Computers at EPCOT Center

Hello, everyone. Sorry for the lack of updates recently, but real life has been keeping me rather busy.

I’ve spent the last decade in the IT field, and computers have been an interest of mine pretty much as long as I can remember. Part of this stems from my childhood in the 1980s, when computers were being touted as the Next Big Thing. In 1982, the year EPCOT Center opened, the computer was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. This was based more on its potential, however, than its actual utility. Personal computers existed in 1982, of course, but compared to the smartphones we carry around today they were little more than “stone knives and bearskins”, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Spock.

Pictured: stone knives and bearskins

The graphical user interface would not see a wide debut until 1984 (no, I’m not forgetting the Lisa, but the fact is that it cost the equivalent of $21,000 in today’s money and no one bought it) hence the only way to interact with the PCs that existed in 1982 was via the command line. The ability to use a computer was considered a special talent akin to piloting the Space Shuttle. The media kept telling us that we’d all be using computers before long, but how we would do so, or what we’d use them for, was hard to visualize. Enter EPCOT Center.

Pictured: the iPhone circa 1982

It did more than just tell us that computers were the wave of the future, it showed us. It started with Spaceship Earth’s post-show, then known as Earth Station. At Earth Station you could use a touchscreen computer kiosk to make reservations at EPCOT’s table service restaurants or find out more about the park. Unlike other computers of the time, the average guest had no trouble figuring out the WorldKey kiosks; the lines to use them rivaled the line to ride Spaceship Earth, and the restaurants were usually booked solid by 10 AM. They may have been primitive by today’s standards, but those WorldKey systems gave us an exciting (and amazingly prescient) preview of how we’d interact with the computers of the 21st century.

Earth Station wasn’t the only place at EPCOT to get your hands on a computer, though. There was also EPCOT Computer Central in CommuniCore, where you’d find kiosks similar to those at Earth Station that you could use to play games or build your own roller coaster via the Compute-a-Coaster, an interesting precursor to the Sum of All Thrills exhibit in today’s Innoventions. The original ImageWorks at the Imagination pavilion featured a computing technology that never quite caught on: pen computing. Long before Microsoft tried (and failed) to popularize pen computing with Windows XP Tablet PC edition, visitors to EPCOT could get a taste of a very early iteration of this technology at the Figment’s Coloring Book kiosks, where they could use a bulky electronic “pen” to color a computerized picture that was displayed on the screen in front of them.

Back in the 1980s, when computers were still seen as something of a novelty, the mere presence of one was enough to impress us. These days, when many of us carry powerful pocket-sized computers with us at all times and use them to do things that a person in 1982 would scarcely imagine, we aren’t as easily wowed. I was thinking about this early last month, as my wife and I passed beneath Spaceship Earth on our way out of the park. There was a group of teenage girls behind us conversing about how it annoyed them that one of their friends was repeatedly posting “LOL” as his Facebook status. It occurred to me that they were having a conversation that none of EPCOT’s opening day visitors would have been able to comprehend.

Myself, and others too, often complain that EPCOT isn’t what it once was. Sometimes, we get so upset about the pathetic state of the Imagination pavilion, or the fact that the Wonders of Life pavilion is sitting vacant, that we forget about the things Disney has done right. So I’d like to step back and recognize how well EPCOT’s interactive exhibits have transitioned from the 1980s mindset that anything computerized was automatically cool to the 21st century reality that the “cool factor” lies not in computers themselves, but in the amazing things we’ve learned to do with them.

Project Tomorrow: an EPCOT success story

January 28, 1986

Twenty-four years ago today, a senseless and preventable accident claimed the lives of of seven brilliant and brave human beings. The loss of Dick Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe are the most tragic result of the Challenger disaster, and we must never lose sight of that.

But something else died that day with the Challenger and her crew and even as an impressionable seven-year-old I sensed it. Ever since it became clear that manned spaceflight would one day be possible, futurists and science fiction writers delighted us with tales of a time when a trip into space was every bit as routine as a ride in a Chevy. And on that clear day in January 1986, it seemed as though those dreams were finally starting to come true. Regular, uneventful shuttle flights had certainly given us the idea that spaceflight had become a routine endeavor, and the inclusion of a high school teacher on a space mission seemed like a logical development. One day soon, I thought, anyone might be able to take a ride on the Space Shuttle!

This idea was not limited to my seven-year-old brain, however. Take a look at this scene from EPCOT Center’s Horizons:

What’s that vehicle delivering that 21st century family to their new home on the Brava Centuari space station? It’s the Space Shuttle! Very little of Horizons was grounded in the “now”. The places the characters lived, the technology they used, even the clothes they wore bore more resemblance to the Star Trek films of the 1980s than they did to anything in the real world. The Space Shuttle (seen in the scene above and also in the background of another space scene) was the only piece of the Horizons future that we had right now, and its very existence (and successful, routine operation) was an assurance that space colonies and floating cities lay not too far off.

Those dreams evaporated at 11:38 AM on January 28, 1986. We found out the hard way that launching a manned vehicle into orbit is not (and may never be) as relatively safe and easy as flying a jetliner from New York to Los Angeles. The accident exposed longstanding flaws in the way NASA went about its business, and shattered any ideas we may have had about the possibility of living in large space colonies by the turn of the twenty-first century. Worst of all, seven families lost sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, moms, dads, husbands, and wives.

