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Max Headroom
1987 · TV series · 60 min episodes · 2 seasons
Created by Annabel Jankel, Rocky Morton
Television networks battle one another in an unrelenting ratings war. Whoever controls the airwaves controls the dystopic world in which they broadcast. So when Network 23's star reporter, Edison Carter, uncovers a deadly secret that could shake up the station's dominion over its viewers, the only option is to eliminate Carter before he can make his story public. After Carter's "accident," his mind is uploaded to create the world's first self-aware, computer-generated TV host — Max Headroom! But will Max bow to his creators? Or will he be the key to his human alter ago bringing down a network superpower?
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72 comments on Hacker News
Going back I dumped all the streaming platforms as most of their new programming was not at all interesting. Turns out I was watching reruns of shows I downloaded years ago that were still sitting on my server. So I made my own cable channel by dumping every downloaded TV show into a single playlist then turn shuffle on. I have a low power PC hooked to my TV running Debian. The power is low enough that I just turn the TV off and leave the PC running.
Since I mostly put the TV on to have background noise this solution works perfectly. It's really nice to turn the TV on and see random x-files, mst3k, max headroom, cowboy bebop, futurama, and so on 24/7. And most of it is in SD or ripped from TV/VHS which doesn't bother me at all, in fact, it adds charm and character via those artifacts of the past.
It seems we're living a Max Headroom episode.
Television today consists of a few bangers like Severance mixed with an awful lot of slop. Serialized or not, it's telling that the term Netflix coined for most of its output is "second-screen content", meaning stuff you have on in the background while you scroll your phone. I had been rewatching Max Headroom recently, and the difference it makes when you make a television show to be watched -- as most television was in the 80s and 90s -- vs. simply filling time, really struck me.
I was rewatching Max Headroom recently and my favorite episode stood out to me. It's about an addictive game show called "Whacketts" which is so mind-numbingly insipid that even the punk operator of the pirate TV station that runs the show wonders why it's so popular. Turns out that the Whacketts broadcast is interlaced with a signal that looks like rapidly changing hexadecimal numbers and functions as a "drug" that induces euphoria in anyone who is visually exposed to it.
When I was a kid I thought this was somewhat dodgy science fiction. As an adult in the age of Cocomelon and Skibidi Toilet, I'm not so sure.
I am a sci-fi nerd and I also found Neuromancer incredibly boring,
I'm curious... if you're willing to say, when did you first read Neuromancer? And had you read a lot of other cyberpunk themed media beforehand?
but that's probably because it introduced so many concepts that others went on to refine.
Yeah, if you'd already been exposed to a lot of the core ideas / themes from other more contemporary works, I can see how that might take away a bit from the Neuromancer experience.
To give a counterpoint... I first read Neuromancer about 1993 / 1994 or somewhere in that range. And I believe it was the first cyberpunk novel I'd read. I think maybe the only other media from the cyberpunk genre that I'd been exposed to then was the "Max Headroom" tv show. Anyway... Neuromancer absolutely blew my mind and I was instantly hooked. To this day it's one of my favorite novels, and I've re-read it several subsequent times. And will almost certainly read it again (and again...) I can't get enough of it.
Of course it's hard to say exactly why our respective reactions to it are so different. There are a lot of variables. But I think your notion from above has a lot of merit to it. If one experiences a derivative (or many derivatives) of something before the original, does the original them come to feel like a cheap copy?
I've had that experience with cover versions of songs before. That is, times when I heard and loved a cover, and then only later heard the original. And in many (maybe all) of those cases, I still preferred the cover over the original.
Recently I began rewatching episodes of Max Headroom. That shit was like Black Mirror for an 80s audience. My favorite episode concerns a mindlessly insipid gameshow, "Whacketts", that has interlaced with it a hidden signal that looks like rapidly changing hexadecimal numbers, and gets people addicted to the show like a drug. Sounds far-fetched, right? Except we live in the era of Cocomelon and Skibidi Toilet.
TV series:
- Dark Angel. I somehow missed this during it's original broadcast run, and only just now went back and watched it. I don't think it's streaming anywhere legit, so I went the bittorrent route. I really enjoyed it. Season One is definitely stronger than Season Two, but it kept me pretty engaged for the entire series.
- Max Headroom. I'd seen the entire series before, but I went back for a re-watch. I love this show.
- Person of Interest. Same deal, I'd seen the entire run previously, but did a complete re-watch.
