Michael Gondry b. 1963
Stephen Furst b. 1955
Theodore Sturgeon b. 1918 died 5/8/1985
Gondry is the writer and director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Furst played Vir on Babylon 5, but the Picture Slot goes to Ted Sturgeon, who makes nearly everyone's short list of important SF writers in the 20th Century.
Many happy returns to Gondry and Furst.
Movies released
Star Trek (reboot) released, 2009
In the year 2000!
Prediction: Grand Opera will be telephoned to private homes, and will sound as harmonious as though enjoyed from a theatre box. Automatic instruments reproducing original airs exactly will bring the best music to the families of the untalented. Great musicians gathered in one enclosure in New York will, by manipulating electric keys, produce at the same time music from instruments arranged in theatres or halls in San Francisco or New Orleans, for instance. Thus will great bands and orchestras give long-distance concerts. In great cities there will be public opera-houses whose singers and musicians are paid from funds endowed by philanthropists and by the government. The piano will be capable of changing its tone from cheerful to sad. Many devices will add to the emotional effect of music.
Predictor: John Elfreth Watkins in The Ladies' Home Journal, published 1900
Reality: I love the phrase "families of the untalented". In 1900, people were expected to make their own entertainment. The idea of music broadcast over telephones is a popular idea from the futurists of this era. Recall that the first radio broadcasts happen in the 1920s, so even though it had been invented, no one in this era saw how big Marconi's gadget was going to be, not unlike the SF writers from the 1950s and 1960s failing to guess what will happen when computers get smaller and cheaper starting in the 1970s. Public opera houses and their endowments are certainly true.
Watkins gets no points for the prediction of a device that changes the tone of a piano from cheerful to sad, since that device already existed in his day. It's called "a good pianist".
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
Alternate Thursdays means Arthur C. Clarke. Knowing his work, I'm guessing it's about exploration of the solar system and I'm guessing it will turn out wrong.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
Watkins gets no points for the prediction of a device that changes the tone of a piano from cheerful to sad,
ReplyDeleteOr the other direction. I am going to suggest you change this to giving him points:
REM in major scale: http://youtu.be/y6KmiIq2-m8
Although it is kind of creepy and repellent.