Wind-powered car goes down wind faster than the wind
June 4, 2010 by Lin Edwards
Image credit: Thin Air Designs
(PhysOrg.com)
-- A wind-powered car has been clocked in the US traveling down wind
faster than the wind. In a recent run at New Jerusalem in Tracy,
California, the car reached a top speed of more than 2.85 times faster
than the wind blowing at the time (13.5 mph) powered by the wind
itself. The run should now settle the DWFTTW (down wind faster than the
wind) debate that has been raging for some time on the Internet about
whether or not such a feat was possible.
The
Thin Air Designs car, called the Blackbird, was built by Rick
Cavallaro, an aerodynamicist, paraglider and kitesurfer, who was
alerted to the DWFTTW debate by his employer at Sportvision Inc., Stan
Honey, a world-class sailing navigator. Cavallaro is chief scientist
with the company. He made some calculations that convinced him the feat
was possible and then built a model to prove it. When skeptics remained
unconvinced, Cavallaro and a friend decided to build a full-size
version.
The “Faster than the Wind” team was able to attract sponsorship from
wind turbine company Joby Energy and Google, and worked in
collaboration with the aero department of the San Jose State University
to build their ultra-light vehicle, which is made largely of foam. The
car has a passing resemblance to a Formula 1 racing car, except for the five meter high propeller
mounted on the back, and it is this propeller that holds the key to how
it is possible for the car to travel down wind faster than the wind. An
earlier version known as the BUFC for Big Ugly Cart (fill in the
blank), also achieved speeds greater than the down wind speed at the
North American Land Sailing Association (NALSA) meeting on a dry
lakebed in Nevada in March.
Cavallaro
explained the car is able to move faster than the wind because the
propeller is not turned by the wind. The wind pushes the vehicle
forward, and once moving the wheels turn the propeller. The propeller
spins in the opposite direction to that expected, pushing the wind backwards, which in turn pushes the car forwards, turning the wheels, and thus turning the propeller faster still.
The vehicle was built after over a year of trials. Building a
transmission able to transfer power from the wheels to the propeller
was the most difficult part of the design. The next stage in
development will be to have trials confirmed by NALSA.
As a founder and CEO of a new company building new products for an "emerging" expeditionary enterprise user market, I've grown to love the "children's book" The Little Prince, by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. My favorite quote comes after the author describes a book he read about the Jungle called True Stories. He shows a picture of a boa constrictor swallowing a "wild beast". (Here's an online version of the book.)
One of the most interesting points about this story is in the second chapter when the narrator meets The Little Prince in the Sahara desert after his emergency landing leaves him stranded with a pretty uncertain future.
The Prince asks the narrator to draw him a sheep and after repeated unsuccessful attempts to draw the sheep to the specific satisfaction of the Prince, the narrator draws a box and explains that "This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside." (The Prince got very excited and was tickled about this. He imagined what the sheep might look or be like - and obviously the Prince liked his vision of the sheep in the box more than the narrator's drawings..)
I hear lots of talk about web 2.0, web 3.0, web 4.0, web x.x, cloud this, mobile that, etc., etc., etc....
Sure patterns of human behavior and the tools we use are changing - but the fundamentals are the same.
By definition, scarcity is everywhere abundance isn't.
The idea behind Sofcoast is simply to focus on applying tech to target the abundant scarcity problem set as it pertains to information and communications. Unfortunately with all of the stuff happening in the world today, it's getting easier for the average person to get a whiff of what might happen when "scarcity" hits and escalates. (some examples...)
Scarcity of information.
Scarcity of communications.
Scarcity of safety.
Scarcity of money.
Scarcity of food.
Scarcity of energy.
Scarcity of freedom.
Now think about the technology we take for granted, like being able to pick up your mobile phone and dial a number and someone answers on the other end...or better yet, you pick up your iPhone which has a full battery and great cellular or wifi reception and download that app to entertain yourself - it just works.
That's abundance.
Now...think about the time where you couldn't make that phone call or couldn't download that app. (your battery died, you couldn't get access to a network, your service was shut down because you didn't pay your bill...wait that was me....) all of these are examples of scarcity.
Now...imagine that you needed to use your mobile device for something more than ordering takeout or playing a game - imagine that you were a first responder responding in a crisis such as a hurricane, a flood, an earthquake, a search and rescue event.
