is that no one seems to be picking up on my google comment (see first post, above). Perhaps I was being too obscure.

Google makes its millions through sheer numbers of users -- that's what's powering the web 2.0 economy. If hundreds of millions of people use google every day, and if "only" one hundred million click through on a google ad that generates, say, one cent in revenue for google, that's a ton of money adding up very quickly for the company. (Totally hypothetical numbers, but you get my point.) That money in turn gets put to work in other areas of the economy.

Technocrats think that economic "health" can be generated via technology, but that's not possible, is it? Without people (whether users, clients, customers, producers, sellers, vendors, buyers, in a word: population), the technology is inert -- and probably too expensive to implement anyway.

Too often we're still stuck in a "19th century" mindset, during which time the Industrial Revolution often made what we now call First World cities into unhealthy cesspools. But today, density (and diversity -- economic, too) in cities is what makes First World cities healthy, thriving, vibrant. There's still a lot of resistance to that -- as if having more people come into a city is "bad," is going to breed vice & inequity, disease and depravity. As if we could have the "clean" glamour of high technology and whiz-bang gizmos and ultra-terrific infrastructure without having huge numbers of people actually using it (effectively paying for it).

To me, when I watch "Magic Highway USA," that's what I'm seeing: this mind-set that hates our cruddy, messy, dirty Industrial past -- as depicted in 19th century etchings by Gustave Dore of London, the densest (and probably filthiest) European capital in the early part of that century, as though that's what density still means in today's First World cities.



Those scenes are more likely found today in Third World megacities, but hardly around here (N. America, Europe).

Disney's "magic" is that it "erases" that history -- a kind of neutron bomb for the imagination, getting rid of all the dirty messy people ...without which we'd grind to a halt.
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#14 Nparker

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Posted 27 December 2007 - 01:29 PM

Disney's "magic"...erases that history -- a kind of "neutron bomb for the imagination", getting rid of all the dirty messy people ...without which we'd grind to a halt.


I love the above expression Ms. B. It may, in fact, find it's way into so much of my daily living that my friends, family and colleagues will soon tire of it, but it's great nonetheless.

It seems to me that much of our current media saturation does just exactly what Disney did in this little "gem" - wipe our imaginations clean, by overexposing us to too much of everything. It shocks and often saddens me how many people forget what life was like even 10 years ago. So bombarded are they by current "history" that even the recent past is a mystery to them. Imagination is supplanted with "popular" trends of what is acceptable, reducing creativity and vitality to forgotten echos of the past.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, and I look forward to seeing even more dialogue on this topic.

Happy New Year to All.

#15 Holden West

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Posted 27 December 2007 - 01:41 PM

^^And that it came just three years before Jane Jacobs (and Rachel Carson and Lewis Mumford) dared to critique the bizarre optimism of those "visionaries" behind this futuristic vision. I wouldn't be surprised if lobbyists from the highway/oil/automotive industry were behind this.

That film is wrong on so many levels. I love how the ambulance takes time to rescue the crashed car before the victim is transported to hospital. Will the hospital have a deposit area for damaged cars or does it stop off at the wrecking yard on the way? Don't they bother investigating car wrecks? Uh, shouldn't they have airbags and seatbelts? Seems they were more concerned with 'erasing' evidence of accidents than actually preventing injuries. Which makes me think GM bankrolled this film.
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