It's day one of the three-day Bell Riots. Everyone pay attention to internet channel 90 on your giant computers with tiny screens.
It's day one of the three-day Bell Riots. Everyone pay attention to internet channel 90 on your giant computers with tiny screens.
Memory Alpha's riot timeline:
Early in the morning of September 1st, a fight between a guard and a dim sparked a riot, wherein the ghosts led by B.C. attacked the Sanctuary guards and quickly captured the Sanctuary Processing Center as well as the rest of the district. Armed with the weapons of the overpowered guards, the ghosts took six center employees hostage, including Vin, Calvera, and Lee. They were joined by "Gabriel Bell" and Michael Webb, who acted as the voice and face of the riot while dealing with police negotiator Detective Preston.
Chris Brynner, who owned Brynner Information Systems (which operated Channel 90 on the net), was convinced by Dax to break the law and to reconnect the Processing Center after the police cut it off. Reconnected on September 2nd, many Sanctuary residents (such as Henry Garcia) were able to tell their stories of imprisonment to the outside world. As a result, the American public became aware of the great injustice that had been hidden from them and further riots broke out in Sanctuaries across the US.
Despite protests from Detective Preston, the governor of California ordered National Guardsmen to retake the Sanctuary by force on September 3rd at 0500 hours. In the melee, hundreds of Sanctuary residents were killed, including B.C. and Michael Webb. "Gabriel Bell" was shot, protecting Vin and the other hostages (all of whom remained unharmed).
I always find how current (for the time) ideas are used to shape the vision of the future. In the 90s cable was still extremely relevant but the internet wasn’t. So the idea of “channels” was mapped to it. And flat panel screens hadn’t become widely used (or even invented) as well as compute was in big gray boxes so that’s how they continued big honking computers. Even though it was supposed to be 30 years in the future from when the show was written.
You saw the same think in ToS and Star Wars too (mainly the tech difference between the OT and the prequels)
AOL was still pretty widely-used then, and it used the concept of "channels" so it wasn't too much of a stretch. I suppose the writers figured that paradigm used for the early internet would stick.
Alternatively, they were accidentally right in that the internet, streaming specifically, is looping back around to become cable TV again.
YouTube has "channels"
Every computer on TOS fits into room sized cabinets and has rows of blinkenlights on the front panel. This is what computers looked like when the show aired.
The blinkenlights are there to report the contents of the registers in binary code. This helps a lot when you are debugging by single-stepping the entire computer one instruction at a time. Any programmer today would think this is incredibly quaint.
The show completely missed the microcomputer revolution that was brewing in the real space program at the same time they were on the air. There was a period where Apollo Guidance Computer was consuming nearly the entire national supply of integrated circuits.
The blinkenlights are there to report the contents of the registers in binary code. This helps a lot when you are debugging by single-stepping the entire computer one instruction at a time.
And now we have redstone torches for this.
Any programmer today would think this is incredibly quaint.
Like using a keyboard :D
True, although I was already on the internet in 1995 when this came out and it was clear to me even then that the writers didn't really do their research. But yeah, for most people it was still something that said "future." The web itself had only been invented three years before. The dot-com bubble wouldn't start for another couple of years. So it was this weird in-between time where the internet (or net or information superhighway as we now no longer call it) was the hot new thing but most people really didn't know what it was.
and Star Wars too (mainly the tech difference between the OT and the prequels)
My headcanon between OT and PT was the galaxy was kind of in a technological recession because the Empire nationalized a some industries and hoarded the high end tech for building their massive new navy and military, kinda how resources were rationed in WW2. It's even stated in some sources that the rebellion had to use cheaper or older equipment/vessels because they weren't as well-funded
I always think that every time I watch the original alien movies. It's this big technologically advanced ship in the distant future, and yet all the screens are still CRTs.
Part of that was a design choice of course but they tried to make it a little bit more modern in the later films.
Same with Star wars of course as well.
i think they just called it the 'net'. i remember thinking it weird they didnt use the word 'internet'
For most of this year, it has been just a meme, but people have gotten more and more reasons to actually riot. That makes me sad. Please don't actually riot.
but people have gotten more and more reasons to actually riot. That makes me sad. Please don't actually riot.
So despite knowing that there are reasons to riot — even good ones — you'd prefer that society stay in the state that it is in?
"Pls maintain status quo, I'm scared of change"
Net channel 90 is fake news. I always tune my giant computer with small screen to channel 36.
I mostly watch Network 23. On channel 23.
The only problem I have with them is they don't seem to be covering that story about people exploding in their homes...
Oh, that Chris Brynner!
“Did you get jacked?”
As far as I'm concerned, this can still happen. The date might even be right, but the year certainly isn't.
IMO, DS9's creators just gave us more credit than we deserved about the technological progress we would make between when the episode aired and when the bell riots were supposed to start.
It's been a while since I watched the episode, but if I recall correctly, they had technology in the episode that we do not currently have.
I'm still convinced this is pretty much inevitable given the current state of the world, it's only a question of when.
There are ongoing concentration camps in a few places around the world, the bell riots could be sparked at any one of them, right?
IIRC, the bell riots were in the USA.... So unless the camps are in the US, probably not?
I don't want riots to break out today. Or ever, really.
"Hmm. Computer says no."