Scarcity happens quickly and when it does people can and do suddenly find themselves in "abundant scarcity" mode. Meaning those individuals (and organizations) must be able to effectively cope in order to survive. We consider groups of people who are responsible for responding during these types of situations to be "expeditionary enterprise users".
The military is great at organizing, synchronizing and operating in expeditionary mode or "abundant scarcity" mode. They've spent eons and gazillions of dollars figuring out how to cope with scarcity.
Consumer tech is advancing at warp speed tantalizing us all with tech that allows us to exploit abundant network and bandwidth availability, processor power and energy.
What about those folks in between magical consumer gizmo's that "just work" and are powered by "freemium" business models and the military tech that, if it isn't classified, is ridiculously pricey or hard to (acquire|operate|integrate|manage|support|maintain).
Global military spending hit $1.5
trillion in 2009
* Spending
rose 5.9 percent, despite global recession * U.S.
military spending up 7.7 percent to $661 billion
By Niklas
Pollard STOCKHOLM, June 2 (Reuters) Worldwide military spending surged to a record $1.5 trillion last year,
defying an economic downturn caused by the global financial crisis, a leading
think tank said on Wednesday. Military spending last year rose 5.9 percent in
real terms compared to 2008 with the United States accounting for more than
half of that increase, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
said in its annual report on arms spending. "The far-reaching effects of
the global financial crisis and economic recession appear to have had little
impact on world military expenditure," the think tank said. "Although
the USA led the rise, it was not alone. Of those countries for which data was
available, 65 percent increased their military spending in real terms in
2009." Global gross domestic product (GDP) suffered a rare contraction last
year, shrinking 0.9 percent according to the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development, as the financial crisis sent economies across the
world into recession. SIPRI, which conducts independent research on
international security, armaments and disarmament, said the rise in spending
reflected the mild economic slowdown for some major purchasers, such as China,
but also longer-term strategic aims. "Many countries were increasing
public spending generally in 2009, as a way of boosting demand to combat the recession.
Although military spending wasn't usually a major part of the economic stimulus
packages, it wasn't cut either," said Sam Perlo-Freeman, head of SIPRI's
Military Expenditure Project. "The figures also demonstrate that for major
or intermediate powers such as the USA, China, Russia, India and Brazil,
military spending represents a long-term strategic choice which they are
willing to make even in hard economic times." DEFICITS COULD WEIGH U.S. military spending, burdened by huge costs for
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, rose 7.7 percent in real terms to hit $661
billion, more than six times as much as China, the second biggest spender ahead
of France, Britain and Russia. But China's rise as a global military power
becomes clearer when viewed over the past decade. During that period its
military spending has surged 217 percent compared to a 76 percent rise for the
United States and an increase of 49 percent globally.
The economic crisis severely strained public finances in many countries,
not least in southern Europe, and the daunting task of cutting gaping budget
deficits might hold back arms spending in the coming years, the think tank
said. "For many countries, the need to cut deficits will mean a reckoning
in 2010 or 2011, in which military spending will likely be one area that comes
under scrutiny for potential cuts," SIPRI said in the report. "For
others, however, this reckoning may be delayed, or may not come at all. In the
USA, the Obama administration's budgets for financial years 2010 and 2011 show
U.S. military spending -- boosted by the escalating conflict in Afghanistan --
continuing its seemingly inexorable rise -- crisis or no." (Reporting by
Niklas Pollard; Editing by Noah Barkin)
As Deepwater
Horizon enters into its seventh week, one can’t help having a bit of the
‘I’m stuck in a bad episode of the Twilight Zone’ feeling.
First, the problem seems unending. No
high tech magic wands. No victory laps. Rather, we’ve witnessed a series of
techno-flops. Top kill, robots, container domes, riser insertion tubes, and now
back to more robots. A definitive remedy, we’re told, can’t be in place until
August. Hmm let’s see 5,000 (or is it 100,000) barrels per day times another 45
(or is it 60 or 90) days. Only one thing seems for sure. We’re talking a mighty
big number.
Deepwater
highlights how far we have to go in terms of practicing innovation on the fly
in relation to important and emerging agendas.