Movies:
I don't think I watched any contemporary movies this year. I mostly watched old cyberpunk movies and "cyberpunk adjacent" sci-fi. Not sure anything I watched was exactly great but a couple stood out as interesting at least (in various ways)
- 964 Pinocchio
- Tetsuo: The Iron Man
- New Rose Hotel
Also saw an interesting psychological horror / thriller titled "Open 24 Hours" that wasn't bad. And a movie titled "Synchronic" that was pretty good.
Informative / educational videos:
- N.J. Wildberger's "History of Mathematics" series
This concept was the subject of the last episode of the 1988 TV show Max Headroom, “Baby Grobags”.
I really enjoyed the show, but I’d suggest checking out the original TV movie Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future first. It provides great context for the series and stands on its own as a unique piece of cyberpunk history. Last time I checked, it was available on YouTube
Max Headroom TV series, 2 seasons 14 episodes total is a really great cypherpunk series. If you watch it today, its cypherpunk and 80's nostalgic retro scifi.
Great! It was inventive and dystopian. Many of the stories were lifted from classic sci-fi concepts.
Of course, it hasn't held up. The subtitle was "20 minutes into the future" so it wasn't designed to be timeless a la Star Trek or Star Wars.
Also, the trajectory of Max Headroom was great: started off as "the first digital talking head for commercials, i.e. not human _at all_, did commercials for Coke IIRC, music videos (Art of Noise), had a late night talk show, a TV series.
I still have a Max Headroom poster hanging in my fl-fl-flat.
Fun fact: the creators of Max Headroom were the creators behind the original 1993 Super Mario Bros movie with Dennis Hopper, Bob Hoskins, and John Leguizamo.
The making of that film is a bit crazy. Part of the issue was, Disney bought the distribution rights shortly before filming was supposed to start, and demanded all these rewrites. Probably also demanded that the stripper scenes be cut. :P
Hoskins claimed that he and Leguizamo started drinking every day before, and between, takes.
Far longer than a decade. We've known that this has been coming since the days of Max Headroom.
The interesting thing is that in the Max Headroom days we thought that it would come about because of scheming corporate interests, not because of movie audiences that had pressed for ever better special effects, and fake Tom Cruises, all of these years.
It's literally an episode of Max Headroom. https://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.2.2:_%22Deities%22
Thematically it's right in line with the Max Headroom TV series, and yet it happened in real life. Utterly amazing.
Yeah, it took a few months of the 1 day sabbaths to really impact things. The first month I was back on twitter/x as soon as the sun went down, etc.
Nowadays, I'm a lot more intentional about when I use social media in particular. It may not be causation, the whole thing could just be correlations. But it feels almost rebellious to unplug like that for a day.
There was a Max Headroom episode (dating myself here) where someone got in trouble for having the ability to turn off their TV. Like all of society was structured around being in front of the TV at all times.
I'm surprised at how often I see adults rewatching Flight of the Navigator, even though it's very much a kid's movie. Harry and the Hendersons is particularly fun to watch now if you are a Poirot fan.
Nostalgia tripping on the 1980s seems to rarely if ever include Max Headroom. To me, he was the essence of my high school zeitgeist. Maybe younger people today think he was too weird to have actually been a big deal. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU)
This was also part of the original Max Headroom TV series, except in this was it was a television you couldn't turn off.
This reminds me of "Blipverts" on the 80s TV show "Max Headroom". TV commercials that were so stimulating they would cause some viewers to explode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekg45ub8bsk
Blipverts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blipvert
From the Max Headroom episode 1 synopsis: Investigative TV news reporter Edison Carter uncovers the disturbing secret of a new TV advert technology in use by his own employers, Network 23, called "Blipverts", high-intensity high-speed commercials with the ability to overload people's nervous systems, causing them to short circuit or explode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)#Season_1_(1987)
I'm sorry, I'm pretty sure you're talking about a max headroom episode...
Or watched the first episode of Max Headroom (from 1987).
Sci-fi is often a metaphorical representation of society. However, it's shocking how many episodes of Max Headroom have become literally true.
Max Headroom, Episode ABC.1.3: "Body Banks":
Paula: "...what's that?" Blank Reg: "It's a book!" Paula: "Well, what's that?" Blank Reg: "It's a non-volatile storage medium. It's very rare. You should have one."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIWR-b42lU0
Reminds me of one of the more memorable Max Headroom episodes.
