{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "The funny thing is while the Nolan Batman films were of-their-time in addressing an unauthorized electronic surveillance...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/652838413282820096/", "html": "

argumate:

youzicha:

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kontextmaschine:

The funny thing is while the Nolan Batman films were of-their-time in addressing an unauthorized electronic surveillance panopticon, it was the \u201868 Adam West sitting in his Batcave running his Bat-Computer and Bat-Analyzer over Gotham City crime data that accurately predicted computer-enabled crime fighting

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talkinggorillabutler said:

That city journal article about California wildness fire fighting in the 1960s with an Apollo ass command center

Also going on in 1968: Operation Igloo White, McNamara\u2019s (failed) high-tech effort to interdict North Vietnamese transports into South Vietnam. Some 20,000 acoustic/seismic sensors were dropped into the jungles of Laos. When they detected movement they sent a radio signal, relayed via a circling airplane, into the Infiltration Surveillance Center, a.k.a Task Force Alpha, at Nakhon Phanom Air Base in Thailand. There the information was plotted in real-time, and used to plan (illegal) bomb runs over Laos.

The center itself used cutting-edge computer technology, and was quite a sight:\u00a0

Step out of the jungle and inside the building, you step back into America\u2014but an America fifteen years from now\u2026 maybe 1984. It\u2019s beautiful\u2026 gleaming tile floors\u2026 glass walls everywhere. They have a full cafeteria where you can get anything you want. They even have real milk, not that powdered crap we get at the mess hall. And air-conditioning? The whole damned place is air-conditioned. There\u2019s even a bowling alley and a movie theater. I and a whole bunch of civilians who look like IBM guys running around in three-piece suits all wearing glasses\u2026 it\u2019s \u201cGeek Central.\u201d We never see them over on our part of the base, so I guess they have everything they need in there.

Then there\u2019s this main control room that looks like the one we saw on TV during the Apollo moon shots, or maybe something out of a James Bond movie. There\u2019s computer terminals everywhere. But the main feature is this huge, three-story-tall Lucite\u2026 or maybe it\u2019s plastic, I don\u2019t know\u2026 full-color depiction of the whole Ho Chi Minh Trail with a real-time depiction of trucks coming down the trail. It\u2019s wild, man.

I found a couple of pictures here.

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Anyway, that relay aircraft I mentioned above?

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It was called the EC-121R Batcat!

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never has so much effort been expended to achieve so little.

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That’s a question, how do Australians conceive of the Vietnam War?

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