And that’s the second striking feature
of Deepwater: the mushiness of the data and the conflicting positions that
result from it. Leak
volume is only one example. Opinions also vary on environmental impact,
costs, and on policy remedies that are now needed. We are now in the realm of
challenges that defy simple technological solutions or orderly chains of
command. It’s business Rashomon now, since how we define the problem (profits,
environmental and economic impact, academic truth, regulatory oversight)
determines what we think should be done.
This takes us to the third aspect of
Deepwater, the ‘could have been’s’ that emerge as we walk the cat back. If only
BP had better
safety procedures, or had questioned the well’s stability earlier or had
used a more conservative remedy in the first place. If only the federal
government had stepped
in sooner. If only our policies with regard to regulation
of oil companies and offshore drilling had been more strict. If only we had
brought other expert opinion in at the outset to work the problem.
Welcome to the world of wicked
problems.
I touched
on this topic recently in relation to the UK elections, but it is worth
expanding on in relation to Deepwater. Almost 40 years ago, the social
scientist Horst Rittel proposed the term “wicked problems” as a way of trying
to understand why some challenges were intractable and highly difficult to deal
with. Wicked problems shared certain characteristics, in his view. First, they
were hard to define. (Is Deepwater an issue of technology, safety, policy, or
environmental policy? Yes.) Second, they involved many different and hard to
reconcile perspectives? (For sure, in this case.) Third, solutions weren’t true
or false, but better or worse, and hard to test in advance. (Yep.) And fourth,
the resut is a brace of conflicting opinions. (Definitely.)
So there may be an important, teachable
element to the Deepwater story. While we would have all preferred a
straightforward technological success story (top kill worked and it’s Miller
time), the failure goes much further. It’s about how we look at our
preparedness to address complex challenges and how we might deal with them
better in the future. Because we are in an era of wicked problems, folks, and
something like this, sadly, is bound to happen again. And again.
How do you deal with wicked problems?
The key for Rittel was bringing a highly creative process to bear and
collecting all stakeholders and viewpoints under one roof to engage in the
work. He felt it important not to give in to the temptation to simplify, but
rather to examine the challenge in all its complexity. Some of this is
reflected in our president’s recent statement, We will take ideas from
anywhere. That’s crucially important, but success is not just about ideas – it’s
what you do with them to make them happen and when, as well as how you use the
convening power of government to create blended solutions and fast
synchronization among divergent parties.
Where can we find some best or at least
promising practices? Certainly the military is in the wicked problems business.
And in that culture, you find situation rooms, sophisticated approaches to
command and control, experience in crisis management, mental rehearsal and
training to think the unthinkable, and investment in leadership development.
But comparable capabilities still seem lacking for the kind of societal
disaster that is Deepwater. And they are desperately needed to generate the
kind of divergent thinking appropriate to wicked problems. In the Deepwater
story, it took a long while for academic expertise to be allowed into the tent
and for the full weight of government expertise to make itself known once we
had resolved a few little problems in the Minerals
Management Service.
Info
So we need to know a lot more about how
to do the work of innovation in order to address the kind of wicked problems
that threaten the common good. In short, we need to design a new kind of
innovative and fast capability in government that is also capable of blending
in the perspectives of the private and NGO sectors as well as academic experts
and civil society.
I have been saying for years that our
government needs to get better at innovation. Deepwater highlights how far we
have to go in terms of practicing innovation on the fly in relation to
important and emerging agendas. We are still stuck in a government narrative
that looks at innovation as being about cool, high-tech ideas, people in white
lab coats or economic inputs within broad development policies. Well yes, but
innovation is also about coming up with innovative solutions to wicked problems
at the tempo of life. It’s about how senior people come together to figure out
new solutions in a crisis to get us to where we want to go.
We need, I believe, a new kind of
innovation rapid response capability that employs the state of the art in
facilitation, communication and collaboration technology to generate speed and
alignment. We need a new approach to cultivating facilitation skills that will
enhance the work of stakeholder groups and allow the generation of rapid
alignment among differing points of view. We need better tools for
visualization and problem solving to create shared understanding. In short, we
need a new kind of innovation SWAT capability with a seat at the table of
power. I’ve even gone so far as to suggest during the last presidential
campaign that every federal department have a senior facilitation team as part
of a national facilitation corps that is prepared to deal with unexpected
emergencies.