We're living its least believable preductions today, and it aired before the Internet caught on.
That show is hugely underrated.
Since we are bringing up Max Headroom, I would like to put a word in for Blipverts. These were part of the fictional subject matter of the first Max Headroom TV Show. They were advertisements that make old people watching them explode. Bryce, the engineer behind these adverts, uses the wonderful line, "I only invent the bomb, I don't drop it." This was amazingly prescient back in the 80s given where we are now in adtech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekg45ub8bsk
I'm glad to hear it, actually. I do have a great fondness for Max Headroom, probably because I was so young when he first showed up and he hit all my "nerd" buttons. I was sad to see I couldn't even finish all the episodes of the show when I tried.
For anyone wondering, I recently re-watched the Max Headroom series & movie, and it still holds. I recommend you check it out, even if you hadn't seen it before.
"They Live, meanwhile, sort of became reality... Drones in the sky, conspiracies in our heads, militarized police in the streets, economic inequality in every corner of society, media that seeks to control our minds"
Max Headroom and Brazil were a couple of other 80's scifi films which were uncannily prescient.
This is deep in uncanny valley. Can it reconstruct images from our imagination as well? What about images from dreams? How far are we away from video?
If you know the series Max Headroom you probably know what I'm getting at. There is an episode about dream-harvesting which Wikipedia summarizes like this[1]:
"In an attempt to get an edge over the major networks, a subscription cable channel turns to airing recorded dream sequences. When Carter begins researching a story on dream recording, he learns that the process can have fatal side effects for the donors."
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)
This is not unilateral, and not the terminal answer. Due to the bundling going on right now, many shows are getting pushed behind absurd paywalls. For example, if I would like to watch Season 11 of RuPaul Drag Race, I would need to get a subscription to FuboTV, a "live sports and TV" service with 100+ standard cable channels. The best price they can do to include this content is $65 / mo. For a single show I care about!
After some checking around, I did find it for $20 / season on Amazon, which comes with the following license agreement:
> Offers and pricing for subscriptions (also referred to at times as memberships), the subscription services, the extent of available Subscription Digital Content, and the specific titles available through subscription services, may change over time and by location without notice (except as may be required by applicable law).
So... I can give them $20 for them to stream it to me for however long they'd like.
It is impossible to buy the series on DVD.
This is not an isolated incident. As with the late what.cd, at some point these torrent services also serve as an archive of secondary and rare work. This particular example does not fall into that category, but it is not hard to find others, such as the classic Max Headroom, that do (https://reelgood.com/show/max-headroom-1987).
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend Max Headroom, especially Season 2. Episode 13: “Lessons”
The series is about a sci-fi dystopia. Unfortunately, most of their predictions have come to pass. That episode is particularly relevant.
When it aired, it seemed absurd that we would cripple our future by punishing people that freely disseminated educational materials.
I guess I’m old enough to play the part of the “advanced” alien species in your hypothetical.
The movie (not the followup Cinemax TV music/interview show) was a pioneering work of cyberpunk.
Gibson's Neuromancer had only been published a year earlier, and some of the tropes in this movie ("I need an operator!") would show up later in The Matrix and other works.
The Verge did an interview with the creators:
https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/2/8285139/max-headroom-oral-history-80s-cyberpunk-interview
Max Headroom is now more relevant than ever. If you haven't watched the TV series, stop what you're doing and get the binge over with.
The dystopian future predicted in this series is well and truly upon us - a case of fiction predicting future truths.
We need Max Headroom to guide us out of the disaster of the modern Internet. Alas, we have Zuckerberg instead ..
Max Headroom TV-movie and the series, not the show is surprisingly good.
It has some very good episodes and works today as retro-future. The aesthetics and the mood are nice.
I'm reminded of the episode of Max Headroom, where the boss was poking around in someone's apartment and noticed something on the TV: "An off switch? She could get 20 years for that!"
FTA:
> Janie Crane: “An off switch?”
> Metrocop: “She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!”
> -Max Headroom, season 1, episode 6, “The Blanks”
As a callow 18 year old in 1980, I suggested to one of my parent's friends that the computer would be as important an invention as fire. He'd been a hippie 10 years earlier, and thought I was being childish, possibly because fire is so vital, more likely because he had a hippie's distrust of the computer's relationship to authority. In retrospect, he was probably right for either reason, though it took me multiple decades to catch on. This article does a nice job of laying out the case for being cautious.