Today we have a more sober, pragmatic view of human spaceflight. The loss of the Columbia in 2003 reminded us that anything can go wrong at any time on a space mission, and the astronauts aren’t really safe until they’re standing on terra firma. The shuttle program is scheduled to end this year, and the International Space Station may be abandoned and deorbited by 2016. There were not, as the Horizons narration suggested, all kinds of valuable resources floating around in near-Earth orbit waiting for us to exploit them. The moon seems to be devoid of any resources that would be worth our while to figure out how to mine, and the asteroids in the belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter would have to be full of cancer-curing magic beans for us to even begin investigating how we might go about mining them.

The fact is that in every life there are hardships and tragedies that force us to let go of childish ideas we once had and grow up. It’s no fun, but that’s the way it is. For my generation, the Challenger disaster was one of those tragedies.

I’m with Coco

The Defining Moment

In the years to come, when I reflect on my most recent trip to Walt Disney World (January 3-7, 2010) I’ll probably think of the bathroom at the rear of EPCOT’s Imagination pavilion.

Perhaps I should explain: it’s no secret that the first two weeks of January saw record cold throughout most of the United States, including Florida. Of course, when I planned my weeklong Disney vacation for the first week of January, I figured that we’d have mild weather; morning lows in the 40s with highs in the mid-60s to low 70s. I definitely did not plan on record cold temperatures, and as a native Floridian I’m not very well adapted to them. Nor is Walt Disney World.

 

I found this out the hard way early in the afternoon of January 4. I popped into the Imagination pavilion’s gift shop to pick up some Figment merchandise before our lunchtime reservation at Le Cellier, and while I was there I decided to visit the restroom. Normally, I like the restroom at the rear of the Imagination pavilion. It's never crowded because not many people know it's there, and since I prefer little or no human interaction during my restroom experience that's a big plus for me. However, the windy, frigid-as-Kate Gosselin weather highlighted an important design flaw in the Imagination restrooms: their lack of front doors. In the warmer months, this isn't much of a problem since the air-conditioning system is robust enough to keep the worst of the heat out. However, the heating system is obviously not as powerful because there was virtually no difference in temperature from the outside to the inside. Not only that, but the faucets were only dispensing cold water. So it was that, at the dawn of the second decade of the 21st century, I found myself freezing my butt off in a restroom at a place called Future World.

While we’re on the subject of the Imagination pavilion, I think it’s very interesting that its gift shop sells all manner of Figment merchandise (including a t-shirt that features both Figment and Dreamfinder) but no Dr. Nigel Channing merchandise.

Just thought I’d point that out.

Pieces of EPCOT Center

Well, I’m back from Walt Disney World, and after spending parts of three days at EPCOT I’ve got pictures (although not as many as I would’ve liked) and a few observations.

There were moments when EPCOT Center would positively enthrall you. You’d be on a ride, and the Imagineers had done their job so well that you were effectively transported to another place and time. Fortunately, there are still a few moments like that to be had in today’s EPCOT, and here they are:

• Spaceship Earth: As I’ve said before, I don’t really understand all the vitriol that’s been directed at this attraction since it’s 2007 redesign. Much of the original attraction has been retained. The Judi Dench narration is obviously aimed at a different generation of people than the Perrin, Cronkite, or Irons narrations were. All in all, it still does a good job of immersing you in different times and places.
• Universe of Energy’s dinosaur diorama: Except for the addition of the easily-ignorable Ellen animatronic and some recoloring of the dinosaurs (most notably the T-rex), the only part of the Energy pavilion that really excites people hasn’t been changed at all since 1982. It’s well-maintained, and absolutely saturated with that old-school attention to detail that Disney World did so well until Team Disney Orlando decided it didn’t want to pay for that stuff anymore. I’m not going to complain about the filmed portions of the attraction, since they were never that great. Sure, the Radok show was technically impressive, but it lacked truly entertaining content.
• The first part of Mexico’s Gran Fiesta Tour: You board your boat, and float down the waterway between the San Angel Inn restaurant and the miniature pyramid. The background painting that decorates the wall behind the pyramid is ridiculously detailed; and even as you’re scrutinizing it, finding new details you never realized were there, your boat enters a magnificently-detailed recreation of an ancient Mexican temple. And then the Three Caballeros appear and ruin everything. The minute or so before they appear is pure gold, though. Not to be missed.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

Off to the World

Well, in less than 48 hours I’ll be on my way to Disney World for a five-day stay. I hope to bring back enough pictures and observations to fuel several more months of posts. I’m especially looking forward to spending an extended amount of time in the World Showcase, and I’ve resolved not to rush through Innoventions like I did the last few visits. Hopefully I’ll find some good stuff there. (In Innoventions, I mean. I know there’s good stuff in the World Showcase).

I also want to take a moment to thank the people who do me the honor of reading these insane scribblings of mine. You’re the best!

So here we are, ten years into the 21st century. We don’t have hoverboards, flying cars, robot butlers, floating cities, holographic videophones, giant space colonies, cities on the Moon, or neon-colored jumpsuits with plastic booties, but at least we have Twitter. That’s a good thing, right?

Maybe we really are doomed.

On the other hand, Spaceship Earth is still the most futuristic-looking twenty-seven-year-old building in existence. As a kid I imagined that most buildings would look similarly futuristic by 2010, but unlike flat panel TVs and ever-more-powerful computers, construction costs for edifices shaped like 180-foot spheres or multistory glass pyramids have not plunged into the realm of easy affordability. Ah, well. I guess there were Spaceship Earths all over the world, then the symbol of EPCOT wouldn’t be as unique.