If we don’t do something like this, I
fear that the history of our future will be written in terms of a series of
wicked problems that turned out to be a lot more wicked than they could have
been.
Dubbed
"Mr. Creativity" by The Economist, John Kao is a contributing editor
at The Daily Beast and an adviser to both public and private sector leaders. He
is chairman of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, whose i20 group is an
association of national innovation "czars." He wrote Jamming:
The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity, a BusinessWeek bestseller,
and Innovation
Nation. He is also a Tony-nominated producer of film and stage.
WASHINGTON — A senior United Nations official said on Wednesday that
the growing use of armed drones by the United States to kill terrorism
suspects was undermining global constraints on the use of military force. He
warned that the American example would lead to a chaotic world as the new
weapons technology inevitably spread.
In a 29-page report to the United Nations Human Rights
Council, the official, Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative
on extrajudicial executions, called on the United States to exercise greater
restraint in its use of drones in places like Pakistan and Yemen, outside the
war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The report — the most extensive effort
by the United Nations to grapple with the legal implications of armed drones —
also proposed a summit meeting of “key military powers” to clarify legal limits
on such killings.
In an interview, Mr. Alston said the
United States appeared to think that it was “facing a unique threat from
transnational terrorist networks” that justified its effort to put forward
legal justifications that would make the rules “as flexible as possible.”
But that example, he said, could
quickly lead to a situation in which dozens of countries carry out “competing
drone attacks” outside their borders against people “labeled as terrorists by
one group or another.”
“I’m particularly concerned that the
United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding
entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe,” Mr. Alston said
in an accompanying statement. “But this strongly
asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an
entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing
grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent
extrajudicial executions.”
Mr. Alston is scheduled to present his
findings to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday. While not legally
binding, his report escalates the volume of international concerns over a tactic
that has become the Obama administration’s weapon of choice against Al Qaeda and its allies.
The New York Times reported last week that Mr. Alston’s report would
call on the United States to stop using Central Intelligence Agency-operated drones and
limit the technology to regular military forces because they are open and
publicly accountable for their conduct — for example, by investigating missile
strikes that kill civilians.
Days later, news emerged that a C.I.A. drone strike in
Pakistan’s tribal areas was believed to have killed Al Qaeda’s third-ranking
leader, apparently a major success. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Alston
acknowledged that the United States could make “a reasonable legal argument”
that a strike against such a figure in those circumstances was lawful and
appropriate, but he argued that the escalating number of drone strikes in
Pakistan still raised concerns.
The recent strike “is a very convenient
one because there you have got a very clearly acceptable target, but we’re not
told who the other strikes are against and what efforts are being made to
comply with the rules,” he said.
The report calls on nations like
Pakistan to publicly disclose the scope and limits of any permission granted
for drone strikes on their territories. It also calls on drone operators like
the United States to disclose the legal justification for such killings, the
criteria and safeguards used when selecting targets, and the process for
investigating attacks that kill civilians.
A White House spokesman declined to
comment on the report, but pointed to a speech in March by the State Department legal
adviser, Harold Koh, that partly outlined the Obama administration’s legal
rationale. Mr. Koh said the United States obeyed legal limits on the use of
force when selecting targets, and he defended drone killings as lawful because
of the armed conflict with Al Qaeda and because of the nation’s right to
self-defense.
“A state that is engaged in an armed
conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with
legal process before the state may use lethal force,” he said. “Our procedures
and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced
technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise.”
The United Nations report agrees that
drone killings can be lawful in battlefield combat. But it says that the United
States is stretching the limits of who can be lawful targets.
For example, it criticized the United
States for singling out drug lords in Afghanistan suspected of giving money to
the Taliban, a policy it said was contrary to the
traditional understanding of the laws of war. Similarly, it said, terrorism
financiers, propagandists and others who are not fighters should face criminal
prosecution, not summary killing.
It also said that a targeted killing
outside of an armed conflict “is almost never likely to be legal.” In
particular, it rejected “pre-emptive self-defense” as a justification for
killing terrorism suspects far from combat zones.