The view is being overhauled, slowly. I scantly believed myself the school presentation I did on Menwith Hill in 1999. My classmates' blank stares were removed by degrees from any understanding of the subject. Today children in school here are being taught to be suspicious of what they read on the internet, and not bully each other through the medium, yet said institution is not willing to relinquish their illusion of authority and demand that the kids think for themselves even though what remains is such a small step.
The TV series Max Headroom explored the subject over 30 years ago in quite some detail. It too was way ahead of its time. It's idea of TV viewership democracy is almost benign, compared to the reality of manufactured public opinion that we are waking up to.
Another easily accessible but rage-teasing production is a three-part documentary called The Century of The Self. I recommend it warmly.
On the Max Headroom TV show, it became illegal for people to turn off their TVs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)#Plot
Would it be outlandish for the tech industry to lobby that Smart TVs and computers be given a 911 style emergency calling system, then for emergency dispatchers to have access to surveillance information, then for such devices to be required to be turned on all the time?
AM and FM radio.
Also, leaflets and posters if it is a prolonged thing.
I’ve heard the kids these days use p2p messaging on their phones (via bluetooth/wifi).
That could work as a way to move large files with plausible deniability.
(Edit: also, you should watch Max Headroom. They have a few prescient episodes on exactly this topic. The couple living out of a trailer, and the copyright crackdown episode come to mind.)
There was a great article some time back about the hisstory behind it. A lot of the episodes satirized the show's own network and specific network executives - some of which flew under the radar and some of which probably hastened the show's demise, etc.
Fake edit: I think this is it:
https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/2/8285139/max-headroom-oral-history-80s-cyberpunk-interview
I will provide some speculation, but first some back story, as I recall it: Max Headroom was, to start with, a collection of special effects to make a British talk-show host seemingly generated by computer, but still able to interact live with guests, etc. (A little bit of the same niche which the early muppets occupied, actually. See the early appearances of Rowlf the Dog on American talk show TV, for instance.) Anyway, the effect proved so captivating and convincing that the show became hugely popular, and a TV Movie was made (still in England) which provided a sci-fi style origin story for the (ostensibly computer generated) Max Headroom character. The character’s popularity was still rising, also in the USA (Coca-Cola famously used Max Headroom for their campaign for the now infamous New Coke), so an American TV series was proposed and made, with most of the same cast reused in the same roles, and the story of the TV movie was used (IIRC) as the two first episodes, except for a slightly happier ending to set it up as an ongoing TV series.
The problem, I guess, was that probably none of the U.S. people greenlighting the TV series had actually watched the original British TV movie; they probably only thought about getting such a popular character. They probably did not know that things like 1984, Judge Dredd and V for Vendetta are all very distinctly British things. The Max Headroom TV movie, as well as the TV series, are both essentially very dark cyberpunk; acerbically critical of prevailing trends in technology and also scarily prescient for 1987. It was also very critical of television itself as a phenomenon, which was probably what ultimately killed it, and by that time the huge fad for the character had passed.
Janie Crane: “An off switch?”
Metrocop: “She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!”
—Max Headroom, season 1, episode 6, “The Blanks” https://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.1.6:_%22Blanks%22
“Edison, an off switch!”
“She’ll get years for that. Off switches are illegal.”
— Max Headroom, season 1, episode 6: “The Blanks”, 1987
Max Headroom, Episode ABC.1.6, "Blanks":
[TV shuts off, surprising everyone] Janie Crane: "An off switch!" Metrocop: "She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!"
edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9AZZVnNw60
It's disturbing how many Max Headroom episodes are now literally true.
"Blank is beautiful!"
> It certainly has real value. Do we need to keep ... books as the real purpose ...
Max Headroom, episode ABC.1.3 "Body Bags":
Paula: "...what's that?" Blank Reg: "It's a book!" Paula: "Well, what's that?" Blank Reg: "It's a non-volatile storage medium. It's very rare. You should have one."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me6oNB4M7N0
Books still work when the power goes out or the copyright cartels revoke - intentionally or not - your ereader's license. Widespread preservation of knowledge on non-volatile media is protection against future problems.
This is exactly how Theora Jones defeats Bryce Lynch's keypad in Max Headroom (Blipverts episode)...in 1987. :)
Two things comes to mind:
First of all, Max Headroom. I think there it was a felony to turn your TV off or some such.
Second, Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It is a anime tv series that involves an undercover security force in future Japan.
