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Destination Earth (1956) (Animation)
Sutherland (John) Productions, American Petroleum Institute via Prelinger Collection
In this corporate-sponsored cartoon, Martian dissidents learn that oil and competition are the two things that make America great.
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Reviewer Christine Hennig calls it “Capitalism and Oil Drilling for Dummies”
This animated bit of capitalist propaganda features a Martian from a totalitarian Martian society who comes to Earth to find out what makes the Earthmobiles so darned efficient, so he can repair the Head Martian’s limousine. By doing research in a public library, he discovers that oil and free-market competition make America great, so he goes back to Mars to preach this gospel (obviously the stack of books that he steals from the library don’t contain titles about air and water pollution, Middle-Eastern politics, robber barons, or the Great Depression).
This inspires the Martians so much that they all go out to drill oil wells, while the totalitarian leader is conquered simply by pushing a self-destruct button–that he was defeated so easily really makes you wonder about the intelligence of the Martian race. This is propaganda, to be sure, but it’s delightfully animated, genuinely funny in spots, and less strident than many films of its kind. The bright colors and 50s cute-style animation won me over, frankly, though I’m not about to drill any oil wells any time soon.
(1956)
Delightful propaganda from the glory days of the American Dream. -BA
UPDATE (Aug 27). Discussed in today’s Drumbeat at TOD. Cid Yama watched the cartoon in elementary school. Samsara (JC) mentioned that the cartoon was included as a Special Feature on the “End of Suburbia” DVD.
Adam’s Story: Uncharted Waters
John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report
This narrative is the final part of an exploration of the five themes from my Archdruid Report post “Glimpsing the Deindustrial Future” using the toolkit of narrative fiction. As with the rest of “Adam’s Story,” the setting is the coastal Pacific Northwest sometime during the second half of this century, after the political disintegration of the United States and the end of the global industrial system.
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They’d been at Tillicum River most of a month before Adam and Haruko knew for certain that their future lay there, though Adam began to guess the shape of it after the first week or so. Growing up as the last child left in a dying town, he’d studied almost from infancy the art of listening to the words behind the words people spoke, all the things adults didn’t want a child to know about that the child needed to know. Through the long days he spent working in Earl Tigard’s garden, patching his roof, and doing a hundred other neglected chores, he watched the townsfolk watch him, listened to their voices as wariness gave way to familiarity in their greetings and small talk, felt the label “outsider” gradually dropping off him as though the sweat that rolled down his face and back as he put in onions or dug up dandelion roots for coffee made it come unstuck. Even so, when certainty arrived it caught him by surprise.
That day he and Earl helped finish the new fence around the goat pasture the Tigards shared with their five closest neighbors: hard work even by Adam’s standards, and it didn’t help that the goats did their level best all day to extract themselves from the barn and get underfoot, and succeeded more than once. The dinner bell was even more welcome than usual, and afterwards Earl broke out bottled beer from the cellar – local, of course, but the Tillicum River brewery had more than a local market in the days before things started falling apart, and there was talk of selling it to the trading ships that were starting to poke their way up and down the coast again.
(24 August 2007)
The end of traffic jams?
Juliette Jowit, The Observer
Innovative study suggests scientific solutions to global transport problems within the next 50 years
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A remarkable study into the way millions of people will travel in the future reveals a world where cars drive themselves, people could be tagged so they are constantly monitored, and nearly all modes of transport can be run by computers rather than people.
Transport Communications, a new book on the future of transport by two New Zealand professors, brings hope that nanotechnology, satellite communications, computer chips – and sleeping pills – could put an end to problems such as congestion, the threat from terrorism and increasing fuel prices. The study also reveals new concerns, ranging from ‘Big Brother’ fears of a surveillance society to whether there will be an increasing ‘obesity time bomb’ because homes, vehicles and even clothes will do everything for us.
Some of the ideas are already starting to emerge in reality; others read like Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury science fiction. Professor Chris Kissling, one of the authors, said congestion for every type of transport and the threat of climate change from burning fossil fuels mean it is no longer possible to rely on traditional solutions.
…The future, as envisioned by Kissling and co-author John Tiffin, relies heavily on ever smaller computers, global positioning system satellites and nanotechnology. Tiny computer chips and sensors could be used to track crowds through public transport hubs or to check the car in for a service if a fault is detected.
Satellites could help the computers guide cars on roads and fly planes or pilot ships remotely, the book says. Nanotechnology could also be used to develop ‘clever clothes’ for humans, enhancing their abilities to walk or run, carry heavy loads or even ‘fly like birds’.
It could be used to build goods locally, reducing the need for mass freight. Remaining items would be transported around the world in huge submarines without crews -‘behemoths gliding silently beneath the oceans’ – where they could be stacked on busy shipping lanes and would not battle the waves.
(26 August 2007)
As the reporter says, this study sounds like science fiction from the 1950s — like the optimistic hyper-tech outlook parodied by “The End of Suburbia.” A review of this study would be a great vehicle for uncovering faulty assumptions and criticizing the technological fix mindset. -BA
