WEBVTT - Tomorrowland 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:21.756 Pushkin. Imagine there's a place in our world where the 0:00:21.836 --> 0:00:26.356 known things go, shelves stocked with proof, and all around 0:00:26.716 --> 0:00:30.116 a clutter of clues. At this point, it's worse than 0:00:30.156 --> 0:00:34.396 a clutter. It's closer to chaos. On the mantel, there's 0:00:34.396 --> 0:00:37.916 a clock. Its hands are racing, its works, ticking too fast. 0:00:38.196 --> 0:00:42.676 It's like a heart about to burst. A phonograph won't stop. 0:00:43.836 --> 0:00:48.316 And who let all these birds in? It's time to 0:00:48.356 --> 0:00:52.596 get out of here. Rush through the door and out 0:00:52.676 --> 0:00:55.476 into a cornfield in the middle of Illinois in the 0:00:55.556 --> 0:01:04.836 year nineteen thirty nine, the American heartland. Holy wow, they've 0:01:04.876 --> 0:01:15.076 got an explosion in the cornfield. Who the devil himself 0:01:15.156 --> 0:01:17.956 broke a loose down in our cornfield? He came a 0:01:18.076 --> 0:01:20.756 roar and a rampagron right up from the fiery pit, 0:01:20.836 --> 0:01:23.276 blowing smoke out of his mouth and fire out of 0:01:23.316 --> 0:01:28.116 his eyes. What is going on? Pulpe science fiction? Is what? 0:01:28.636 --> 0:01:31.876 This is? A bananas story called The Warning from the Past. 0:01:32.356 --> 0:01:35.236 Not enough trouble to have the radio st client his 0:01:35.396 --> 0:01:39.356 full head off right in the middle of my favorite program. 0:01:39.436 --> 0:01:41.876 The Warning from the Past was published in the magazine 0:01:41.996 --> 0:01:46.076 Thrilling Wonder Stories in nineteen thirty nine. Here's what happens. 0:01:46.556 --> 0:01:49.796 After the explosion in the cornfield. The farmer's wife calls 0:01:49.876 --> 0:01:53.956 the police. The reporters call scientists. The scientists discovered that 0:01:53.996 --> 0:02:03.196 the explosion had come from a gigantic time capsule. It 0:02:03.356 --> 0:02:07.676 is buried twenty feet under the ground, constructed of rust 0:02:07.836 --> 0:02:12.116 resistant metal. The size cannot be determined as yet, but 0:02:12.316 --> 0:02:16.196 it is at least thirty feet in diameter. The top 0:02:16.236 --> 0:02:20.356 of the capsule was blown off by an explosion. Apparently 0:02:20.596 --> 0:02:24.436 the light, the smoke, and the radio signals were designed 0:02:24.436 --> 0:02:29.076 to call attention to the time capsule. I guess the 0:02:29.076 --> 0:02:31.436 people who built the time capsule were worried that unless 0:02:31.436 --> 0:02:34.396 the thing literally blew its top off, known would ever 0:02:34.436 --> 0:02:37.516 notice it was there? Who will be left unopened its 0:02:37.556 --> 0:02:43.756 mysteries Unknown myths and legends surviving from pre primitive times 0:02:44.036 --> 0:02:48.956 indicate that a civilization may have existed on Earth prior 0:02:49.036 --> 0:02:53.236 to the present, but this is the first definite proof 0:02:53.316 --> 0:02:58.116 of their existence ever found. In the story, a group 0:02:58.116 --> 0:03:01.036 of brave men prior open the time capsule's giant door 0:03:01.596 --> 0:03:07.956 and make their way inside. Their entrance triggers a projector 0:03:08.156 --> 0:03:11.316 and a film starts playing it turns out that the 0:03:11.356 --> 0:03:14.516 time capsule was built by ancient Earthlings after their planet 0:03:14.556 --> 0:03:17.636 was invaded by aliens. They made this little film about 0:03:17.676 --> 0:03:19.516 what happened to them, and then they buried it in 0:03:19.556 --> 0:03:22.876 a time capsule. I first ran across this story Warning 0:03:22.916 --> 0:03:26.036 from the Past in January twenty twenty. I was really 0:03:26.156 --> 0:03:29.436 into the time Capsule, so goofy. But there was another 0:03:29.476 --> 0:03:31.396 part of the plot that didn't seem as important to 0:03:31.396 --> 0:03:34.796 me at the time. It's this The aliens didn't destroy 0:03:34.836 --> 0:03:37.916 the Earthlings with lasers or ray guns. Now they let 0:03:37.956 --> 0:03:42.396 loose a virus, the common cold, a coronavirus, and everyone died. 0:03:43.476 --> 0:03:49.836 Time Capsule indeed, welcome to the Last Archive. They show 0:03:49.876 --> 0:03:51.476 about how we know what we know and why it 0:03:51.476 --> 0:03:53.636 seems lately as if we don't know anything at all. 0:03:54.516 --> 0:03:57.276 This is the last episode of the season. All along, 0:03:57.276 --> 0:03:59.596 I've been making an argument about the history of evidence, 0:04:00.036 --> 0:04:03.316 arguing that our elemental unit of knowledge has changed from 0:04:03.356 --> 0:04:06.836 mysteries to facts, to numbers to data. But the age 0:04:06.836 --> 0:04:08.956 of data is also a return to the age of miss, 0:04:09.716 --> 0:04:12.876 a world in which we can't know anything. Only machines 0:04:12.956 --> 0:04:18.436 can know things, mysterious godlike machines. All season long I've 0:04:18.436 --> 0:04:21.476 been trying to figure out who killed truth, what a 0:04:21.636 --> 0:04:25.036 time capsules have to do with it. Weirdly, they're a 0:04:25.076 --> 0:04:28.956 clue to me as a historian. Chronology is like gravity 0:04:29.076 --> 0:04:32.076 a law. A time capsule tries to break that law. 0:04:32.356 --> 0:04:34.836 That's like a rocket from the past blasted into the 0:04:34.876 --> 0:04:38.236 future by being buried in the ground. Sometimes I get 0:04:38.236 --> 0:04:41.476 the feeling we're all trapped in someone else's time capsule. 0:04:51.676 --> 0:04:54.276 In nineteen thirty nine, the world seemed to be coming apart. 0:04:54.836 --> 0:04:58.756 The world was coming apart. Pulp science fiction aliens from 0:04:58.796 --> 0:05:00.996 outer space would have been a relief compared to what 0:05:01.076 --> 0:05:06.036 was actually happening. Germany has invaded Poland and has bombed 0:05:06.116 --> 0:05:11.276 many times. General mobiliza has been ordered in Britain and France. 0:05:11.876 --> 0:05:16.116 It felt unreal, dream like a nightmare. But over in 0:05:16.116 --> 0:05:18.916 the United States, in New York, the World's Fare was 0:05:18.956 --> 0:05:24.276 opening a fair called the World of Tomorrow. The World's 0:05:24.316 --> 0:05:27.316 Fair was held on hundreds of acres and queens. There 0:05:27.316 --> 0:05:30.836 were all kinds of exhibits, Mainly they involved traveling to 0:05:30.916 --> 0:05:34.676 the future. You could visit Democracity, a sort of imagined 0:05:34.916 --> 0:05:38.276 Jetson style city of the Future, the Future of Democracy, 0:05:39.436 --> 0:05:43.316 the nation's foremost companies present the magic of today that 0:05:43.476 --> 0:05:47.476 paves the way while the miracles of tomorrow. Or you 0:05:47.476 --> 0:05:50.316 could check out preparations for a time capsule, the kind 0:05:50.316 --> 0:05:53.716 of thing that inspired that thrilling wonder story. We've been 0:05:53.756 --> 0:05:56.396 reading a lot about the time capsule. Could we take 0:05:56.436 --> 0:05:58.356 a look at it? Why? Sure, we can get to 0:05:58.396 --> 0:06:04.036 it this way. Time Capsule of Cupola deposited on the 0:06:04.076 --> 0:06:07.676 side of the New York World's Fair on September twenty third, 0:06:07.836 --> 0:06:12.916 nineteen thirty eight, by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company. 0:06:12.956 --> 0:06:17.036 If anyone should come upon this capsule before the year A. D. 0:06:17.316 --> 0:06:20.916 Sixty nine thirty nine, let him not wanting they disturb it, 0:06:21.556 --> 0:06:24.076 or to do so would be to deprive the people 0:06:24.116 --> 0:06:27.716 of that era of a legacy here left them. This 0:06:27.756 --> 0:06:30.236 weirdness is a scene from a promotional film about the 0:06:30.236 --> 0:06:33.156 World's Fair, in which in all American family visits the 0:06:33.156 --> 0:06:37.236 world of tomorrow. The time capsule down there is actually 0:06:37.276 --> 0:06:40.276 a message from our time to those those who opened 0:06:40.316 --> 0:06:42.036 and study it. Will they're more about us than any 0:06:42.036 --> 0:06:45.116 man living today. Well, what I'm wondering is how anybody 0:06:45.116 --> 0:06:46.836 will know how to find it in the year What 0:06:47.116 --> 0:06:52.156 was he sixty nine thirty nine. Not quite in sixty 0:06:52.196 --> 0:06:56.276 nine thirty nine, but in the last quarantine free days 0:06:56.276 --> 0:06:58.956 of twenty twenty, I headed out to Queens to look 0:06:58.996 --> 0:07:02.276 