I find his discourse on fax machines interesting. I just rewatched Johnny Mnemonic, and a fax machine plays a significant plot role in that film. At the end, J-Bone says "Get your VCRs ready". This despite the writing being quite on the wall for both fax machines and VCRs even in 1995.
Cyberpunk is a bit misnamed, I think, because as expressed by Gibson and his copycats, it's distinctly hipsterish. There's a fondness for the old, a desire to flash-freeze the zeitgeist (usually of the Beat era) so that it could live, in some sense, forever. In Max Headroom, every time we see a computer it has an old manual typewriter (much like the one Gibson used to write Neuromancer on, because to him computers were and still somewhat are alien invaders) for a keyboard.
Strangely, Johnny Mnemonic goes overboard with the technology in other ways: in 2015, let alone 2025, Johnny could have fenced 320 GiB of data at considerably less personal risk by swallowing a toy balloon with Micro SD cards in it.
In the movie "Ready Player One" I had a pleasant memory triggered by the appearance of Matt Frewer, who played Max Headroom in the TV series later.
He's one of many tech / 80s cameos in the movie. I wonder if someone has counted them all.
If nothing else, this may bring a new legion of younger fans to the old "Max Headroom" British TV show. I enjoyed the show in my younger days.
Over the last ~decade, far too many episodes of Max Headroom have changed from "metaphorical warning about growing social issues" to "literally happening today".
However, for what I believe will be the most prescient fictional warning about where society is currently headed, see Sleep Dealer[1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZw2Hxdq1QE
Not a movie. Not 'about' hacking, but there are some cool hackers-- Max Headroom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom
We haven't made sufficient "progress" until we have Blipverts. As "Bryce Lynch" said in that Max Headroom episode: "It's not my problem. My brief was to find a way to stop channel switching. I mean, you know, I only invent the bomb, I don't drop it. Ha ha." [he gives that quick shrugging grin of an uncertain adolescent]
The thing about going out with a bang vs. a whimper.. come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it will be a shrug.
> > there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
Max Headroom, episode ABC.1.3 "Body Bank"
Paula: " ...what's that?" Blank Reg: "It's a book!" Paula: "Well, what's that?" Blank Reg: "It's a non-volatile storage medium. It's very rare. You should have one." Paula: "Stuff it!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-a8TG-1gWY
That show was way ahead of its time.
// Blank is beautiful!
Much like the last episode of the 1988 TV show Max Headroom, “Baby Grobags”.
The Max Headroom series 2 episode "Deities" was about a Vu Age church that sold A.I. recreations of loved ones as salvation.
> your score is 0
Computer Court 9: "Guilty. Take her down." Convicted Blank: "I know my rights. I won't be judged by a machine!" Dragul: "You don't have any rights. You're a Blank." Convicted Blank: "Blank is beautiful! Blank is beautiful! Blank is beautiful!"
Max Headroom, Episode ABC.1.6 "Blanks"
> I mean, who's going to even want to sign up to the machine dispute resolution? Not me, no way, that's the freaky dystopian future we're supposed to be trying to avoid.
Hell, that was a plot point in a 1987 episode of Max Headroom, "The Blanks", where a "blank" (someone who has erased themselves from all government databases, which is a crime in the world of Max Headroom) protests after she is tried by a computer that she has a right to be judged by a human but the prosecutor points out that as a "blank" she "has no rights" (implying that if she was not a "blank" she would have such a right).
A better term already exists: "blank"
Computer Court 9: "Guilty. Take her down." Convicted Blank: "I know my rights. I won't be judged by a machine!" Dragul: "You don't have any rights. You're a Blank." Convicted Blank: "Blank is beautiful! Blank is beautiful! Blank is beautiful!"
Max Headroom, Episode ABC.1.6 "Blanks"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRzYJullFOs
Max Headroom, Season 2, Episode 13 "Lessons"
Have you any idea how suc-suc-suc-cessful censorship is on TV? Don't know the answer? Hmm... Successful, isn't it!
Before something can be considered a threat (or even worthy of strong opinions), they must first realize it exists. Systems that depend on people forming such opinions - such as democracy and capitalism - should really consider anything that blocks or corrupts the dissemination of knowledge as an existential threat.
> requesting the broadcast from your provider
This is identical with HTML. I request a page via HTTP, and they send it to me. What I do with that page is up to me. Just like I can mute a commercial on TV, change the channel, or shut the TV off[1].
