Part 23
How do new technologies evolve?
Looking back at the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we see an incredible period in Man’s recorded history in respect of new technologies. Driven by an almost insatiable desire to speed up our lives, the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s gave birth to endless ways of increasing production. Basic to this appears to be the power of steam and electricity, which opened the door to all manner of machines and faster modes of transport. The time was, in fact, a turning point in the evolution of Man’s abilities.
There seemed to be a formula. One good idea sparked off a completely new way of thinking about a problem. This was usually followed by some genius coming up with a technological solution. There are dozens of examples of this, but I’ll give you just one, which affected my life directly.
I started to work for BBC Television in 1957. Up to that point, the magical concept of broadcasting pictures around the world was fast becoming an everyday facet of people’s lives. However, the technology for it was in many ways in its infancy. Black and white pictures were accepted as the norm. Color TV was a dream of the future.
What many people don’t realize is that video technology had not yet been released. This meant in effect that all television was live until the end of the 1950s when early videos became a reality. The only way that recorded material could be used was through a process called Telecine. It was primitive but worked surprisingly well. The lens of a movie projector was pointed into the lens of a TV camera and held in place so that the focus remained reasonably sharp. Telecine was, in effect, a transitional method used until videotape arrived, with its ability to record live action and film footage where required.
How did this come about? I would imagine that someone became frustrated with the fact that all TV shows or coverage of sports events could only be viewed once and always at the time of their actual happening.
The problem extended even further than the public realized. For example, a TV drama requiring a number of different sets for different scenes had to be built in a large studio, usually able to house between five and ten sets. However, the drama often required even more sets, and so a specialist breed of scene-shifter was born. These were people who were capable of moving into a set the moment the cameras and the action had moved to the next set. In total silence, these highly skilled scene-shifters broke down the existing set that had just been used and built another set in its place. How they managed to do this silently is nothing short of miraculous. Of course, there was the occasional bang or squeak, but it was a matter of pride for these teams to be as quiet as possible.
So presumably – and I don’t have the historical facts to support it – whoever developed video technology must have been a great lateral thinker who saw the problems that live-only TV created and thought “there must be a way.” Happily, this led to the creation of videotape. If you think about it, it required a huge leap to conceptualize a way in which pictures and sound could be captured on tape instead of film.
Many technologies require such a leap, but sadly, the whole subject of computing has been lacking one. Happily, though, ExoTechnology has arrived and was invented by one of those dynamic “someones” who dared to think, “There must be a way!” … and then found it.
ExoTech obviates the increasing number of problems created by existing methodology with its massive amounts of programming that grows ever larger and more complex in attempts to improve and add onto state-of-the-art software. It is a quantum leap in the structure of software, infinitely easier, more versatile, less expensive, more secure and overall more beneficial to the user.
So if we can move past live TV with all its difficuties, we can certainly move past the evermore complex computing systems of today. After all, Peter Warren was curious and found a way. And that’s how new technologies are born.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.