“This expansive and open-ended
interpretation of the right to self-defense goes a long way towards destroying
the prohibition on the use of armed force contained in the U.N. Charter,” Mr. Alston said. “If invoked by
other states, in pursuit of those they deem to be terrorists and to have
attacked them, it would cause chaos.”
But a United States official, speaking
anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue, said drone attacks had
been an “effective, exact and essential” tactic for reaching militants in
inaccessible areas of Pakistan, whose government does not want the United
States military fighting in its territory.
“The United States has an inherent
right to protect itself and will not refrain from doing so based on someone
else’s exceptionally narrow — if not faulty — definition of self-defense,” the
official said. The report noted that Russia and Israel had also claimed a right
in recent years to single out people they deemed terrorism suspects, and Mr.
Alston said 40 other countries already had drone technology — with several
already seeking armed versions.
Warning that the technology is making
targeted killings much easier and more frequent, the report urged major
military nations to meet with human rights specialists to work out agreements
on murky legal issues, such as when a farmer who sets roadside bombs at night
may be a target.
The report also raised concerns that
drone operators might not have the same respect for the laws of war as soldiers
in the field who have “been subjected to the risks and rigors of battle.”
“Because operators are based thousands
of miles away from the battlefield, and undertake operations entirely through
computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a
‘PlayStation’ mentality to killing,” it said.
Last week, the military released a report faulting military drone operators for
“inaccurate and unprofessional” reporting that led to an airstrike in February
that killed 23 Afghan civilians, including women and children.
All Things Digital Q&A session with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in 2007. Wonderful to see two of the most influential people of the our generation share space and time and discuss computers, software and innovation.
Before
Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, Jim Henson made short films for Big
Blue. The tech may be archaic, but the entertainment is timeless.
By Andrew Leal | Posted at 10:11 pm on Monday, May 31, 2010
IBM.
The Muppets. Two venerable institutions-but not ones we tend to
associate with each other. Yet in the late 1960s, before most people
had ever seen a computer in person or could identify a Muppet on sight,
the two teamed up when IBM contracted with Jim Henson for a series of
short films designed to help its sales staff. Little known today, these
remain fresh, funny, and surprisingly irreverent. Henson would return
to their gags and situations in his famous later works–and he plucked
the Cookie Monster from one of them when assembling the Muppet cast for
Sesame Street in 1969.
Whose idea was this unique collaboration? Well, Henson had already
established himself in the advertising field. He was best known at the
time for the Muppets’ guest skits on variety shows and Rowlf the Dog’s appearances on The Jimmy Dean Show. But he was busier making a wide array of commercials and longer sales films for regional and national products from Esskay Meats to Marathon Gasoline.
For its own part, IBM was keenly aware that its products–including
computers, electric typewriters, and very early word processors–had to
be explained to both the public and IBM’s own employees. So it formed
its own advertising group, including a film and television division. An
executive named David Lazer headed this division, overseeing the
production of training and sales films.
Jim Henson and friends in the 1960s.
According to Henson archivist Karen Falk, the IBM films were
produced between 1966 and 1976, but most of the only confirmed examples
date to the 1960s, primarily 1967. Jim Henson was the primary puppeteer
and director in these projects. Assisting were the Muppets Inc./Henson
Inc. staffers: Frank Oz (later to play Miss Piggy, Cookie Monster, and
others), writer Jerry Juhl (who co-wrote The Muppet Movie, worked on Fraggle Rock, and scripted classic Ernie and Bert sketches), and puppet builder Don Sahlin (whose credits included George Pal’s Time Machine), among others.
1967 was an interesting time for the team-up: two years before the Muppets’ national prominence would rise thanks to Sesame Street, and two years after the introduction of IBM’s Selectric
typewriter, an electric device which was crucial in the transition from
old Remington typewriters to the modern word processors which would
soon make the Selectric look old-fashioned.
Short and Silly Films
The films Henson made for IBM fell into two basic classes. The first
were short comedic “meeting films,” which acted as icebreakers or to
signal breaks in long corporate, sales, and training meetings. The
second category consisted of longer industrial films which explained
IBM’s products, service, and approach. Though the industrials look like
commercials, their purpose seems to have been to motivate IBM’s sales
team and/or to serve as a primer to potential corporate clients.
