Man and Machines

When J.R.R. Tolkien thought about the modern world, he rejected much of it.  He believed that the machinery that was rapidly becoming a part of modern life extracted vengeance upon those who created it.  The pursuit of progress in his view led to the destruction of the environment and the twisting of the human soul.  His answer was a return to pastoral living.

Walt Disney on the other hand embraced the machine.  He became fully immersed in the modernist view of the world.  Machines were useful tools to serve, educate and inform humanity.  Utopia was just around the corner--or as the Carousel of Progress puts it:  A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.  Machines and scientific innovation would solve all of the world's challenges, and we would live together in harmonious abundance.

Throughout his work, Disney was a gadget guy.  He was constantly tinkering with technology as the answer to his challenges.  He was the first to add sound to a cartoon.  His cartoons were some of the first to feature stereophonic presentation.  Color was added before others even considered it.  Disney invented the multi-plane camera which allowed depth of the background and the ability to focus in on a dynamic landscape.

His innovations went beyond his studio work.  He was a pioneer in the idea of animatronics.  He used a number of experimental technologies in his theme parks.  He first saw a monorail in Europe and believed that it would be the transportation option of the future.  He invented the people mover, a device of continuous cars on a belt that would move people in efficiently in large cities.

He designed the Magic Kingdom in Florida with under the surface utility corridors so that trash, goods and workers could be moved without disturbing the enjoyment of the park.  Walt sold Florida on the idea that he was going to create a new model for an American city that would solve the urban problem on the land that ultimately became Disney World.  He even gave it a name, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.  This new city was never really built, but remains in vestiges in EPCOT.

Walt Disney was distrustful of government which he saw as wasteful, slow and bloated.  He had confidence in business.  He believed that corporations would through science and new technologies solve all of the problems of modern life.

It was an optimism that seems naive today in the wake of BP and any other of a number of corporate disasters and malfeasance.  But Walt Disney really believed in better living through science.  He was the quintessential modern man.