> they have some say as to how they package up the data you ask for.
Correct. The problem comes when this is extended to include what someone does with that data after it changes hands. We have historically described this situation as the publisher's rights ending at the "1st sale"[2].
Anybody that wants rights to restrict what someone does with the data they are sent should get a contract that describes these requirements. (an EULA, writing at the bottom of a previously-requested page, and the HTTP headers are not contracts)
As for paying by CPU usage: I'll run the javascript and load the image or video files only after I receive a payment for electricity usage (CPU time) and compensation for my lost personal time. Hourly rates are available upon request.
> The right solution is somewhere in the middle.
The right solution respects users instead of trying to move the Overton Window[3].
[1] Max Headroom, Episode 1.6 "The Blanks"
Janie Crane: "An off switch?" Metrocop: "She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!"
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
You've got it backwards. This hack was referencing the previously-existing Max Headroom TV show, commercial, etc.
We are creating a "demon" with artificial intelligence, but it the origin isn't machine learning or Kurzweil-style AIs. In fact, the demon already exist, and is known by many names: "bureaucracy", "corporate policy", "work-to-rule", etc.
We already have many situations where important decisions are made by algorithm and heuristic. The "demon" is seen when the computer is followed blindly, even in the instances where it doesn't make sense. We have all seen times where the heuristic failed; sometimes this lead to stupid outcomes that "must" be followed where a human with decision-making power would make the obvious override.
To continue the metaphor, you can summon a demon if you know it's true name. Bureaucracy and "official policies" are hard to change once they are created, so this gives the people that control who can write the heuristics can control the demon, allowing attacks to be hidden behind policy.
As an example, consider youtube's "Content ID" system. The failure of the matching algorithm have been a problem for some time now, with user left with ultimatums and the brick wall of google's "support". Even more problematic are the cases where the Content ID system did match correctly, but the situation was covered by something outside of youtube.
I'm not saying automation is bad or that tools like Content ID shouldn't exist. They are merely tools. The problem comes when we try and substitute a tool for critical thinking and judgement. Those problems become a powerful demon when you are forced to deal with only that tool, no questions, no variances, and no appeals.
/* Incidentally, this is yet another situation where an episode of Max Headroom has become literal truth. ( http://www.maxheadroom.com/mh_episode_14.html ) */
“Edison, an off switch!”
“She’ll get years for that. Off switches are illegal.”
— Max Headroom, season 1, episode 6: “The Blanks”, 1987
One day, I tacked up a quote from the "Max Headroom" TV show. The dialogue it was from went like this:
Blank Reg: "Here, take this." Kid: "What is it?" Blank Reg: "It's a book." Kid: "What is it?" Blank Reg: "It's a non-volatile storage medium. You should have one." Kid: "Shove off!"
I explained this to a coworker, and after laughing he told a story about how, decades ago, a few folks had made a computerized "repository of all human knowledge". Semi-recently, some folks tried to read the data on this massive storage device; technology had advanced and changed so much... they couldn't. However, we can still read "ancient books" like the Gutenberg bible.
Note: The Gutenberg bible was just an example of a really old book; religion was incidental at best.
More like the last episode of the 1988 TV show Max Headroom, “Baby Grobags”.
For example: Max Headroom[1] portrayed by Matt Frewer[2] doing vocals in the video[3] for "Paranoimia"[4] by Art of Noise[5] (1986)
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(character)
2. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001242/
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YubzvkNh77w
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoimia
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Noise
Just to throw this in, but the original Max Headroom movie "20 Minutes into the Future" is not as bad as the Channel 4 / Cinemax music video show or (oh god) the American ABC series.
It's an interesting bit of proto-cyberpunk that even addressed things like digital avatars and real-time viewer feedback nearly 30 years ago.
Am I the only one to feel like an idiot for not knowing Max Headroom was not an animation. I haven't seen the show since I was young, but now I just want to go find an episode to watch and look at the animation to see how they fooled my younger me.
I remember thinking I wasn't sue but how else. That's also why tv shows you watched when young where better than you remember, you could be fooled more easily and use your imagination whereas today were so use to the special effects that we almost need them, we can't easily imagine it unless its there and looking real'ish.
I am reminded of a Max Headroom episode that covered the character Edison Carter's loss of one of those devices. It was also his key to personal property (house, car).
You're only saying this because it was a Max Headroom episode.