The meeting films were comedy bits which could have fit right in on The Muppet Show
(and in fact some would be reworked and repeated on the series). Muppet
trademarks, such as characters eating each other or spontaneous
explosions, were already in force, as seen in a clip with two
businessmen arguing.
Another features an early version of Kermit the Frog, one of only
two star Muppets at the time, attempting to deliver a long speech on
sales success while intimidated by a gruesome monster.
The third spot, “Coffee Break Machine,” is a quintessential Muppet comedy skit (it was remade twice, for The Ed Sullivan Show and The Muppet Show). It’s
also the first explicit link between the meeting films and IBM’s
products. The premise is simple, as an elaborate talking computer
device (voiced by Jim Henson) recites a laundry list of features and
components all to produce a single cup of coffee. A Muppet monster,
instantly recognizable as a prototype of Cookie Monster (but scruffier
and with prominent teeth), enters and devours the machine piece by
piece. (The monster’s voraciousness would remain when Cookie showed up on Sesame Street, but a modified toothless puppet would be used instead.)
This entertaining short displays an ambivalent attitude towards
technology, showing it as complicated, seemingly pointless, and likely
to self-destruct. Not a message one would expect from IBM, but it shows
that the company–despite its reputations as a pretty button-downed
place–had a corporate ability to laugh at itself.
IBM Puts on the Dog
When it came to the actual selling of its technological
products and services, IBM worked with Henson and crew to produce more
sales-driven but still entertaining sales and industrial films. In an
entertaining untitled ten-minute short, Rowlf the Dog (the other
established star Muppet, thanks to his regular stint with Jimmy Dean)
appears as a newly hired IBM salescanine, proudly writing a letter to
his mother about his exploits. Rowlf displays an adeptness at the
keyboard which would serve him well years later as The Muppet Show‘s resident pianist.
Over the course of the film (divided into parts, with typed out
intertitles), Rowlf progresses from a standard typewriter to an
electric IBM model to finally using a Selectric, complete with shots of
the famous “golf ball” typing element,
which he observes with keen interest. Comedic bits include Rowlf
accidentally breaking a bottle of mimeograph ink , struggling with
stairs, and a running gag where the typewriter carriage backs up and
knocks over objects.
In an industry in-joke, Rowlf’s sales territory is expanded to
include an office building, only the camera trucks in to reveal the
name “Sperry-Rand,” the early IBM competitor behind the Univac.
By 1967, however, the company had become embroiled in a lawsuit with
Honeywell and was diminishing in importance. Still, based on his track
record, sending Rowlf to sell IBM products to a competing company might
be construed as an act of corporate sabotage! In addition, the
acknowledgment that IBM wasn’t the only fish in the pond differed from
the period in the 1940s and 1950s when corporations were afraid to
acknowledge competing companies (and long before the Mac/PC ads).
Among the other highlights are a series of amusing commercial spoofs made by Rowlf. One parodies a then-current series of Timex durability ads featuring newsman John Cameron Swayze. Another, referencing Wrigley’s Doublemint Twins
ads, has twin Rowlfs chanting “Double your output, double your speed!
With IBM MTS MT/ST” and then typing on dual machines.The MT/ST
(Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter) would feature far more prominently
in the next film, The Paperwork Explosion.
That film –whose title was a common term in the 1960s and perceived
as a side-effect of the information explosion–eschews Muppets for a
more serious but still creative presentation. It’s not dissimilar in
its rapid cuts and use of animation to Henson’s earlier,
Oscar-nominated short Time Piece.
The Paperwork Explosion (made concurrently with a
same-named print campaign) uses a talking heads approach, as various
office workers and/or IBM employees discuss the problem and its
solution. The cast consists of a mix of New York commercial and
character actors, Henson Inc. employees (a young Frank Oz can be
glimpsed smoking a cigarette and Henson’s voice is briefly heard), and
actual IBM people (including David Lazer).
The short’s music was by Raymond Scott, who had worked with Henson
before but is best known as the composer of that Looney Tunes staple “Powerhouse,”
usually played during assembly-line scenes. Scott’s synthesizer score
is perfectly matched to the subject matter, presenting both an
insistent feel to the initial problem (businesses overwhelmed by
paperwork in every facet) and then to IBM’s mechanized solution.
