Max headroom and the efficiency worshippers: Problems of control in a technocratic democracy
1988; Wiley; Volume: 3; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1007/bf01116437
ISSN1573-7861
Autores Tópico(s)Risk Perception and Management
ResumoFor a short while in 1987 ABC ran a marvelous program that centered on the physically two-dimensional but spiritually three-dimensional Max Headroom. The man who gave birth to Max, Edison Carter, had a traffic accident in which his head slammed into a parking garage barrier that warned: Maximum Headroom 6 Feet. Carter, a post-modem silicon-raker with Network 23, had witnessed some evil doing, the particulars of which now escape me, and a device was hooked up to his head to discover what he had seen. The inventor of the idea-sucking device, Bryce, was a high-level hacker with a devious nature. Bryce's machine was powerful enough to take all the data from Carter's brain and reconstitute his thoughts and emotions, creating an electronically designed image of the donor. When the electronic Max took form-began to speak and reason and run around in networks of machines and televisions (which were literally everywhere)-the first thing he remembered was the sign on the garage barrier; hence his name. Everywhere Carter turned he found himself fighting the good fight against overwhelming corporations whose labyrinth interconnections would render the heartiest interlock researcher apoplectic. Government had disappeared and society had bifurcated into those who ran and fought for control of powerful corporations and those who watched television.' Although technology had rendered everyone but capitalist and engineering elites superfluous, the hundreds of Networks nevertheless competed intensely for Ratings. The market was gone, but the competitive urge remained. The issues Max Headroom raised about economic power, organization, democracy, and technology burn for Langdon Winner. Reading
Referência(s)