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The Future Is Now: Diegetic Prototypes and the Role of Popular Films in Generating Real-World Technological Development

February 2010
Social Studies of Science 40(1):41-70

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California Polytechnic State University

Scholarship in the history and sociology of technology has convincingly demonstrated that technological development is not inevitable, pre-destined or linear. In this paper I show how the creators of popular films including science consultants construct cinematic representations of technological possibilities as a means by which to overcome these obstacles and stimulate a deisre in audiences to see potential technologies become realities. This paper focuses specifically on the production process in order to show how entertainment producers construct cinematic scenarios with an eye towards generating real-world funding opportunities and the ability to construct real-life prototypes. I introduce the term 'diegetic prototypes' to account for the ways in which cinematic depictions of future technologies demonstrate to large public audiences a technology's need, viability and benevolence. Entertainment producers create diegetic prototypes by influencing dialogue, plot rationalizations, character interactions and narrative structure. These technologies only exist in the fictional world – what film scholars call the diegesis – but they exist as fully functioning objects in that world. The essay builds upon previous work on the notion of prototypes as 'performative artefacts'. The performative aspects of prototypes are especially evident in diegetic prototypes because a film's narrative structure contextualizes technologies within the social sphere. Technological objects in cinema are at once both completely artificial – all aspects of their depiction are controlled in production – and normalized within the text as practical objects that function properly and which people actually use as everyday objects.

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Social Studies of Science 40/1 (February 2010) 41–70

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ISSN 0306-3127 DOI: 10.1177/0306312709338325

ABSTRACT Scholarship in the history and sociology of technology has convincingly

demonstrated that technological development is not inevitable, pre-destined or

linear. In this paper I show how the creators of popular films including science

consultants construct cinematic representations of technological possibilities as a

means by which to overcome these obstacles and stimulate a desire in audiences to

see potential technologies become realities. This paper focuses specifically on the

production process in order to show how entertainment producers construct

cinematic scenarios with an eye towards generating real-world funding opportunities

and the ability to construct real-life prototypes. I introduce the term ‘diegetic

prototypes’ to account for the ways in which cinematic depictions of future

technologies demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, viability and

benevolence. Entertainment producers create diegetic prototypes by influencing

dialogue, plot rationalizations, character interactions and narrative structure. These

technologies only exist in the fictional world – what film scholars call the diegesis –

but they exist as fully functioning objects in that world. The essay builds upon

previous work on the notion of prototypes as ‘performative artefacts’. The

performative aspects of prototypes are especially evident in diegetic prototypes

because a film’s narrative structure contextualizes technologies within the social

sphere. Technological objects in cinema are at once both completely artificial – all

aspects of their depiction are controlled in production – and normalized within the

text as practical objects that function properly and which people actually use as

everyday objects.

Keywords cinema, entertainment production, popularization, prototypes, science

consultants, technical development, visualization

The Future is Now:

Diegetic Prototypes and the Role of Popular

Films in Generating Real-world Technological

Development

David Kirby

I want to make humans-to-Mars real in the minds of the viewing public.

(Film director James Cameron speaking to The Mars Society)

Space may be the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement.

(Red Hot Chili Peppers, ‘Californication’, 1999)

How Film Establishes Technological Viability, Necessity

and Benevolence

On 19 September 1981 audiences witnessed the first successful implanta-

tion of a permanent artificial heart. The patient, a 20-year-old woman, did

not experience any physical complications after the surgery. As she walked

out of the hospital the doctor told her that he had given her ‘a heart as good

as any God ever made’.We will never know how long this woman lived with

her new heart because this transplant took place within the fictional film

Threshold, not in the real world. A year after the film’s release the first per-

manent artificial heart transplant on a living patient took place on 2

December 1982 at the University of Utah Medical Center (Jeffrey, 2001).

Audiences watching Threshold today could be forgiven for mistaking

the film for a historical docudrama or a documentary re-enactment of the

artificial heart’s development.The film listed 11 medical doctors as science

consultants, including Denton Cooley and Robert Jarvik, who played sig-

nificant roles in the actual 1982 transplant. Given that Jarvik was the inven-

tor of the artificial heart (the Jarvik-7) used in that operation, he, in

particular, had valid reasons for participating in the production of a film

such as Threshold that could ease public fears and demonstrate the possi-

bilities of his future medical technology. Other controversial medical tech-

nologies, including test-tube babies, the pacemaker and artificial limbs, had

seen fierce public resistance in the 1960s and 1970s as researchers moved

towards clinical trials (Turney, 1998). After an initial wave of enthusiasm

about the technology in the late 1960s, even heart transplants involving liv-

ing organs had received heavy public criticism, including a ban in Great

Britain (Nathoo, 2009).