for the time capsule buried there in nineteen thirty nine. 0:07:03.356 --> 0:07:04.996 What did the people who buried it mean to say 0:07:05.036 --> 0:07:07.756 about the world of tomorrow? Could we go back in 0:07:07.836 --> 0:07:11.196 time and heed that war from the past? I went 0:07:11.196 --> 0:07:13.636 with my producer Ben and with Olivia Oldham, who works 0:07:13.676 --> 0:07:16.556 for the podcast. We had an appointment with Liz Sevchenko, 0:07:16.636 --> 0:07:19.596 a historian of New York and of memory. She's the 0:07:19.636 --> 0:07:23.316 director of the Humanity's Action Lab. Anyway, if you've seen 0:07:23.356 --> 0:07:25.916 Men in Black, you've seen the place where we met, 0:07:26.196 --> 0:07:30.036 where Will Smith got vomited back out in a giant 0:07:30.156 --> 0:07:35.316 spray of demon goo. The sight of the nineteen thirty 0:07:35.396 --> 0:07:38.796 nine World Tomorrow. It's pretty close to LaGuardia Airport. It's 0:07:38.836 --> 0:07:41.596 got all these remnants of the fair, these monumental, huge 0:07:41.676 --> 0:07:47.636 rusting structures, gigantic abandon spires, a massive metal sphere. It 0:07:47.636 --> 0:07:50.796 looks like a graveyard of the future. We're also really 0:07:50.836 --> 0:07:53.636 close too, as I understand it. Fact check please, but 0:07:53.796 --> 0:07:58.316 the you know, birthplace of our dear President so this 0:07:58.516 --> 0:08:03.276 is like where it all started, yea of the future 0:08:03.396 --> 0:08:07.956 exactly when Donald Trump was born near here in nineteen 0:08:08.036 --> 0:08:10.476 forty six. His father, Fred was the owner of a 0:08:10.476 --> 0:08:13.836 construction business in Queens. The Trump's had gotten married in 0:08:13.916 --> 0:08:16.276 nineteen thirty six, and by the time The World Tomorrow 0:08:16.316 --> 0:08:19.356 opened they already had two kids. Probably they came to 0:08:19.396 --> 0:08:22.476 the fair. Fred Trump rented a giant billboard near the 0:08:22.516 --> 0:08:25.916 fair for his Trump homes. It called them the Home 0:08:26.276 --> 0:08:29.876 of Tomorrow. When I tell people I'm working on a 0:08:29.916 --> 0:08:33.916 podcast that asks the question who killed truth, they usually say, 0:08:34.836 --> 0:08:39.676 isn't the answer obvious? The murderer is Donald Trump? Okay, fair, 0:08:40.516 --> 0:08:43.596 But all season long I've been avoiding the usual suspects. 0:08:43.956 --> 0:08:46.796 I think they're just a little too easy. Also, I 0:08:46.836 --> 0:08:49.516 don't quite buy it. I think Trump might be a 0:08:49.556 --> 0:08:53.556 red herring. God knows, the man's a liar, a colossal, 0:08:53.676 --> 0:08:56.636 dangerous liar. But it takes a whole lot more than 0:08:56.716 --> 0:09:01.196 one man to undermine an entire system of knowledge. Anyway, 0:09:01.476 --> 0:09:05.276 we had a different mission in Queens. Find that time capsule, 0:09:05.916 --> 0:09:07.756 I think you need to ask. I mean, there was 0:09:07.796 --> 0:09:12.596 a very understated, little sort of like memorial looking thing 0:09:13.356 --> 0:09:17.076 back there. I don't know if we've a was it 0:09:17.196 --> 0:09:19.716 like a cylinder or like a low silm like every stump. Yes, 0:09:20.796 --> 0:09:23.796 we'd asked Sevchenko along to help us think about memorials 0:09:23.796 --> 0:09:27.436 and monuments and whether they contain truth or really just 0:09:27.516 --> 0:09:32.156 containers of myths. She's written brilliantly about that stuff. We 0:09:32.276 --> 0:09:34.636 also thought she could probably help us find the time capsule. 0:09:35.276 --> 0:09:39.756 Not that that bolder thing, but like where those bushes are. Okay, wait, 0:09:39.836 --> 0:09:46.996 this is it. It's like a flattened smushed something like 0:09:47.036 --> 0:09:49.756 if it were an obelisk that a giant stepped on 0:09:50.236 --> 0:09:53.516 and it went splat. It feels kind of self defeating 0:09:53.556 --> 0:09:56.076 because if you want something to be found five thousand 0:09:56.156 --> 0:09:58.116 years in the future, why would you make it so 0:09:58.196 --> 0:10:01.076 low key and everything else about it. I shouldn't be 0:10:01.156 --> 0:10:04.236 like a giant space needle spike putting out of it. Yeah, 0:10:04.316 --> 0:10:07.076 it's like a kind