Rather than continuing to pour old whine into new bottles, would anyone mind if I present for PEN-Lers' viewing pleasure, a treatment for a pop-up book that I'm constructing? For those who might wonder what this has to do with progressive economics, I would like to point out that this construction is in the vein of a materialist/postmodernist fusion. To anticipate a quote from Walter Benjamin, presented in the method section below, "Fashion has a flair for the topical, no matter where it stirs in the thickets of long ago; it is a tiger's leap into the past. This jump, however, takes place in an arena where the ruling class gives the commands. The same leap in the open air of history is the dialectical one, which is how Marx understood the revolution." Or, to paraphrase a vacuous slogan, "What if they held a recession and nobody came?" (and for you doubters: this ain't no virtual pop-up book; it's been cut, pasted and assembled. FLIGHT OF THE POSTMODERN (1957-58): AN INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC CIRCUS I. FORMAT OF PRESENTATION Lothar Meggendorfer's 1887 pop-up panorama, INTERNATIONAL CIRCUS. "This book unfolds to reveal six scenes featuring exciting circus acts from around the world. The daredevil riders and their horses, the acrobats and clowns, the circus orchestra are all included in this three-dimensional spectacular." Panorama: Panorama of a residential street in a Peoria suburb (1958). Caption: "Effect of Trouble in Jefferson Street. The way trouble has hit a single block in the Peoria area is shown below in the picture of Jefferson Street in Pekin. 'Trouble is already here for some people,' says one Caterpillar worker. 'But it's under the surface for everybody.'" II. DOCUMENTS A. Propulsion Image #1: Monsanto House of the Future, Disneyland (1957). Caption: "Against a backdrop of the faraway past, Monsanto's 'House of the Future' stands at Disneyland as a symbol of scientific progress to date and in the years to come." Text fragment #1: A glittering metallic pinpoint of light streaking across the predawn sky last week gave the U.S. its first look at Soviet Russia's great feat, the artificial moon, Sputnik.(1957) Image #2: Working class mother and four children posed candidly on a living room sofa (1958). Caption: "Jose Gonzales' family waits for him to finish his twelve-and-a-half hour day. Laid off from an $80-a-week machine shop job at Caterpillar, he quickly found two other jobs that bring a total of $300 a month." Text fragment #2: Thanks to a tiny electronic instrument called a transistor, which replaces bulky glass vacuum tubes, the day is not far off when portable, personalized TV-phones will let people see and hear one another anywhere. A wireless phone the size of a toothbrush case will be unveiled by the Bell labs in a year or two. Working models of a picture-phone are in existence there today. Meanwhile, technology is speeding up communication's stepchild, the mails. Guided missles loaded with letters instead of war heads are being planned for the distant future. After their successful launching and arrival, new sorting systems now in use will still be indispensible. (1957) Image #3: Young Werner von Braun carrying rocket (1930). Caption: "18-year-old pioneer in 1930. Werner von Braun, a university student and the son of a Prussian baron, and rocket scientist Rudolf Nebel carry early rockets across their testing ground, an unused firing range outside Berlin" B. Guidance Text fragment #3: The word "automation", so new to the English vocabulary that it can't be found in last year's dictionary, is causing a stir in the business world... A shorter workweek is union labor's answer to new machines. The big trend to automation in factories has leaders talking in terms of 30 to 32 hours -- 4 days of work instead of 5. (1955) Image #4: Man peering straight ahead (into the camera) with background of computer memory tapes (1961). Caption: "Mr Diebold is generally credited with coining the term "automation" Text fragment #4: Do you really want a four-day week? The whole question may be decided not by workers but by their wives. "Do you think," one psychiatrist asked Parade, "that American women can stand to have their husbands underfoot three days in a row?" (1957) Image #5: Seated crowd of men (1958). Caption: "At a special meeting sullen unionists listen to a UAW official who wanted them to risk more layoffs rather than accept a four-day week. Feeling the crowd against him, he gave up" C. Re-entry Image #6: Panorama of women at closed circuit TV workstations (1957). Caption: "Penn Station in New York has the world's largest closed-circuit TV system. By dialing code number, ticket clerks at counter or on phones have available ticket space flashed on set" Text fragment #5: Then an adult in the balcony -- no one was sure who -- realized that the flash was not the separation of a booster rocket, and yelled, "Shut up, everyone!" A silence descended in time for the students, teachers and administrators at the school where that teacher, Christa McAuliffe, had taught for three years to hear the announcer report, "The vehicle has exploded." (1986) III. METHOD Walter Benjamin: "Pedogogic side of this project: 'To train our image-making faculty to look stereoscopically and dimensionally into the depths of the shadows of history.'" "The work must raise to the very highest level the art of quoting without quotation marks. Its theory is intimately linked to that of montage." "Method of this work: literary montage. I need say nothing. Only show. I won't steal anything valuable or appropriate any witty turns of phrase. but the trivia, the trash: this, I don't want to take stock of, but let it come into its own in the only way possible: use it." "The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again." "History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now [*Jetztzeit*]. Thus to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with the time of the now which he blasted out of the continuum of history... Fashion has a flair for the topical, no matter where it stirs in the thickets of long ago; it is a tiger's leap into the past. This jump, however, takes place in an arena where the ruling class gives the commands. The same leap in the open air of history is the dialectical one, which is how Marx understood the revolution." POSTSCRIPT Text fragment #6: The accuracy of an intercontinental ballistic missle's flight is determined in the first moments when it roars into the sky. Its electronic brain has full instructions. But it needs reminding, too! Borg-Warner makes an ingenious device to do this... to tell instantly if and when any corrections are needed to keep it precisely on course. (1957) Regards, Tom Walker, [EMAIL PROTECTED], (604) 669-3286 The TimeWork Web: http://mindlink.net/knowware/worksite.htm
