Paranoid Machines 2
Memory Technology has Always been Paranoid
This Incident: OLDE TIMEY UFOs (Space Paranoids part 1)
Thursday, July 5 at 8pm
Free
On June 24, 1947, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold saw nine shiny objects flying past Mount Rainier. He compared them to skipping discs, and someone on the AP wire dubbed them “flying saucers.” This event is considered the origin point of the modern UFO.
This month, were going to deal with this informatic problem, going backwards from this alleged origin point through some of the other aerial and contractee that pre-date the Arnold sighting, with particuar emphasis on the work of pulp mastermind Ray Palmer, the Great Airship Flap of 1987, and a detour through the work of Thaddeus Lowe.
Perhaps on your way home you will pass someone in the dark, and you will never know it, for they will be from outer space. Many scientists believe that another world is watching us this moment. We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aeroplane, the telephone, the electric light, vitamins, radio, and even television! And now some of us laugh at outer space. God help us… in the future.
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Hi. I’m Jason Brown.
For the last twenty years or so, I’ve been trying to understand the paranoid nature of memory technology from its ancient origins to its modern nightmares, using the 1982 movie Tron as a mythopoetic scaffold to explain everything. Which has not worked.
Does that sound Fun and Interesting? Then buddy, you are in luck, cause that’s what I’m doing monthly this summer and you are invited.