of dimple or like a nipple 0:10:07.156 --> 0:10:08.556 on the top of this pine. It looks like it's 0:10:08.596 --> 0:10:11.596 a button. Should be able to press it rise out 0:10:11.596 --> 0:10:13.996 like a coffee maker or something. If we press and 0:10:14.076 --> 0:10:18.836 just ruin the whole, there's like a lip or what's 0:10:18.876 --> 0:10:21.316 the opposite of a lip, because like there's a little 0:10:21.356 --> 0:10:25.556 gutter underneath, right, Maybe that's where you're supposed to fry from. 0:10:28.236 --> 0:10:30.396 I'd break my nails, honey, I'm not gonna do that. 0:10:32.796 --> 0:10:35.076 If you went to the World's Fair in nineteen thirty nine, 0:10:35.316 --> 0:10:37.076 you could see some of the contents of the time 0:10:37.076 --> 0:10:41.756 capsule behind a big glass display. Who stuff the logical 0:10:41.756 --> 0:10:44.476 illage in a committee? Aided by a thought? He's in 0:10:44.556 --> 0:10:47.396 every field of science on the os. It's a complete 0:10:47.436 --> 0:10:51.436 record of our civilization. A complete record of our civilization, 0:10:51.916 --> 0:10:55.716 brought to you by Westinghouse. Section one. Small articles of 0:10:55.716 --> 0:11:02.116 common use alarm clock, can opener, eyeglasses, bifocals, fountain pen, 0:11:02.876 --> 0:11:09.516 Mazda electric lamp, mechanical pencil, miniature camera, nail file, padlocking keys, 0:11:09.716 --> 0:11:13.196 and a safety food. I like the lamp socket. They 0:11:13.236 --> 0:11:16.196 have an electrical lamp socket there. It was just like 0:11:16.316 --> 0:11:18.356 outside the context of a house. How are you ever 0:11:18.356 --> 0:11:21.276 going to figure out what that was? For? Our guide 0:11:21.276 --> 0:11:23.836 in Queens Lives of Chenko direct some of the world's 0:11:23.876 --> 0:11:27.756 most powerful public memory projects. Our project about American prisons 0:11:27.756 --> 0:11:32.516 called States of Incarceration, another called the Guantanamo Public Memory Project. 0:11:33.156 --> 0:11:35.396 After I read the list of the Time Capsule's contents. 0:11:35.916 --> 0:11:39.076 She got this look on her face. I just think, 0:11:39.116 --> 0:11:41.636 I mean, there's this weird sense in which they're speaking 0:11:41.636 --> 0:11:47.476 to an ignorant future population, like assuming they don't know anything, 0:11:47.516 --> 0:11:50.756 and they're so excited to like educate them. It struck 0:11:50.796 --> 0:11:53.116 us all as a weird and creepy kind of arrogance. 0:11:53.316 --> 0:11:56.076 We just couldn't puzzle the thing out. It was also 0:11:56.116 --> 0:11:59.076 strange that it had so few markings. We kept looking 0:11:59.116 --> 0:12:07.596 for text, a plaque, anything, Oh what is that? Oh? 0:12:07.676 --> 0:12:12.716 I can't read it. It says, I think it's the 0:12:12.756 --> 0:12:16.956 stamp of the granite, the you know, the it's a 0:12:16.996 --> 0:12:20.156 company symbol of westings I think it's either the Westinghouse 0:12:20.276 --> 0:12:21.956 or the concrete. It does look like that's a W 0:12:22.196 --> 0:12:31.916 though I think it's no. It says Rock of Right, 0:12:36.316 --> 0:12:40.196 you can see what the Rock of Ages. There's a go, 0:12:40.476 --> 0:12:45.916 this is the Rock of Ages. Holy Moses. This season 0:12:45.996 --> 0:12:48.836 started in episode one with a crime scene in Barry, Vermont, 0:12:49.036 --> 0:12:51.676 a place whose best known quarry is called the Rock 0:12:51.756 --> 0:12:55.236 of Ages. And Jesus turned out that they'd supplied the 0:12:55.236 --> 0:12:57.876 granite that made the lid to close the time capsule. 0:12:58.676 --> 0:13:01.356 Now we'd left the last archive. We were in the 0:13:01.436 --> 0:13:07.796 Twilight Zone. Honestly, it really freaked me out. The Rock 0:13:07.836 --> 0:13:10.036 of Ages is the name of the quarry, but it's 0:13:10.036 --> 0:13:12.836 also the title of an eighteenth century hymn, The Rock 0:13:12.876 --> 0:13:21.516 of Ages is Jesus Christ, so weird. Also, I haven't 0:13:21.556 --> 0:13:24.076 talked very much about religion in this podcast, but a 0:13:24.076 --> 0:13:26.836 certain feeling just then as we read the words Rock 0:13:26.876 --> 0:13:31.036 of Ages engraved into stone, that feeling that some unknown 0:13:31.036 --> 0:13:34.396 and mysterious forces in control of our lives for better 0:13:34.476 --> 0:13:37.356 or worse. That feeling is how humans came to believe 0:13:37.356 --> 0:13:42.516 in gods, Zeus, Saphrodite, Mars in the coronavirus crisis. That 0:13:42.636 --> 0:13:48.356 feelings everywhere. We left Queens and Tomorrowland for the origins 0:13:48.356 --> 0:13:52.756 of another future in the Valley of the Gods, Silicon Valley. 