onbeyond (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} onbeyond) wrote,@ 2004-10-11 16:25:00 |
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1.21 giga watts?!!!!!
Young Doc : No! It can't be! I just sent you back to the future!
Marty McFly : You did, oh, I know, you did send me back to the future, but I'm back - I'm back FROM the future.
Young Doc : Great Scott!
Marty McFly : You mean, I'm going to see where I live? I'm gonna see myself as an old man?
Doc : No, no, no Marty, that could result in a... Great scott! Jennifer could conceivably encounter her future self! The consequences of that could be disastrous!
Marty McFly : Doc, what do you mean?
Doc : I foresee two possibilities. One, coming face to face with herself 30 years older would put her into shock and she would simply pass out. Or two, the encounter could create a time paradox, the results of which could start a chain reaction that wold unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, and destroy the entire universe! Granted, that's a worse case senario. The destruction might in fact be very localized, limited to our own galaxy.
Marty McFly : Well that's a relief.
in 1985 i was 11 years old, but a movie came out kinda shed a whole new light on everything for me: it made me wonder how old i actually was. BACK TO THE FUTURE started a chain reaction in my being that still has not worked itself out. in fact, it actually seems like the whole universe did unravel somehow. it was a schlocky teen pop pap movie with american apple pie sensibility and an unabashed advertising scheme, but it managed to introduce some of the most poignant and important concepts in my world. i became obsessed with time and its paradoxes. i started to realize that the only moment was now and that somehow it might be possible to travel "sideways" thru time. this trilogy managed to become one of the largest blockbusters of all time in an age when it seemed only harrison ford could command that kind of viewership. the result is that millions of western kids were seeded with a new way of looking at time. to a culture imprisoned in the linearity of a cartesian nightmare, doc emmet brown's delorean heralded a different type of consciousness. a radial time matrix, where the past present and future were all full of travellers working thru the various different "disasters" they had created by changing events of the main temporal stream. it was not the first movie or story to do this, but it was the first one to top box office records.
bill and teds excellent adventure was the next. these two idiots managed to become temporal heroes despite the fact that they had no clue what was going on. this film introduced the idea of a being coming from the future to influence the past in order that the future may turn out the way it does. it all sounds ridiculous and in true glam metal fashion, our heroes set out to pass their highschool history test by nabbing famous personalities from the past to get the real scoop. in many ways, bill and ted, thru sheer ignorant brilliance, stumble across the key to temporally shifting the present based on having a time machine to go back into the past. a set of keys suddenly appears on the table forever freeing them from the tyranny of the linear reality. anything is possible, provided you remember to zip back in time to set it up properly.
the terminator was one big loop that always existentially reminded us the dangers of having people come into the past to affect the future. certain events must not happen. forever the plot is destined to repeat, our hero eternally stuck battling the evil machine, falling in love in the past, only to return to the moment where he must return to the past from the future. sad actually.
the spookiest element of this kind of time mythology was the paradox of meeting the self. what happens when your cross temporal self meets your linear self in the present (potentially the past of a future self)? was the fabric of space irreparably ruptured? what if perfectionist future selves are coming back all the time to influence events? suddenly the fragile shell of an alarm clock world seemed pretty limited. time travel eh?
suddenly our skillsets were being jumpstarted. the movies we watched were helping us to conceptualize the edges of our perception. what would going thru time look like? what challenges would time travel present to the hero? but also...what benefits. the subtle undertone always pointed to the utter coolness of the experience and the inexplicably power that comes along with having crosstemporal skills.
star trek's 3'rd spin concept VOYAGER frequently explored the subspace world and the time space continuum. their experiences in the delta quadrant often involved some "quantum singularity or chroniton pulse" which somehow manages to pull the crew into tangential realities and repeating scenes. cheap acting ploy, but effective technique to induce that metaphysical creepiness and existential lonliness of the subspace fracture. poor captain janeway must live and relive all of her terrible mistakes as a starship captain an unreasonably long way from home. the voyage isnt made any quicker by spending large chunks of it in the shifting realms of tangential time streams. they even encounter one race who have a weapon they use from subspace to eliminate whole timelines and civilizations. its all math.
