“Disney personally introduced the first television show, “Man in Space,” which aired on ABC on March 9, 1955. The objective, he said, was to combine “the tools of our trade with the knowledge of the scientists to give a factual picture of the latest plans for man’s newest adventure.” He later called the show “science factual.” The show represented something new in its approach to science. But it also relied on Disney’s trademark animation techniques.

For example, a portion of the show was devoted to explaining basic scientific principles using an animated bust of Sir Isaac Newton. In one scene, an animated puppy sneezes and moves backward across a sheet of graph paper to illustrate that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Disney also filled “Man in Space” with stereo-typical images of learning and science. For example, Disney appears on camera against a bookcase backdrop and introduces producer Ward Kimball complete with a sketch pencil behind his ear.”

» “The Disney-Von Braun Collaboration and Its Influence on Space Exploration”

From linkmachinego:

“I know a lot of artists …like the art to be very, very simple, and leave the detail up to the mind of the reader, but what about leaving it in the mind of the writer and artist, and allow us to bring you into our world and let the reader visit what we’ve envisioned, a complete vision – something that is three dimensional and totally realized and will take you completely out of yourself.”

On Monday we have the good fortune to have Jessica Hammer visiting us here to talk about her work: “Six Principles: Toward a Theory of Interactive Narrative”, in which she discusses the counterpoint to the above view – shared authorship:

“The principle of shared authorship addresses the question of who is the author of an interactive story. A single author cannot create enough meaningful content to have a story that is both powerful and interactive, and artificial intelligence is not yet sophisticated enough to have truly computer-generated narratives. To incorporate the human ability to tell a story with the flexibility and interactivity of computer-generated stories, many people must participate in the authorship of the story. A group of users share the duties of authorship, creating a story that makes sense on a human level but is being created in real-time (rather than being authored in advance).”

Looking forward to it. Hopefully I’ll get some notes from her talk up here next week.

» “Six Principles: Toward a Theory of Interactive Narrative”

Some network/fileserver connection problems, and getting used to a different keyboard layout but pretty much smooth and wonderful experience so far. Somewhat optimistically I’ve borrowed a friend’s copy of “Learning Perl” causing nervous-shudders from colleagues.

Things I just can’t get over:

• The amount of cool little details, tricks, tips. It’s a rich and complex palace of experience to wander around, compared to the insurance company district-office of windows.
• The amount of cool little apps, especially opensource that seem to be available and growing in number for MacOSX. Exciting.
• The fact that I made a playlist in iTunes and it FADES BETWEEN THE TRACKS. Oh, my stars. Caught me completely unawares… 4hero mixed smoothly into Curtis Mayfield. Incredible. And iTunes doesn’t drunk when it mixes so it will be far better than me. The rise of the machines, my friends.

…best educated, best prepared, best equipped troops refuse to fight. In fact it is safe to says they would rather swwwiiiitch… than fight…”*

Yup – I’ve gone over… traded in my ‘orrible grey tower work PC for a shiny OSX TiBook… Omnigraffle and Perlhackin’ here I come… yeah!!!

[*With profuse apologies to the late Dr. King, Chuck D. and the Bomb Squad.]