0:14:06.996 --> 0:14:09.596 It's like we could be being pulled by also right now, 0:14:11.836 --> 0:14:18.276 except it would sail then. I actually think we In 0:14:18.316 --> 0:14:21.836 February of twenty twenty, we went to California. It was 0:14:21.876 --> 0:14:24.596 a few weeks before the whole state shutdown, shelter in place, 0:14:24.716 --> 0:14:27.836 locked down, before people were even talking about those things, 0:14:28.196 --> 0:14:31.396 we were blissfully ignorant. We rented a car, got on 0:14:31.436 --> 0:14:33.916 the highway, me and my producer Ben and my son 0:14:33.996 --> 0:14:38.756 Oliver go West. Young man. Oliver is fifteen, Cherry read 0:14:38.796 --> 0:14:45.236 twenty seventeen Camaro convertible top down, of course, chrome wheels. 0:14:45.596 --> 0:14:48.356 It was Oliver's birthday, and so I rented a car 0:14:48.436 --> 0:14:51.116 that is exactly not the right car for a podcast. 0:14:51.796 --> 0:14:54.356 But Oliver had never been to California. What are your 0:14:54.396 --> 0:14:59.396 impressions of California? Um, it's beautiful. It looks exactly like 0:14:59.436 --> 0:15:04.996 it did in Watchdogs Too. Every street go down, Oliver says, 0:15:05.036 --> 0:15:07.396 I've already driven down the street. I've driven down here, 0:15:07.436 --> 0:15:12.636 guns blazing. Watch Dogs Too is a video game set 0:15:12.636 --> 0:15:15.116 in a perfect stimulation of the city of San Francisco. 0:15:16.316 --> 0:15:18.876 Playing watch Dogs Too, you're part of an elite crew 0:15:18.876 --> 0:15:21.556 of hackers who are trying to catch the guy who 0:15:21.716 --> 0:15:25.316 killed Truth. Its plot is disturbingly like ours at the 0:15:25.356 --> 0:15:28.516 last archive. In the video game. The guy who kills 0:15:28.516 --> 0:15:31.516 Truth is basically Mark Zuckerberg, the head of a Silicon 0:15:31.596 --> 0:15:35.396 Valley data company called Bloom Bloom CTOs, is like a 0:15:35.396 --> 0:15:39.636 giant spider whim endlessly gathering data. They're making backroom deals 0:15:39.676 --> 0:15:42.876 to trade our private information. We have to stop this. 0:15:43.436 --> 0:15:47.396 We're talking data manipulation on a massive scale, ricked elections, 0:15:47.596 --> 0:15:52.076 weapons programs, spying into people's homes, all of it controlled 0:15:52.116 --> 0:15:54.956 by one man. Whenever I told anyone I was working 0:15:54.996 --> 0:15:56.796 on a podcast that was trying to find out who 0:15:56.916 --> 0:16:01.076 killed Truth, almost everyone's first answer was Donald Trump, and 0:16:01.196 --> 0:16:05.076 almost everyone's second answer was Mark Zuckerberg. And fair enough. 0:16:05.436 --> 0:16:08.396 He's an obvious suspect, though, so I've been avoiding him 0:16:08.436 --> 0:16:11.436 too easy. I mean, he's the villain in a video game, 0:16:11.516 --> 0:16:15.996 for Christ's sakes. Anyway, when my son Oliver plays Watchdogs Too, 0:16:16.316 --> 0:16:18.836 he has to drive simulated fast cars all over a 0:16:18.916 --> 0:16:22.076 simulated San Francisco. And here I was taking him on 0:16:22.076 --> 0:16:24.356 a trip, a birthday trip to a thrilling new city. 0:16:24.796 --> 0:16:27.556 But everywhere we went he would be all, oh, yeah, 0:16:27.596 --> 0:16:29.836 I've been here. There's a donut shop on the next block, 0:16:30.436 --> 0:16:33.956 and there would be this looks literally exactly Save's Watchops. Mom. 0:16:33.956 --> 0:16:37.276 I'm gonna have you play some Washdogs later. Okay. I 0:16:37.396 --> 0:16:40.476 look at California. I don't see the superimposed dystopia of 0:16:40.556 --> 0:16:44.436 Watchdogs Too. No, I'm too old for that future. My 0:16:44.596 --> 0:16:47.676 California future, the one stuck in my mind comes straight 0:16:47.716 --> 0:16:51.716 from the Monorail and Disneyland and it done. It's way now, 0:16:51.836 --> 