it seems every film like this represents its own quantum singularity, its own subspace fructure which unalterably changes the fabric time. time is the collective application we use to temporally locate ourselves in proximity to each other: families, friends, communities, cities, countries, global. time operates as the thread which weaves the common myth. time is immortal. time is the next frontier..
our culture is obsessed with a technological appocalypse. much of the mainstream utilizes technology to spread a message which is strangely anti tech. why this paradox? why this obsession with the quest but a taboo for the outcome? we want to build robots, but we know they'll become smarter than us and beat us down. we want to invent time machines but we know that dudes like biff are just waiting to make a fast buck off of stealing a useful artifact from the future. we can already see that that all of time is threatened by evil intentions. you have to laugh, but shudder as well. can we prevent tragedies from happening? will the first time travellers we meet be heroes coming to try and stave off terrible disasters 2 centuries from now?
the implications have always been astonishing and actually logically impossible. the paradoxes of movement at hyperspatial speeds render the current visions of time machines unfeasible. they always involve propulsion of some sort into a faster than lightspeed scenario and we know, as of now, that the energy involved in doing this is far greater than what we can generate. this is the famous quote from our crazed dr.brown in BTF. christopher lloyd plays the fiend with his typical sort of wildness as he exclaims that the only power source that large, in the 50's, is a bolt of lightning.
there's a not so subtle nod to the 80's paranoia of nuclear annhilation. Dr. Emmett L. "Doc" Brown says: I'm sure in 1985, plutonium is available at every corner drugstore, but in 1955 it's a little hard to come by! "there are strange shadows and repercussions all over the plot referring to the appocalyptic future scenario. in the 80's it was death by bombs. now its death by machine, but the threat of bombs is still there. those terrorists building weapons were a bit too wild to be real. right?
were we being duped into accepting a role as amateaur physcists, working out the issues in our minds as we watched it unfold. the tyranny of timelessness is that it has little direction. mainstream media was the nipple of mythology when i was a kid. schoolwork was schoolwork and movies were more important than science or math class. isnt that what we were being intrigued by? didnt we love the wild professor and wish we could be the assistant to a mad scientist? were we being prepared for some kind of destiny? was back to the future a message from the future to tell us to get used to time travel. if so, i think we're still shy of the tech.
the weird part of all these cultural mythologies is that, especially with ones like BTF which painted a picture of a not too distant future, we have the strange experience of seeing the years pass which were meant to be the future, only to be disappointed that we have not yet achieved some of the inventions that were optimistically portrayed. we do not yet have the "mr fusion" energy cell that powers the flux capacitor on the now hovering delorean. yes, we still need roads in 2004 and its not looking like thats gonna change this decade. no we don't have hover skateboards and shoes that form fit to your feet as you wear them. this is one of the other curious sides of time travel extrapolation. future concepts are always cast from an examination of the current cultural trajectory. the fashions of the future somehow never end up looking quite as extreme or bizarre as they are portrayed. the path we walk in this timeline gives us that seamless flow where fashion, technology and trends evolve slowly and only in retrospect can a trend be definitively pinpointed. sometimes a trendy object from the 80's is portrayed with an extra special reverence in the new millenium, while in reality, the trend died out like most of the 80's: in a whirlwind of bad hair and terrible fabrics.
so michael j fox never really grew into looking like a man. he kept staying young and helped to confirm our suspicions that some sort of temporal mischief was up. a slew of other time films have come and gone: lawnmower man, the time machine, terminators 2-4, minority report, the one... the list continues in a fascinating way. meanwhile, the underground alternative cultures continue to thrash at the edges of their time boxes with new calendars, past life regressions and future channelings. the world is no longer a solidly entrenched timeline from birth to death. the past exerts a huge pull, but it disappears daily to be replaced with the latest gizmo to represent the future of our imagination. yesterdays star trek com link is todays cell phone network. its as if the shockwave of today is still reverberating back thru the past where it surfaced in the imagination of scriptwriters and artists. i am still linked into the same flow of events that seems to be present thruout the duration of my days, altho i swear that a future self has been contacting me, thru these circuits and chips, encouraging me to become something considerably less localized. all i can say is "great scott"!