The IBM Selectric Composer, in a photo from IBMComposer.org.
The soundtrack and pace gradually slow to a more
comfortable rhythm, as the previously shown office folks begin to
investigate the ways IBM products can help, especially the MT/ST. IBM’s
print “paperwork explosion” ads described it further, as “a rather
remarkable typewriter that takes a secretary’s rough draft and types it
back error-free at the rather remarkable rate of a page every two
minutes.”Also shown in the film is the IBM Selectric Composer,
an advanced typesetter used to prepare copy which would be photographed
for print ads and which allowed for a choice of font. Dictation
machines are presented as ways to record the office staff’s thoughts
more efficiently than freehand transcription or the best secretary.
These products may look quaint and amusing today, but in the 1960s
this was futuristic stuff. And the mantra, reiterated by the chorus of
talking heads, is that IBM office equipment and other machines will
help do the work, leaving people more time to think.
Forty odd years later, it’s not clear that technology and our
increasingly digital world have freed up time to think (though
unquestionably they’ve given us more to think about). Outside of deeper
messages, the film is very effective salesmanship and a fascinating
mixture of techniques and look at the 1960s business world (or one
version of it). As with his personal films, it proves Jim Henson could
do more than wiggle frogs and dogs.
And Now For the Rest of the Story….
Once work had been completed on these films, Henson and IBM ended
their partnership. But the collaboration’s impact continued to be felt,
and the relationship between the Muppets and technology continues to
this day:
Once personal computers and related gadgetry entered American
households, the Muppets were there. In the 1980s, for instance, there
was a Muppet keyboard for IBM’s infamous PC Jr and a Muppet computer literacy program for the Commodore 64. In the 1990s, there were Muppet CD-ROMs. Today, the Muppets star in several apps for the iPhone.
Henson scribe Jerry Juhl with animatronic Muppet at the 1964 Worlds' Fair.
Writer Jerry Juhl remained with the Muppets, but he used his IBM
experiences for his sole foray into adult literature, a 1968
science-fiction short story called “The Edward Salant Letters,”
detailing the correspondence between the owner of an IBM-like dictating
typewriter (called a Phonotyper) receiving automated computer responses
from the manufacturer (and thus eerily foreshadowing customer service
hassles of today).
IBM film honcho David Lazer joined Henson as a full-time executive, where, among other things, he was a producer for The Muppet Show and the movies The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth.
He also worked with Jim to develop and expand the “meeting film”
concept. While IBM owned the original shorts, Lazer proposed making
similar films which could be marketed to any business, spoofing
corporate doubletalk, workplace tedium, and hard sell exhortations.
These Muppet Meeting Films began in the 1970s, were significantly promoted in 1980 when new shorts were added, and remain available.
Following Jim Henson’s death in 1990, the Muppets experienced many
ups and downs and been sold and resold, but they’re currently enjoying
a resurgence, due both to an upcoming Disney movie (The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever) and–benefiting from the computer era and the Internet–a series of clever and popular viral YouTube videos (notably an acclaimed cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody”).
IBM
may no longer make typewriters or word processors–or office-automation
machinery of any sort–but it remains a technological giant. In a
touching nod to the past (or more likely, just using a popular internet
phenomenon as an example), its developerWorks page on the Lex parser uses the Swedish Chef translator (turning text into mock Swedish and adding the Muppet’s trademark “Bork bork”) as an example.
And Jim Henson himself? He continued to toy with computers for as long as he lived, from making “Scanimation” films for Sesame Street to hiring engineers who created some of the earliest motion-capture CGI puppetry.
And after his passing, one of the most memorable tributes he received
came from a computer company. No, not IBM. It was Apple that
prominently featured Henson (and Kermit) among the notable minds in its
famous “Think Different” campaign. Jim Henson did indeed think differently, as these early films attest.
(Andrew Leal is a freelance writer in El Paso, Texas. A lifelong Muppet fan, he serves as administrator at Muppet Wiki and contributed to the book Kermit Culture. He’s also an animation historian, with selections in the books Animation Art and The Animated Movie Guide. He completed this article without the aid of an IBM Composer.)
By Andrew Leal | Posted at 10:11 pm on Monday, May 31, 2010