0:16:54.716 leaving frontier Land at going one hundred years into the 0:16:54.716 --> 0:17:02.316 future to tomorrow Land. That's Ronald Reagan at the opening 0:17:02.356 --> 0:17:06.076 of Disneyland in nineteen fifty five. The nineteen thirty nine 0:17:06.076 --> 0:17:09.596 World's Fair was nothing compared to its successor. While Disneys 0:17:09.676 --> 0:17:12.876 Tomorrowland built at the height of the Cold War. The 0:17:12.956 --> 0:17:16.076 future as a space age future is an invention of 0:17:16.076 --> 0:17:19.996 the Cold War because Cold War scientists understood themselves as 0:17:20.036 --> 0:17:23.756 engaged in a battle for the future. Would capitalism prevail 0:17:23.956 --> 0:17:28.276 or communism? Only science could tell. If scientists could predict 0:17:28.316 --> 0:17:32.756 the future, then they could build it. Yes, this is Tomorrowland, 0:17:32.956 --> 0:17:35.156 and it's not a stylized dream of the future, but 0:17:35.236 --> 0:17:39.956 a scientifically planned projection of future techniques by leading space 0:17:40.076 --> 0:17:44.956 experts and science. You find yourself living predictions of things 0:17:45.036 --> 0:17:49.236 to come. A lot of Tomorrowlands popped up in California 0:17:49.276 --> 0:17:51.756 in the nineteen fifties, not just the one at Disneyland. 0:17:52.756 --> 0:17:56.116 California was like a future factory, full of think tanks 0:17:56.196 --> 0:18:00.356 charged with coming up with a general theory of the future, psychologists, 0:18:00.356 --> 0:18:03.796 political scientists. They were trying to predict human behavior by 0:18:03.796 --> 0:18:07.356 way of endless computer simulations by the middle of the 0:18:07.396 --> 0:18:11.316 nineteen fifties. When people pictured there, they usually pictured computers, 0:18:11.436 --> 0:18:14.836 and they usually pictured California, where the computer industry was born. 0:18:15.916 --> 0:18:19.076 So we drove our cherry red Camaro down Highway one 0:18:19.156 --> 0:18:22.396 oh one to the Computer History Museum. It's in Mountain View, 0:18:22.436 --> 0:18:24.676 a couple of blocks from the Google Blox, not too 0:18:24.756 --> 0:18:27.636 far from Facebook. We went into museum not to look 0:18:27.636 --> 0:18:32.156 at old computers, but to use them. So now I'm 0:18:32.196 --> 0:18:34.956 going to hit load and it's going to start reading 0:18:35.036 --> 0:18:49.156 the cards. That's the sound of those little shoes or 0:18:49.236 --> 0:18:53.196 knips grabbing the cards and sliding them in. Carl Claunch 0:18:53.276 --> 0:18:55.516 is a volunteer at the Computer History Museum. He was 0:18:55.516 --> 0:18:57.396 showing us a punch card reader that's part of an 0:18:57.396 --> 0:19:01.236 IBM fourteen oh one, a computer first manufactured in nineteen 0:19:01.276 --> 0:19:04.396 fifty nine. This computer is the size of a room, 0:19:04.436 --> 0:19:08.316 a big room, say, an elementary school classroom. I asked Claunch, 0:19:08.476 --> 0:19:11.076 what school it's thought when they visited it? Do they 0:19:11.196 --> 0:19:14.116 recognize this as a computer? Like? Are they just baffled 0:19:14.116 --> 0:19:16.916 by it? Yeah? That they The docents have to tell 0:19:16.956 --> 0:19:20.036 a story that takes them back to the nineteen fifties 0:19:20.116 --> 0:19:24.636 and they're constantly contrasting it. So, for example, there's a 0:19:24.636 --> 0:19:27.796 piece of core memory that's used to speed up the printer, 0:19:28.436 --> 0:19:32.116 and it's entire contents of this big block or one tweet. Yeah, 0:19:32.156 --> 0:19:34.556 it's sort of like Honey, I shrunk the kids. Like opposite, 0:19:35.236 --> 0:19:37.916 it's like Honey, I enlarged the computer, like it's actually 0:19:37.916 --> 0:19:40.636 a thing they know about, but blown up to this 0:19:40.956 --> 0:19:45.236 giant proportion, like we're a little Fusians, we're inside a computer. 