Young Doc : No! It can't be! I just sent you back to the future!
Marty McFly : You did, oh, I know, you did send me back to the future, but I'm back - I'm back FROM the future.
Young Doc : Great Scott!
Marty McFly : You mean, I'm going to see where I live? I'm gonna see myself as an old man?
Doc : No, no, no Marty, that could result in a... Great scott! Jennifer could conceivably encounter her future self! The consequences of that could be disastrous!
Marty McFly : Doc, what do you mean?
Doc : I foresee two possibilities. One, coming face to face with herself 30 years older would put her into shock and she would simply pass out. Or two, the encounter could create a time paradox, the results of which could start a chain reaction that wold unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, and destroy the entire universe! Granted, that's a worse case senario. The destruction might in fact be very localized, limited to our own galaxy.
Marty McFly : Well that's a relief.
in 1985 i was 11 years old, but a movie came out kinda shed a whole new light on everything for me: it made me wonder how old i actually was. BACK TO THE FUTURE started a chain reaction in my being that still has not worked itself out. in fact, it actually seems like the whole universe did unravel somehow. it was a schlocky teen pop pap movie with american apple pie sensibility and an unabashed advertising scheme, but it managed to introduce some of the most poignant and important concepts in my world. i became obsessed with time and its paradoxes. i started to realize that the only moment was now and that somehow it might be possible to travel "sideways" thru time. this trilogy managed to become one of the largest blockbusters of all time in an age when it seemed only harrison ford could command that kind of viewership. the result is that millions of western kids were seeded with a new way of looking at time. to a culture imprisoned in the linearity of a cartesian nightmare, doc emmet brown's delorean heralded a different type of consciousness. a radial time matrix, where the past present and future were all full of travellers working thru the various different "disasters" they had created by changing events of the main temporal stream. it was not the first movie or story to do this, but it was the first one to top box office records.
bill and teds excellent adventure was the next. these two idiots managed to become temporal heroes despite the fact that they had no clue what was going on. this film introduced the idea of a being coming from the future to influence the past in order that the future may turn out the way it does. it all sounds ridiculous and in true glam metal fashion, our heroes set out to pass their highschool history test by nabbing famous personalities from the past to get the real scoop. in many ways, bill and ted, thru sheer ignorant brilliance, stumble across the key to temporally shifting the present based on having a time machine to go back into the past. a set of keys suddenly appears on the table forever freeing them from the tyranny of the linear reality. anything is possible, provided you remember to zip back in time to set it up properly.
the terminator was one big loop that always existentially reminded us the dangers of having people come into the past to affect the future. certain events must not happen. forever the plot is destined to repeat, our hero eternally stuck battling the evil machine, falling in love in the past, only to return to the moment where he must return to the past from the future. sad actually.
the spookiest element of this kind of time mythology was the paradox of meeting the self. what happens when your cross temporal self meets your linear self in the present (potentially the past of a future self)? was the fabric of space irreparably ruptured? what if perfectionist future selves are coming back all the time to influence events? suddenly the fragile shell of an alarm clock world seemed pretty limited. time travel eh?
suddenly our skillsets were being jumpstarted. the movies we watched were helping us to conceptualize the edges of our perception. what would going thru time look like? what challenges would time travel present to the hero? but also...what benefits. the subtle undertone always pointed to the utter coolness of the experience and the inexplicably power that comes along with having crosstemporal skills.
star trek's 3'rd spin concept VOYAGER frequently explored the subspace world and the time space continuum. their experiences in the delta quadrant often involved some "quantum singularity or chroniton pulse" which somehow manages to pull the crew into tangential realities and repeating scenes. cheap acting ploy, but effective technique to induce that metaphysical creepiness and existential lonliness of the subspace fracture. poor captain janeway must live and relive all of her terrible mistakes as a starship captain an unreasonably long way from home. the voyage isnt made any quicker by spending large chunks of it in the shifting realms of tangential time streams. they even encounter one race who have a weapon they use from subspace to eliminate whole timelines and civilizations. its all math.
