Monday, February 1, 2010

Networking

This is a great scene, and speaks to our future from the past...



Chayefsky's sermonizing in "Network" may be dated in some ways, but when you think about cybernetics marching onward, the concept of "dehumanization" takes on an entirely different context. Depending on where we end up in this century, it could be an upward and evolutionary process, or a downward spiral into final oblivion.

The Mummy

Saw a mummified squirrel on the way to the bus stop this morning. Must've died in a snowbank or something, and when the snow went away, there was the squirrel mummy -- I thought it was a rat at first, because it was black, but then realized it was a squirrel. A ghoulish memento of the winter.

Sort of weird running across that, after watching "Zodiac" on DVD last night. I think it's a good David Fincher movie -- his excesses are reined in by the demands of being rooted in time and place. Anyway, since there is a scene with squirrels in it, seeing that this morning made me shudder anew.

It's weird to think about the Zodiac killings, because so much of it depended on police departments not communicating with each other, over-reliance on particular experts, and other assorted missteps that perhaps might not have been so much of a factor these days. I'm sure investigative botches occur all the time, but theories around serial killing weren't as well-developed in the early 70s as they are now, and plenty of the warning signs of a suspect or two were likely glossed over, whereas today, they would point to particular suspects straightaway.

I'm sleepy today. A bit sleep-indebted from the weekend.