ALL SCI-FI

[ralfy]

1080p version, but with black bars around screen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOGAEAJ4xJE

[Bud Brewster]

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Thinking Outside the "Plot"!
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A device which records everything going on in the user's brain — sensory input, thoughts, and emotions — would change the world.

That's obvious, of course.

If you've seen the movie, you know how amazing the device is. Never mind all the crap at the end about Christopher Walken replaying Louise Fletcher's death experience. It's fascinating to watch, and the music by James Horner is stunning.

But the whole idea just completely tosses out the hard-science premise of the story!

That said, here's something to think about for all those folks who are so inclined.

~ A Question for the Members: If the machine we see in the movie could be reduced to the size of a cell phone — with a trim wireless headset which transmits the data to a pocket-sized device that stores millions of hours digitally — what kinds of experiences would people want to record and relive?

~ My Theory: What kinds? Good God . . . ALL kinds!

If you could carry around a gizmo like that and record every sensation, every experience, and every thought you had — why would EVER turn the damn thing off?

Consider this.

How do know when you going to have a brilliant idea for a story while driving home . . . but then can't remember it when you get there?

How to you know when you're going to have a life-changing experience you'll want relive . . . .years later?

How do you know when your going to have a pleasant visit with your aging mother . . . the day before she passes away unexpectedly?

How do you know when you going to have a great evening with several close friends — which you'd love to relive ten years later?

Gentlemen, we all know that life is filled with moments we don't appreciate at the time they occur.

But I've got hundreds of hours of such moments, stored carefully on dozens of cassette tapes which I recorded on the device shown below. They include three weekends trips to Disney World with my kids in 1985, 1989, and 1996!





I've also got many hours of tapes with stereophonic recreations of evenings in local restaurants like Red Lobster, along with several very pleasant summer cookouts at a friend's house.

All these tapes put me right there in midst of the experience whenever I don my headphones and let the stereo sounds of these occasions wrap me in the memories of these Golden Moments!

I consider myself to be the World's Only Practicing Time Traveler, with tapes which start in 1982!

My unpublished novel, Time Saving Device, is set in a near-future world where most of the world's citizens own the device I described. They use them to relive pleasurable experiences — even those which are illegal, immoral, or personally regrettable.

As I said above, a device which records everything going on in the user's brain — sensory input, thoughts, and emotions — would change the world.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[ralfy]

That reminds me of cyberpunk novels like Neuromancer, if not films like Johnny Mnemonic. Throw in something like the game Circuit's Edge, and you might end up with something that combines elements from these, Blade Runner, and Minority Report: cybernetic implants plus cyborg tech plus virtual reality.

[Pow]

Douglas Trumbull largely abandoned Hollywood after his continuous battles with MGM over Brainstorm.

"The movie business is totally screwed up. I don't have the energy and patience to invest taking three-to-four years in producing a feature film."

[Bud Brewster]

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I'm just offering a "Hollywood outsider's" opinion here, but I doubt anybody on All Sci-Fi will disagree with me. So, here goes nothin'.

Hollywood — aka "show business" — is run by people whose focus, motivation, and training are devoted to maximizing prophets and minimizing costs. These people are practical, left-brained bean counters who want their studios to operate like factories which manufacture a product that can be sold to the public.

That sad fact is what caused the kind of problems people like Douglas Trumbull experienced.

Unfortunately for the studio executives, their "factory" is not composed of machines which manufacture physical objects — factories operated by workers who grease the wheels and push the buttons to keep the factory running at peak efficiency.

The difference between factory workers and movie makers is dramatically different.

Every person involved in film making relies on their right-brained artistic skills to insure that the finished motion picture is the cinematic work of art it should be.

The script writer, the director, the cinematographer, the set designer, the wardrobe person, the makeup artists, the matte painters, the special effects team, and all the others involved in making a film must judge their own work on the basis of its artistic merits — not it's "marketability" to the ticket-buying public.

Conversely, the movie moguls are only interested in the profits they see on their ledger sheets.

But all the people who labor to create the "product" created by the studio's movie factory must judge their work by the emotions it invokes when viewed through the eyes of each talented artists on the film-making crew.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Let's Create a Sequel!
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~ A Question for the Members: What would the world be like ten years after the events in Brainstorm?

~ Here's what I came up with.: The movie does a wonderful job of showing us the progression of the technology which can record the sensations, emotions, and thoughts of the people who use it.

We see the way the equipment goes from a large machine with super-cooled components and a bulky headset connected with thick cables — down to a trim headset with a thin cable, and a less bulky record/playback unit.

The logical progression of this trend would be to eventually have a very trim headset which connects wirelessly to a unit that could be worn on a person's belt — or even carried in their pocket (like an iPod).

The data from the headset would be stored digitally by the unit, and it would hold thousands of hours of "experiences" which could be replayed.

What would society to with such a device when it became easy to use, portable, and affordable?

As I mentioned in my post above, a device like this would have an unlimited number of uses. (Check the list on my earlier post.)

Naturally a world in which these TSDs (time saving devices) are in common use would be quitE different from today. Not only would people be "recording" experiences to relive later, they would even be sharing these experiences with others!

This would redefine "wife swapping" dramatically!

In fact, a person could record one sexual experience and then replay it while enjoying a second one — an orgy in which the person has two bodies engaged in sex, simultaneously!

As for a sequel to Brainstorm . . . I've already written it! It’s a novel I wrote in 1985 called Time Saving Device.

The new improved units that would be developed ten years after Brainstorm would do exactly the same thing as the device I describe my novel.

In this near-future story, a private detective named Calvin Denning has his headset circuitry glued to his skull, and he leaves the pocket-sized data storage device running during all his waking hours.

This gives him a perfect memory which comes in handy when he realizes he's seen clues to the solution of the mystery he’s been hired to solve — clues he saw several days-or-weeks after he'd witnessed key events, or conversions he’d heard that contained information he didn’t know was important at the time.

Time Saving Device is about corporate espionage within a large electronics manufacturer, such as Sony or Panasonic. The elderly president of the company is close to having a nervous breakdown because he's experiencing nightmarish hallucinations for which his doctor can’t find a cause.

This is hampering his efforts to uncover spies within his corporation who are leaking information about new technological developments to one of the corporation’s biggest competitors.

A wish I had Time Saving Device in a Word document so I could post it on All Sci-Fi, but it’s still only in typewritten form.

However, please post your own ideas for a story about a world in which TSDs are used (and misused) by the public at large!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)