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Related: Culture Forums, Support Forums"The President's Analyst" warned us that The Phone Company was spying
On us all and that TPC wanted to control us all.
The 1967 satire, The President's Analyst warned about government and corporate spying. Sure, it was just a funny little movie but it had it right 45 years ago! It even includes gun toting Americans, commentary on race relations, and a lot of other things that haven't changed much since the movie was made.
Taken to TPC's headquarters in New Jersey, he [Dr. Schaefer] is introduced to the head of TPC (Pat Harrington, Jr.), who wants Dr. Schaefer's help in carrying out their plan. TPC has developed a "modern electronic miracle", the Cerebrum Communicator (CC), a microelectronic device that can communicate wirelessly with any other CC in the world. Once implanted in the brain, the user need only think of the number of the person they wish to reach, and are instantly connected, thus eliminating the need for The Phone Company's massive and expensive-to-maintain wired infrastructure. (The operation of the CC is shown in animation that parodies the animated sequences in the Bell Telephone Science Series television programs.)
For this to work, every human being will be assigned a number instead of a name, and the CC prenatally implanted. Dr. Schaefer is "requested" to assist TPC by blackmailing the President into pushing through the required legislation.
Masters and Kropotkin use their superspy abilities to come to Schaefer's rescue. They hand Schaefer an M16 rifle that Schaefer gleefully uses on The Phone Company's security staff. The three emerge victorious from the ensuing bloodbath, but months later, as Dr. Schaefer and his spy friends are enjoying a Christmas reunion, animatronic executives from TPC look on approvingly, while "Joy to the World" plays in the background.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_President%27s_Analyst
MiddleFingerMom
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... exaggerated satire and I don't think anyone involved realized
just how prophetic it was.
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hobbit709
(41,694 posts)csziggy
(34,136 posts)To be implanted into everyone's brains! They'd so much more convenient than cell phones.
I for one welcome The Telephone Company as our corporate overlords.
DFW
(54,363 posts)"Krepotkin! Kak Vy pazhyvayetye?"
"Please! No Russian, I'm spying!"
csziggy
(34,136 posts)Really got me to recognize the damage that racial epithets do.
For you:
And for our gun loving Americans!
DFW
(54,363 posts)I've met Dick Gregory when he came to speak at my college in 1970.
That wasn't Dick Gregory. That was Godfrey Cambridge.
End of a long day and I'm too tired to check my sources. Let me fix that!
DFW
(54,363 posts)Long day--how's this for a long day: it's half past midnight here in Sprout City, after having left home on the 6:14 train, and I have to be in Paris by 10:00 AM tomorrow, and back here in Belgium by 9:00 tomorrow night.
csziggy
(34,136 posts)I have no endurance these days, but sleeping badly contributes. I got maybe 5 hours last night, went with my husband to the doctor to find out about the surgery he needs (just fixing ligaments in a foot but he'll be non-weight bearing for weeks), probably why I didn't sleep A few more errands and now I am useless.
DFW
(54,363 posts)What used to be a standard 3 hour trip from Brussels to Paris is now only 80 minutes. By the time you doze off, you're there.
csziggy
(34,136 posts)DFW
(54,363 posts)Better make that one quick snooze!
csziggy
(34,136 posts)Pffffft to a few announcements!
I just can't sleep at night when everything is quiet.
I don't even know what quiet is any more.
I always fly back to the States for a few weeks in the summer to a spot where I KNOW it's quiet. Batteries need periodic recharging, and here in Europe it's just too crowded, and there's ALWAYS someone that just HAS to ask me something.
csziggy
(34,136 posts)But at least I have a quiet place. A 60 acre horse farm in North Florida, outside Tallahassee I've owned since 1978. It's not as quiet as it used to be, but it is still very peaceful. I can go outside and hear the birds' wings as they fly by - in fact the birds and frogs are some of the noisier things I hear most days.
I couldn't live in a city or even a community of any size - I had problems in college living in the dorms with people around all the time.
Falling asleep in the movies was from disrupted sleep, not the ability to ignore noise. But I bet I could sleep on a train - I do in the car all the time.
If you ever get to Tallahassee, let me know. The best times are spring and late fall - in the summer the bugs are terrible. I'll let you wander the farm and promise to not ask you something.
DFW
(54,363 posts)I will definitely take you up on that!
olddots
(10,237 posts)satire is about reality .
csziggy
(34,136 posts)And every time find more things it gave us previews of.
DFW
(54,363 posts)The President's analyst tells his girlfriend that most people would think he was worried about Russia or China, but he spent lots of time just worrying about (the then totally insignificant country of) Libya.
Of all the inconsequential places to pick out of a hat, they picked a country that, starting less than 5 years later, would be in the headlines on and off right up until the present day.
ConcernedCanuk
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until the bombs start coming over from Russia and China
and they WILL come unless the USA changes its attitude towards the rest of the World,
Can't go messing around with the whole world without expecting payback . . .
wtf are the American voters thinking???
CC