Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 1, 1993 TAG: 9306010210
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER EDITORIAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
So when they billed "Wild Palms" as a worthy successor to "Peaks," I stocked up on popcorn and prepared to settle in for its four-night, six-hour duration.
"Palms," however, wasn't worth a kernel. It had none of the Peakies' style and elan. It was, in fact, like I've always imagined a bad LSD trip would be.
I'm ashamed to say, I watched the dreadful thing anyway - but only because it was the first I'd heard of "virtual reality," and that piqued my curiosity.
Virtual reality - as best I could grasp between gougings of eyeballs on "Palms" - is a twilight zone in which images on a screen come to life computeristically for interaction with human beings.
The technology for this, it seems, has been in the development stages for some time. I must have missed it 'cause I was watching "Murphy Brown" or something.
I learned, via news accounts tied to "Palms," that virtual reality holds great promise for science, medicine and Toys-R-Us. Doctors, apparently, are already using it to get into our bodies to straighten out our yin and yang. Virtual-reality game machines are expected to be the hottest seller next Christmas. But I'm awfully worried about where this might lead.
As those who know me well would tell you, I am what they charitably call technologically challenged. I'm not sure I even understand how an automatic pop-up toaster works. Cruise control? Fax machines? I don't want to think about it.
I reluctantly entered the era of microwave ovens, cordless telephones, answering machines and VCRs - largely because such innovations came as gifts from my sons. True, I now can't do without them. True, I've had to work with computers at this newspaper for many years, and now can't imagine going back to my old Underwood manual typewriter.
But I'm a chronic sufferer of futuristic technology angst - and all that moaning and groaning from the office next door is not making me feel better.
Explanation: My friend and colleague, Elizabeth "Betty" Strother, has the office next door, and I can attest that she didn't exaggerate when she wrote in this space last week of the "terror" being inflicted by this newspaper's move to a new, state-of-the-art computer system.
Day after day, for the past couple of weeks, she's been working under torture. Gasping. Sobbing. She's too refined a person to do what I'd do under the circumstances: blister the wall paint with expletives.
A month ago, any one of us on this editorial staff could prepare an op-ed page in - oh, say, three hours, if there were not too many interruptions. With our menacing new computer system, it now takes Betty about 48 hours to do one page.
Being a nice person, I would have offered to stay and help the times she was stuck here late into the evenings. But (hee-hee, ha-ha) I still have not been through the week-long new-computer training. Ignorance is temporarily bliss.
Anyway, I had to hurry home to watch "Wild Palms."
It gave me a big chill. Could one of my kids be planning to surprise me with a videophone for my birthday? Hasn't AT&T done enough already to screw up my life with voice-mail systems?
No such luck. As soon as the price drops below $1,500, I'm sure the communication gurus will convince my sons that I need videophone hookups that will transmit, along with a caller's voice, a little picture of the caller - and, in turn, the caller will receive a little picture of me.
I want no part of this technological peep show. Suppose I've taken my cordless telephone into the bathroom and happen to be sitting buck naked in the tub when some stranger calls to pitch aluminum siding?
And, as if that were not invasion enough of my privacy, get this:
Scientists in Japan are close to developing a computer that can read minds. According to a March 14 news story in the Times of London:
"Researchers at Fujitsu, Japan's largest personal computer manufacturer, announced last week that they are training a computer to pick up specific patterns of thoughts in the brain. It means computers could be operated without tapping a keyboard or even speaking a word. The secret is what the researchers call `silent speech.' Simply thinking a word such as `yes' or `no' generates a distinctive pattern of brain waves that the Fujitsu team has detected with stick-on electrodes."
But they don't intend to stop with mind-reading a simple "yes" or "no." The Times' story continued:
"They are developing super-sensitive devices called Squids (Superconducting Quantam Interference Devices), . . . which pick up silent speech by remote control. . . . [A Fujitsu spokesman] explained that Squids are so ultra-sensitive they can pick up even the tiniest electrical signals from a distance."
In other words, this newspaper's next computer system could follow me to the restroom or downtown to lunch, and know every furious and vile thought I have about computers. Eventually, the Times reported, Squid technology might be so advanced and intuitive that the newspaper's computers could start deciphering my dreams, do interpretations of every Freudian slip of a gray cell. And what's to stop them from eventually not just reading my every thought but entering my brain and controlling my every thought?
Nah! Good ol' Times-World wouldn't do that. Still, the Brave New World of technology portends more interaction with machines than I think I can stand.
Suppose, for instance, that virtual-reality computers bring the entire cast of "Hee Haw" - donkey, included - to life in my living room, and there's no getting rid of these uninvited guests. Do I have to feed them? Will they settle for leftovers warmed up in the microwave?
Or suppose our government leaders commandeer this technology for their own devious purposes. The future could become day-in, day-out mind-numbing C-SPAN, in which politicians never stop blathering and we can't click 'em off - because they are at our sides, with us always in virtual reality.
Betty Strother's "Terrors of Technology" column last week ended on a somewhat upbeat note. Our new computer system, she said, "really isn't so bad." A little more practice, a little more familiarity with it, and she thinks the worst might be over.
That's because you missed "Wild Palms," Betty. I'm sorely afraid the worst is yet to come.
by CNB