Re: "I have seen the future, and it works".
An unfortunate choice of quotes, thought I agree entirely
with your sentiments. The quote is, I think, from Stephen
Leacock, a noted writer in the 1930s. He went on a trip to
that workers paradise somewhere in the 30s and returned, I
think to the UK, where he said something like "I have seen
the future, and it works". What really happened was that
he was shown a very controlled set of tableaus, all staged
and non-representative, that had been set up to dupe naive
visitors into thinking that everything was ducky in the
USSR. That statement is right up there with Neville
Chamberlain's "Peace in our time" nonsense. As an aside on
this kind of fooling the visitor theme my thesis advisor had
worked in the David Sarnoff research center in Princeton,
New Jersey when a visit by old man and CEO Sarnoff was
scheduled. My advisor was astonished to see the entire
route that would be followed by Sarnoff refurnished,
repainted and re-equipped with the latest, most up-to-date
stuff. Nothing else was touched, but the route Sarnoff
took. Sarnoff must have gotten the impression that
everything in the Sarnoff center was new and spiffy. "He
had seen the Sarnoff center and it was spiffy and new."
Burt |