it seems every film like this represents its own quantum singularity, its own subspace fructure which unalterably changes the fabric time. time is the collective application we use to temporally locate ourselves in proximity to each other: families, friends, communities, cities, countries, global. time operates as the thread which weaves the common myth. time is immortal. time is the next frontier..
our culture is obsessed with a technological appocalypse. much of the mainstream utilizes technology to spread a message which is strangely anti tech. why this paradox? why this obsession with the quest but a taboo for the outcome? we want to build robots, but we know they'll become smarter than us and beat us down. we want to invent time machines but we know that dudes like biff are just waiting to make a fast buck off of stealing a useful artifact from the future. we can already see that that all of time is threatened by evil intentions. you have to laugh, but shudder as well. can we prevent tragedies from happening? will the first time travellers we meet be heroes coming to try and stave off terrible disasters 2 centuries from now?
the implications have always been astonishing and actually logically impossible. the paradoxes of movement at hyperspatial speeds render the current visions of time machines unfeasible. they always involve propulsion of some sort into a faster than lightspeed scenario and we know, as of now, that the energy involved in doing this is far greater than what we can generate. this is the famous quote from our crazed dr.brown in BTF. christopher lloyd plays the fiend with his typical sort of wildness as he exclaims that the only power source that large, in the 50's, is a bolt of lightning.
there's a not so subtle nod to the 80's paranoia of nuclear annhilation. Dr. Emmett L. "Doc" Brown says: I'm sure in 1985, plutonium is available at every corner drugstore, but in 1955 it's a little hard to come by! "there are strange shadows and repercussions all over the plot referring to the appocalyptic future scenario. in the 80's it was death by bombs. now its death by machine, but the threat of bombs is still there. those terrorists building weapons were a bit too wild to be real. right?
were we being duped into accepting a role as amateaur physcists, working out the issues in our minds as we watched it unfold. the tyranny of timelessness is that it has little direction. mainstream media was the nipple of mythology when i was a kid. schoolwork was schoolwork and movies were more important than science or math class. isnt that what we were being intrigued by? didnt we love the wild professor and wish we could be the assistant to a mad scientist? were we being prepared for some kind of destiny? was back to the future a message from the future to tell us to get used to time travel. if so, i think we're still shy of the tech.
the weird part of all these cultural mythologies is that, especially with ones like BTF which painted a picture of a not too distant future, we have the strange experience of seeing the years pass which were meant to be the future, only to be disappointed that we have not yet achieved some of the inventions that were optimistically portrayed. we do not yet have the "mr fusion" energy cell that powers the flux capacitor on the now hovering delorean. yes, we still need roads in 2004 and its not looking like thats gonna change this decade. no we don't have hover skateboards and shoes that form fit to your feet as you wear them. this is one of the other curious sides of time travel extrapolation. future concepts are always cast from an examination of the current cultural trajectory. the fashions of the future somehow never end up looking quite as extreme or bizarre as they are portrayed. the path we walk in this timeline gives us that seamless flow where fashion, technology and trends evolve slowly and only in retrospect can a trend be definitively pinpointed. sometimes a trendy object from the 80's is portrayed with an extra special reverence in the new millenium, while in reality, the trend died out like most of the 80's: in a whirlwind of bad hair and terrible fabrics.
so michael j fox never really grew into looking like a man. he kept staying young and helped to confirm our suspicions that some sort of temporal mischief was up. a slew of other time films have come and gone: lawnmower man, the time machine, terminators 2-4, minority report, the one... the list continues in a fascinating way. meanwhile, the underground alternative cultures continue to thrash at the edges of their time boxes with new calendars, past life regressions and future channelings. the world is no longer a solidly entrenched timeline from birth to death. the past exerts a huge pull, but it disappears daily to be replaced with the latest gizmo to represent the future of our imagination. yesterdays star trek com link is todays cell phone network. its as if the shockwave of today is still reverberating back thru the past where it surfaced in the imagination of scriptwriters and artists. i am still linked into the same flow of events that seems to be present thruout the duration of my days, altho i swear that a future self has been contacting me, thru these circuits and chips, encouraging me to become something considerably less localized. all i can say is "great scott"!
