I've been following Seth MacFarlane on Twitter, and reading his tweets while filming "A Million Ways to Die in the West." How cool is that? Live updates from a set in the middle of the desert? It makes me wonder how different life would be had the Internet been around during the golden age of Hollywood. Imagine for example, the tweets we might have seen from the set of The Conqueror:
"Day 27 of filming, and I can't get rid of this goddamn headache."
"My hair keeps falling out. Must be the heat."
"John Wayne as Genghis Kahn? Christ, what's next? Elvis as a Shiek?"
We're all so damn connected now, and it makes the world seem small. It was only as recently as the early 1990s when cell phones were bricks, computers were stationary, and live video required a microwave truck. But when it comes to current technology - the Internet in particular - it feels like we've always had instant communication. Instant news, instant video, and endless instant texts, tweets, emails, blogs, and Facebook posts...it's a fog of digital chatter. I'll bet if we could actually "see" our communications, the world would look like The Matrix credits.
Back when I was in high school, I remember didn't really "get" the importance of history classes until lessons reached the 20th century - and textbooks were accompanied by video. There was something about seeing the "footage," the grainy black & white images from the 1920s, 30s, & 40s which caused me to think: "Wow. This really happened. And this film was actually state-of-the-art technology, recording this moment forever." I imagined how cool it would be to see video from the Civil War, the Inquisition, or the construction of ancient Rome. I imagined watching a YouTube file of what really happened when those apes found the monolith.
I often wonder what the world will be like two or three hundred years in the future, when Star Trek is finally reality. I imagine we'll have much better communications - something like Radio World's "Headline," only with a better interface. Or maybe we'll all have digital "skull caps" - as described in Arthur C Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey. I figure we're still a solid 1000 years away before we evolve into beings of pure energy, so I imagine our tweets until that happens will be as petty as now, only on a more universal scale:
"Day 27 of floating through the cosmos, and still I can't get rid of this damn engorged, pulsating, oversized-head ache."
"(Unpronounceable alien name) as God? Christ, what's next? (Equally unpronounceable alien name) as Shatner?"
"ROTFLMAO! Look at those idiots freaking out over the monolith we buried on their moon -
Who's going to tell em' that it's just a goddamn Coke machine…?"
"Day 27 of filming, and I can't get rid of this goddamn headache."
"My hair keeps falling out. Must be the heat."
"John Wayne as Genghis Kahn? Christ, what's next? Elvis as a Shiek?"
We're all so damn connected now, and it makes the world seem small. It was only as recently as the early 1990s when cell phones were bricks, computers were stationary, and live video required a microwave truck. But when it comes to current technology - the Internet in particular - it feels like we've always had instant communication. Instant news, instant video, and endless instant texts, tweets, emails, blogs, and Facebook posts...it's a fog of digital chatter. I'll bet if we could actually "see" our communications, the world would look like The Matrix credits.
Back when I was in high school, I remember didn't really "get" the importance of history classes until lessons reached the 20th century - and textbooks were accompanied by video. There was something about seeing the "footage," the grainy black & white images from the 1920s, 30s, & 40s which caused me to think: "Wow. This really happened. And this film was actually state-of-the-art technology, recording this moment forever." I imagined how cool it would be to see video from the Civil War, the Inquisition, or the construction of ancient Rome. I imagined watching a YouTube file of what really happened when those apes found the monolith.
I often wonder what the world will be like two or three hundred years in the future, when Star Trek is finally reality. I imagine we'll have much better communications - something like Radio World's "Headline," only with a better interface. Or maybe we'll all have digital "skull caps" - as described in Arthur C Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey. I figure we're still a solid 1000 years away before we evolve into beings of pure energy, so I imagine our tweets until that happens will be as petty as now, only on a more universal scale:
"Day 27 of floating through the cosmos, and still I can't get rid of this damn engorged, pulsating, oversized-head ache."
"(Unpronounceable alien name) as God? Christ, what's next? (Equally unpronounceable alien name) as Shatner?"
"ROTFLMAO! Look at those idiots freaking out over the monolith we buried on their moon -
Who's going to tell em' that it's just a goddamn Coke machine…?"