0:19:45.436 --> 0:19:47.436 Like the idea of using like a reference from the 0:19:47.436 --> 0:19:49.876 early two thousands, or really in the nineteen nineties to 0:19:49.956 --> 0:19:52.436 explain a machine from the nineteen sixties to kids in 0:19:55.276 --> 0:20:00.196 it wasn't Carl Clenched. He's a sweetheart, and he's also 0:20:00.356 --> 0:20:02.956 very modest, but he's much more than a volunteer at 0:20:02.956 --> 0:20:07.476 the museum. Carl computer archaeologist. I don't have my hat. 0:20:09.116 --> 0:20:10.476 Bunch had done a whole lot of the work getting 0:20:10.516 --> 0:20:13.316 this computer from nineteen fifty nine up and running. In 0:20:13.356 --> 0:20:15.556 his garage, he's got an old punch card reader that 0:20:15.596 --> 0:20:17.676 can handle punch cards that are bent and even a 0:20:17.676 --> 0:20:21.036 little tattered. And as it happens, I had some old, 0:20:21.076 --> 0:20:26.956 screwed up punch cards that needed reading. If you've ever 0:20:27.036 --> 0:20:29.076 punched in at work, like I used to do, that's 0:20:29.076 --> 0:20:31.996 a punch card. Their papers the size of a business 0:20:31.996 --> 0:20:36.116 on flope, popped up with tiny rectangular holes. Before the cloud, 0:20:36.156 --> 0:20:39.276 before thumb drives, before hard disks and floppy disks, they 0:20:39.316 --> 0:20:42.556 were punch cards. He stored information for a computer by 0:20:42.636 --> 0:20:46.076 encoding it in these tiny holes. We can still read 0:20:46.116 --> 0:20:49.756 ancient parchments thousands of years later, but old punch cards 0:20:49.796 --> 0:20:53.076 are useless after just a few decades because hardly anyone 0:20:53.116 --> 0:20:55.476 has the machines you need to read them. The past 0:20:55.636 --> 0:20:58.276 is getting shorter and shorter, and this matters to the 0:20:58.276 --> 0:21:01.476 work I do as a historian. A few years ago 0:21:01.516 --> 0:21:04.476 I found thousands of really interesting punch cards. The cards 0:21:04.476 --> 0:21:06.916 were boxed in the files of this one company, a 0:21:07.036 --> 0:21:10.676 very early startup called the similar Madox Corporation, and I 0:21:10.716 --> 0:21:14.156 was writing a book about them. Simomatics was founded in 0:21:14.236 --> 0:21:17.756 nineteen fifty nine, a big year for computing. The name 0:21:17.796 --> 0:21:21.796 was a mashup of simulation and automatic, and Simomatics wound 0:21:21.876 --> 0:21:24.396 up being kind of like the Cambridge Analytica of the 0:21:24.436 --> 0:21:29.036 presidential election of nineteen sixty. MTS Archives held the Symbiomatics 0:21:29.076 --> 0:21:32.476 punch cards, but might couldn't read them, so they ended 0:21:32.516 --> 0:21:35.156 up shipping the cards for me to the Computer History Museum, 0:21:35.196 --> 0:21:40.556 where Carl ran them through his ancient machine. Here's the 0:21:40.596 --> 0:21:43.796 backstory on simiomatics, some of what you've already heard if 0:21:43.796 --> 0:21:46.916 you've been a steadfast listener to the last archive. He 0:21:47.036 --> 0:21:49.516 might remember in episode five, how we talked about the 0:21:49.596 --> 0:21:52.996 nineteen fifty two election, where CBS hired a computer called 0:21:53.116 --> 0:21:56.796 Univac to predict the results on election night. Well, a 0:21:56.876 --> 0:22:00.756 Madison Avenue admin named Ed Greenfield, learning about the UNIVAC, 0:22:01.116 --> 0:22:03.436 got the idea of helping the candidate win an election 0:22:03.756 --> 0:22:07.076 by building a massive computer simulation that could predict how 0:22:07.116 --> 0:22:10.236 people would vote. And then, four years later, in nineteen 0:22:10.316 --> 0:22:13.316 fifty six, Greenfield got a contract from the Adlai Stephenson 0:22:13.356 --> 0:22:17.196 campaign when Stephenson was trying once again to beat Eisenhower, 0:22:17.636 --> 0:22:24.956 a man who can believe Ah yeah, Well, first, Stephenson 0:22:24.996 --> 0:22:27.636 had to win the Democratic nomination, and to do that 0:22:27.676 --> 0:22:29.996 he had to win the California primary, a big state 0:22:30.036 --> 0:22:33.956 whose population was booming. Greenfield hired a bunch of people 0:22:33.996 --> 0:22:38.316 in California, including two political scientists, and helped Stephenson win 0:22:38.396 --> 0:22:42.276 the state's primary and then the nomination, but he couldn't 0:22:42.276 --> 0:22:46.116 help Stephenson win the election. As evening returns come in, 0:22:46.156 --> 0:22:49.476 the trend is unmistakable. It's Eisenhower by a landslide with 0:22:49.596 --> 0:22:52.876 four hundred and fifty seven electoral votes to seventy four 0:22:53.116 --> 0:22:57.236 or Stephenson. The admen and their computers couldn't save Adlai 0:22:57.236 --> 0:23:00.556 Stevenson in nineteen fifty six, but his loss didn't slow 0:23:00.596 --> 0:23:03.396 them down. Ed Greenfield started gearing up for the election 0:23:03.396 --> 0:23:07.036 of nineteen sixty. He hired people who'd done psychological warfare 0:23:07.076 --> 0:23:12.356 for the military, driving people to traction targeting messages, attention manipulation. 