Fahrenheit 451

As announced in entry about Wild Palms, this one would like to introduce an earlier idea of futuristic TV virtual-reality using the example of dystopian science-fiction movie Fahrenheit 451 from 1966 by director François Truffaut, which is based on same-titled novel by Ray Bradbury from 1953. The title referes to the temperature at which paper catches fire. 451 degrees Fahrenheit is about 233 degrees Celsius.

Guy Montag is a fireman. But unlike an usual fireman, his job is not to fight fire, but to burn books, which are forbidden in the story. He is married to Linda, who is prosperous by consuming meds and TV shows. Montag gets to know young teacher Clarisse and falls in love with her. She is not allowed to teach any longer, because she is a passionate books reader. Montag becomes curious and starts reading books secretly.

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

Like the snippets taken from Wild Palms, this one also shows a futuristic vision of TV virtual-reality. But with a significant difference. While in Wild Palms a holographic projection right in the living room provides the illusion of being part of the TV show, Fahrenheit 451 contents itself with a set of two-dimensional parlor wall screens, for giving the illusion of having your own family around you.

Fahrenheit 451 is brought to the cinemas three years after Emmett Leith and Yuri Upatnieks generate the first three dimensional image. So the idea of projecting a virtual image right into the air can be assumed as known. But it isn't used in Fahrenheit 451 even it would have been a good opportunity and would have made sense to do. This could of course be because of production reasons, for it could last several months or even years to produce a movie, or for it is just to expensive. Despite it is astonishing that it lasts another ten years until holography finds its way to movie. In 1976 one the first holographic images in a movie is used in Logan's Run. Even it is not used to generate a virtual-reality as it is done in Wild Palms to give the illusion of being part of another reality. It seems that Fahrenheit 451 can be read as an example of phantasms and ideas reaching conscious with a delay. Further questions result from this observation: Why does it last more than ten years until holography conquers phantasm space of movie? And when is it first used to generate a virtual-reality that can be felt, touched and experienced?

Wild Palms

"Is it real or is it Mimecom?

Wild Palms is a six hour US TV mini series from 1993 produced among others by Oliver Stone. This vision of futuristic TV describes an eraly form of CyberTV and is about virtual television, cravings of power of a media tycoon, phantasies of immortality and a dark picture of the near future.

Set in Los Angeles in 2007, Senator Tony Kreutzer among others is founder and head of the Church of Synthiotics, a sect that believes in a religion of New Reality. To these techno shamans there is more than just one reality.

"This religion is based on the postmodern notion that reality is relative and provisional. Recognizing that what we normally think of as 'reality' is to a certain extent an artificial construct, the New Realists take the next step and decide to attempt literally to generate an alternative reality that is more to their liking. In particular Kreutzer and his cronies are heavily involved in researching computer-generated virtual-reality, a technology that [...] will allow the creation of a 'new improved reality controlled by Mimecom and sold straight out of 7-11'"

Building up media empire Wild Palms Network (WPN) and developing new technology Mimecom for holographic television should smooth the way to world domination by brain washing viewers.

Senator Tony Kreutzer presenting Mimecom

TV Channel Three opens the age of holographic television. TV series Church Windows should bring synthetic holograms right into the living rooms.

Recording an episode of Chruch Windows

All what is needed to watch Church Windows and to become part of the illusion of the new TV format is a little adapter that is put on top of the TV set to generate three-dimensional holograms of the actors.

Watching Church Windows

Mimecom is supported by drug Mimezine, which is an empathigen developed by neuropharmacologists affecting a couple of minutes the cerebral cortex and generating the illusion of touch and enabling the interaction with the virtual hologram.

Mimezine

Experiencing the New Realism is possible without any obstructing devices like data helmets or holo spectacles.

Even if there isn't a drug developed yet to experience a holographic generated virtual-reality, but there are technologies yet in progress to make holograms touchable with no other disturbing devices needed.

Wild Palms is produced exactly 30 years afters the development of the laser and the following explosion of interest in holography. One of the entries to come would like to introduce an earlier idea of virtual-reality by showing a scene from 1966 movie Fahrenheit 451.