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.

Laser

The term LASER is an acronym for Light amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation and describes a physical principle of optical amplification; not the device itself, even the term commonly has to serve as a description for the device.

There is a whole bunch of different lasers: gas laser, solid-state laser, dye laser, semiconductor laser, excimer laser, lasers for every visible colour of light, for ultra-viloet and infra-red light, laser for continuos operation and impulse laser (generates short light impulses, like flashlight). Even not each of the lasers is suitable for making holograms, they all have one thing in common: they generate coherent light, with radiation, behaving as going out from one single point. Vice versa the light rays can be concentrated back to one single point.

In holography usually Helium-Neon gas lasers (He-Ne) are used. The are quite cheap and easy to use. Its mechanics should be should be explained here.

He-Ne lasers consist of a glass tube, which is filled with a mixture of Helium and Neon under low pressure. The tube is sealed. On both transparent ends is a mirror attached. One reflecting light 100% and one reflecting light 98%. First the Helium atoms gets stimulated by energy input. They bump into the Neon atoms. Thereby they get transferred into a higher energy state. When falling back into their previous energy state, they set photons free. These photons stimulate surrounding atoms, and so forth. The emerged light begins to move between the two mirrors back and forth. For the two mirrors are fitted exactly many times over the wave length off each other, the amplitudes adds form wave to wave and amplifies. Finally light becomes so bright, that it passes out as coherent light the laser on that side with 98% reflecting mirror.

Fig. Gas laser

Gasentladungsröhre: Glass tube

Spiegel: Mirror

halbdurchlässiger Spiegel: transparent Mirror

Spannungsquelle: voltage source

Laserlichtbündel: bunch of laser light

5th June: 110th birthday of Dennis Gábor

Due to a lot of work on the issue of holography, Dennis Gábor's birthday completely slipped this blog's mind. Even a tad too late, this should not stay unmentioned.

Born 5th June 1900 in Budapest as a son of jewish parents, Dennis Gábor (hung. Gábor Dénes) passes a study of electrical engineering at Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem (TUB) in 1920, that he continues from 1921-1924 at Technische Hochschule in Berlin Charlottenburg. Three years later he takes a doctoral degree - thesis: Oszillographieren von Wanderwellen mit dem Kathodenoszillographen. After getting his PhD, Gábor works at Siemens & Halske AG on his invention of high pressure mercury quartz lamp. Because of his jewish roots, in 1933 he emigrates to England, where he gets the british citizenship and works for Thomson-Houston. 1947/1948 he discovers the principle of holography - at that time called wavefront reconstruction. In 1949 he joins the Imperial Collage of Science & Technology in London. First as a reader of Electronics, later as a Professor of Applied Electron Physics, where is stays until his retirement in 1967. He stays connected as a Senior Research Fellow and becomes a Staff Scientist at CBS Laboratories, where he collaborates with his life-long friend Dr. Peter C. Goldmark in new schemes of communication and display.

Since 1958 Gábor spends much time on a new interest of his: the future of our industrial civilization. His conviction "[...] that a serious mismatch has developed between technology and our social institutions and that inventive minds ought to consider social inventions as their first priority [...]" finds its expression in is three books: Inventing the future (1963), Innovations (1970), and The mature society (1972).

In 1971 Dennis Gábor gets honoured with the Nobel Price in Physics for his invention and development of the holographic method.

8th February 1979 he dies in London.

"You can't predict the future, but you can invent it." (Dennis Gábor)