Future Shock

The year is 1987. The Dow Jones has broken 2,000 for the first time in history.
The Iran-Contra scandal is rocking the nation. AIDS is still new and scary. And
a quirky little show called Max Headroom
will charm the then-burgeoning geek culture that will rise to power, slowly but
unstoppably, over the next two decades.

It is said that today’s science fiction has a habit of becoming tomorrow’s
science; flying cars notwithstanding (though you
did hear about
the
personal flying saucer, right?) that’s pretty much how it’s gone over the
past century or so. So when I recently discovered a torrent containing all known
episodes of the marvelous Mr. Headroom, it was instructive to go back and
realize just what it was this show posited as the future – and, more to the
point, how much of it had come true. From the smallest details to the largest
overarching themes, here’s a list of some of the key things that shows writers
called.

Cellphones – This one wasn’t a super-tough call, as wireless
phones were past the early adoption stage and satellite phones were considered
affordable by many small companies. Still, the flip phone Bryce uses in his
bathtub is a dead ringer for what many of us carry around in our pockets today,
and phones that small were still a major status symbol in ’87 – especially since
the 2G networks that supported the first “real” cell phones didn’t appear until
1991. Granted, the prophesied ubiquity of video phones has yet to transpire, but
with more and more computers being sold with integrated cameras and more and
more people turning to online conversation as an affordable alternative to
telephone monopolies, that may only be a matter of time.

Short Advertisements – In 1987, an ad meant 30 seconds of airtime.
Headroom’s take on this was info-dense
“blipverts,” 30 seconds worth of information crammed into a 3-second zip to
prevent you from changing the channel. We’re not there yet, but 10-15 second
spots, unheard of in 1987, are commonplace today, and some on demand video
services are experimenting with 5-10 second spots bracketing short form content
delivered to cell phones and other mobile devices. It’s also worth noting that
the mediums still clinging to the 30 second spot model are the ones inexorably
but consistently losing money and ground in the mindshare wars.

CGI – “I’ve computer-generated a parrot onto the screen. It squawks.” In
1987, the processing power necessary to make a convincing CGI model was
expensive and hard to come by (as anyone who saw
TRON can attest to). So science fiction
creators used different techniques, like traditionally animating things meant to
look like computer graphics (as seen to
spectacular
effect in the BBC’s serialized version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy) or using funky camera techniques to foreshorten props and actors
decorated to look isometric and blocky (the technique used to create the shows
titular character). The concept of a computer image that looked even vaguely
realistic was as alien then as the concept of directors using the technique for
anything other than flashy monsters and spaceships is today.

Computer Generated Composite Photos – Police sketch artists aren’t out of
a job yet, but they’re on the verge of being replaced by massive databases of
known felons, where parts of faces can be used interchangeably to create
supposedly more accurate composites. The ability to sort things as abstract as
facial parts, let alone rapidly search a massive database of same, is something
that’s only just barely started to happen in the past couple of years – but
we’re on the verge of it, and it’s largely been enabled thanks to some of the
developments below.

Integrated Corporate Information Systems – Today, if email goes down, half
the company grinds to a halt. Computers in the workplace in ’87 were glorified
typewriters and accountancy systems, rarely networked in any meaningful way;
“information technologists” meant the guys with the key to the file rooms or, at
best, access to the one or two databases that stored archival records. But one
of the recurring themes in Max Headroom is the difficulty in controlling
an AI that knows you can’t just pull the plug – to do so would destroy the
entire organization, a pyrrhic victory at best. While this level of computer
dependency isn’t yet known at the level of a mom and pop restaurant, any company
that deals primarily with information is already well beyond this tipping point.

Every Information Device Connected - For that matter, Max’s great power
is centered in the fact that he can show up on virtually any screen in the world
at any time, because all the world’s data systems are wired together. It wasn’t
just the official stuff, either – one way the shows “controllers” would help
keep their field people safe was by tapping into local security systems, remote
viewing devices, and other proprietary networks using a central location and
1337 hax0r skillz. While the Internet was certainly well established by the time
this show came along, the concept that it would connect up everything
everywhere, including things like laptops and Sidekicks that weren’t necessarily
wired to it, was revolutionary at the time to anyone who wasn’t conducting
military research, and even among that set it was edgy and far-off. In fact the
necessity of this premise to many episodes’ plot-lines – incomprehensible as it
was to a public who at best was dimly aware of BBSs and AOL – may have a lot to
do with why the show failed to achieve the requisite toehold necessary to please
its network masters.