0:23:12.916 --> 0:23:16.276 One of those guys was the mathematician Alex Bernstein. There's 0:23:16.276 --> 0:23:19.836 a great film from nineteen fifty nine called Thinking Machines. 0:23:20.156 --> 0:23:22.836 What can we learn about Thinking from a game of Chess? 0:23:23.356 --> 0:23:26.356 It shows a bespectacled Bernstein playing chess against a room 0:23:26.396 --> 0:23:30.076 sized computer. All it takes her some printers, magnetic tape, 0:23:30.396 --> 0:23:34.436 and a chessboard. Mister Bernstein and his collaborators prepared a 0:23:34.516 --> 0:23:38.596 chess playing program for the IBM seven O four, a 0:23:38.636 --> 0:23:42.556 digital computer that has performed one billion calculations in a 0:23:42.636 --> 0:23:46.476 single day. It's never absent minded and never makes an 0:23:46.476 --> 0:23:50.036 obvious plunder. Bernstein helped create a field that became known 0:23:50.116 --> 0:23:54.596 as artificial intelligence. For the presidential campaign of nineteen sixty, 0:23:54.956 --> 0:23:58.156 he and Ed Greenfield at Cymblematics, they built this thing 0:23:58.196 --> 0:24:01.276 called a People Machine who was programmed with punch cards 0:24:01.276 --> 0:24:05.276 in very early for Tran, an ancient computer language. There 0:24:05.276 --> 0:24:08.156 were data cards too. Each card the cards I found 0:24:08.156 --> 0:24:11.036 in the archives. The cards only Carl Quanch could now read. 0:24:11.436 --> 0:24:17.716 Each represented an imaginary American age, place of residence, economic class, race, gender, 0:24:17.796 --> 0:24:23.036 political persuasion. Here was a Similematox Company's vision of the future. 0:24:23.476 --> 0:24:26.116 One day computers would be able to predict human behavior 0:24:26.156 --> 0:24:28.276 and manipulate it. There'd be a lot of money to 0:24:28.316 --> 0:24:30.596 be made. There'd be a lot of power to accumulate. 0:24:31.156 --> 0:24:34.356 Greenfield thought Dlea. Stevenson would run again in nineteen sixty, 0:24:34.556 --> 0:24:38.116 and he wanted Stephenson to use his People Machine. And here, 0:24:38.276 --> 0:24:40.556 just here is a snag in the fabric of time. 0:24:41.556 --> 0:24:44.316 First of all, Stephenson did not run for a third time. 0:24:44.676 --> 0:24:47.876 He only almost ran. But also some of the people 0:24:47.916 --> 0:24:51.596 who got Greenfield's confidential memo about the People Machine, they 0:24:51.636 --> 0:24:55.596 thought christ On toast this thing should be illegal. One 0:24:55.636 --> 0:24:58.436 of the people Greenfield sent this proposal too was Stevenson's 0:24:58.476 --> 0:25:02.036 law partner, Newton Minnow. Minnow is a really important person 0:25:02.076 --> 0:25:03.676 because he'd go on to be the chairman of the 0:25:03.756 --> 0:25:09.116 FCC under the Kennedy administration. Greenfield's proposal freaked Minnow out. 0:25:09.636 --> 0:25:14.476 Dear Arthur, do you remember ed Greenfield? Minno wrote a 0:25:14.516 --> 0:25:17.156 letter to the very eminent Pultzer Prize winning Harvard historian 0:25:17.476 --> 0:25:23.196 Arthur Slessinger Junior about Greenfield's dangerous idea. Without prejudicing your judgment, 0:25:23.836 --> 0:25:27.556 my own opinion is that such a thing A cannot work, 0:25:27.916 --> 0:25:33.596 b is immoral, c should be declared illegal. Please advise 0:25:34.316 --> 0:25:40.476 best regards, Newton n Minnow. Slessinger wrote right back, Dear Newt, 0:25:40.876 --> 0:25:44.276 I have pretty much your feelings. I shudder at the 0:25:44.316 --> 0:25:48.396 implications for public leadership of the nation. On the other hand, 0:25:48.436 --> 0:25:51.036 I do believe in science and don't like to be 0:25:51.116 --> 0:25:56.676 a party to choking off new ideas. Yours ever, Arthur Slessinger, 0:25:57.476 --> 0:26:00.996