A Hundred Years Hence: The Expectations of an Optimist — John Shaqi
A Hundred Years Hence: The Expectations of an OptimistRussell, T. Baron
Philosophy
A Hundred Years Hence: The Expectations of an Optimist
Russell, T. Baron
Forecasting; Twentieth century -- Forecasts
The more distinctively intellectual pleasures of the new age will
be much subserved by one class of invention, of which the rudiments
already exist. By means of the phonograph we are able, not very
perfectly, to reproduce as often as we desire sounds created in
favourable circumstances. By various kinds of kinetoscope we can
reproduce a rudimentary sort of picture of an event which has taken
place in a good light. But when the phonograph has been developed, when
moving pictures have been perfected, what a vast implement of amusement
may be foreseen! Each of these inventions is comparatively new. If
we imagine the discovery of means, developed from the phonograph,
by which any sounds which have once existed in the presence of a
recording machine can be reproduced at will, not in a makeshift sort
of way, but without any loss of timbre and quality, with perfect
articulation where articulation is necessary, with exactly correct
time-regulation automatically determined by the first enunciation, and
all this cheaply and compendiously, what vast resources of cultured
enjoyment are offered to the lover of music! How many people, denied
the pleasure of learning to understand good music by the difficulties
and exertion attendant upon our infrequent and expensive concerts,
will become true lovers and appreciators of it! For music is only to
be really enjoyed by the average man when it is repeatedly heard,
repeatedly considered. Certainly the people of the new age will be
epicures of the emotions which comprehended music is so nobly capable
of stirring.
No doubt the new age will have solved, in a far more satisfactory
way than we have been able to solve as yet, the problem of chromatic
photography. When colour influences photographic plates or some
contrivance substituted for them, not indirectly by a mechanical
sorting-out of tints, but by affecting directly the optical
properties of the plates or whatever may succeed plates, we shall
have marvellously accurate pictures. [6]
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