Cash Free Society – One of the various advantages of having everything in
the world networked is that you no longer need to carry a physical
representation of value – you can simply stick a card/tube/identifying trinket
into a socket, and all your relevant bits appear wherever you are, with the
resulting transaction reporting back to the mother hive brain in real time. The
only time cash was even necessary was when conducting illegal transactions or
dealing with people who had made the conscious decision to live off the grid.
This meme has been slow to catch on, but it’s been the central premise of most
Visa and Debit Mastercard commercials for the past half decade or more – and
should be familiar to anyone who’s already gotten used to being able to pay for
fast food via debit card.

One (Token) Ring To Rule Them All – How, then, to ensure the information
travels that globe spanning network from A to B in an orderly and predictable
manner? Obviously the solution is to have one company or central authority
running everything behind the scenes. In Max Headroom this was a
data-mining wunderkind called Security Systems. Think we haven’t reached that
point yet? Microsoft already tried it with their Passport service, an Orwellian
“enhancement” to Windows that would allow you to enter one set of indent data
into a secure account stored on Microsoft’s servers, and Windows would integrate
it in real time into any application or website that requested the info. Passport
may have failed, but we’re a lot closer to the Security Systems concept than is
comfortable for many lovers of civil liberties. Don’t believe me? Ask your bank
what OS runs their ATMs. (Hint: it ain’t Apple. Or Linux.)

Reality Television -
The
Real World, nearly universally considered to be the first reality TV show,
wouldn’t debut until 1991. Meanwhile, for all the 10,000 channels in the world
of Max Headroom, reality television is the order of the day. The #1
ratings grabber in the multichannel multi-verse is an investigative reporter, and
one of the most popular shows on his network is called You the Jury, in
which a court case is presented in real time and audience phone-votes determine
whether the accused is found guilty or innocent. (Incidentally, this is a theme
that would also be touched on in the great future-shock film of the 80s,
RoboCop – the
only programs shown on the various televisions that litter the film’s world are
news and talk shows, as anything that isn’t live simply can’t compete for the
attention of the ADD-addled audience.)

Extreme Sports – What better way to make reality-based programming more
interesting than to ratchet up the level of violence? All the sports mentioned
in Max Headroom are extreme ones, from football players carting weapons
to teens riding motorized skateboards as they attempt to impale each other with
forearm-mounted spikes, Wolverine style. The X-Games, meanwhile, would not
premiere until 1995.

Terrorism As Media Trope – With real time violence being the order of the
day, is it really surprising that terrorism wasn’t far behind? The phrase “wag
the dog” to describe politicians using fabricated news stories to distract
attention from actual issues wouldn’t enter the common lexicon until 1997. Fully
a decade earlier, Max Headroom depicts a world in which politicians
aren’t the only ones engaging in the practice – aggressive program packagers
would offer for-hire terrorists with on-demand, causality-free explosions to the
highest bidder. If this seems far-fetched even in today’s “increase the security
alert color every time there’s a Republican scandal” universe, consider that the
Nazis used
this
very tactic to garner sympathy and support in the late 1930s.

Everyone An Auteur – With TV the only medium worth experiencing and
cameras everywhere, it should come as no small surprise that just about everyone
in Max Headroom was familiar with cameras, how to operate them, and what
techniques were necessary to get just the right shot. Cameras come in many
flavors – large and small, live and taped, with or without point-blank self
defensive armaments attached – but basically everyone in the show is fairly
intimately familiar with how camera angles work, how to compose a good shot, how
to most compellingly tell the story; there was even a self-selected outsider
group known as the Blanks who would broadcast their original content on whatever
frequency was convenient. This phenom should be familiar, today, to frankly just
about anyone who’s been paying attention. Camera phones have redefined what it
means to be the paparazzi as surely as they are causing us to reexamine the
boundaries between public and private. Camcorders have gone from major
investments to hundred dollar impulse purchases at Target. Apple, Microsoft, and
DVD drive software bundles include free tools for editing movies more powerful
than what dedicated editing decks could achieve when Max Headroom was on
the air. YouTube may be crawling with copyright violations, but it’s every bit
as full of things like
Ask a
Ninja or
Goodnight
Burbank – original content that comes from the bottom up. This one is, hands
down, the single most central concept underpinning the structure of the world in
Max Headroom, and minus the feathered hair and outrageous neon colors, it
is very much the world we find ourselves in today.