In order to overcome public anxiety about the implantation of a per-

manent artificial heart in humans, scientists had to establish: (1) the neces-

sity of this technology; (2) the normalcy of a person who receives an

artificial heart and (3) the heart’s viability. Jarvik, Cooley and the other

consultants clearly believed that this film was an important public relations

opportunity and they helped film-makers construct a narrative for

Threshold that overtly addresses these three concerns.

A key theme in the first half of the film is the rarity and fallibility of

donated hearts. One early plot thread follows the character of Henry who

is waiting for a heart donor. As one character crudely puts it, Henry is actu-

ally waiting for ‘one good motorcycle accident’. Henry’s body rejects the

donor heart, prompting the central protagonist Dr Vrain to rail against

those who would prevent the development of an artificial heart (necessity).

In addition, the film’s dialogue highlights scientists’ concerns about ‘irra-

tional’ fears that accompany new medical technologies. Aldo Gehring, the

character who invents the heart, for example, tells a sceptic:

The fact is that fifteen years ago when the pacemaker was introduced it

created a furore. People said it was unnatural. That it was better to let the

sick die in peace. Now it is considered an everyday affair. No one ques-

tions its use.

42 Social Studies of Science 40/1

The film also addressed the public’s concern that a mechanized heart

might make the recipient feel like a mechanized person. The surgeon and

scientist repeatedly assure their patient that although the heart is a ‘mira-

cle’, she will be the ‘same person’ (normalcy).

Most importantly, the film’s visualization of a working technology

within its realist orientation established the achievability of a permanent

artificial heart (viability). Robert Jarvik designed the film’s heart model,

which he modelled after his own Jarvik-7. The film demonstrated how the

Jarvik heart solved the problems associated with older technologies. In a

crucial scene Dr Vrain inserts the Jarvik heart into the woman’s body. After

Dr Vrain attaches the heart, he switches it on. The audience then heard a

sound recognizable to anyone familiar with modern electronic devices: a

faint whirring sound that reassured the audience that the machine works.

The subsequent close-up of blood flowing through the artificial heart

shows the audience that it will indeed be a life-saving device. Through its

plot, narrative, dialogue and visual effects the film made something unfa-

miliar and frightening seem familiar and desirable.

In a previous paper in this journal, I showed how science consultants

can use popular movies to create highly plausible depictions of scientific

disasters in order to arouse fear in the audience (Kirby, 2003a). I argued

that popular cinema allows audiences to ‘virtually witness’ disasters in the

hopes that such movies will stimulate public action so as to prevent the dis-

asters from occurring in real-life.

In this essay, I extend that work by

demonstrating how film-makers, scientists and engineers can also create

filmic portrayals of technological possibilities with the intention of reduc-

ing anxiety and stimulating desire in audiences to see those possibilities

become realities. I build upon work on prototypes as ‘performative arte-

facts’ (Schrage, 2000; Iacucci et al., 2002; Suchman et al., 2002), as well

as the role of prototypes in contextualizing technologies within the social

sphere (Winston, 1998; Carroll, 2000). For film-makers and science con-

sultants, cinematic depictions of future technologies are what I term diegetic

prototypes that demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need,

benevolence and viability. Although I will primarily focus on the actions of

science consultants on popular films, there are also cases where film-makers

have had financial or ideological motivations for advocating development of

a proto-technology. Even film-makers who have no vested interest in seeing

the real-world development of a technology play a role in how these tech-

nologies are depicted on the screen. At the very least, any cinematic depic-

tion requires the consent of film-makers at the top of the production

process such as directors and producers.

Diegetic prototypes have a major rhetorical advantage even over true

prototypes: in the fictional world – what film scholars refer to as the

diegesis – these technologies exist as ‘real’ objects that function properly

and which people actually use. Diegetic prototypes extend the analytical

utility of virtual witnessing by addressing the issue of how cinematic

depictions can lead to real-world technological development. The notion

of virtual witnessing – that cinematic narratives present scientific and

Kirby: The Future is Now 43

technological objects as conforming to natural reality – is central to a

diegetic prototype. Witnessing a technology as a naturalistic part of a cin-

ematic landscape is significant, but it is not sufficient to convince audi-

ences of a technology’s essential worth. Diegetic prototypes entail an

additional visual and narrative rhetoric specifically framed so as to encour-

age audience support for the development of the technology on the screen.

Equally important, the embedding of diegetic prototypes within narratives

contextualizes emergent technologies within the social sphere. Within the

film world, Robert Jarvik’s artificial heart diegetic prototype worked prop-

erly, was safe and saved lives.

Social Contextualization and Diegetic Prototypes as

Performative Artefacts

If scholarship in the history and sociology of technology has taught us

nothing else, it has taught us that technological development is not

inevitable, pre-destined or linear. Any number of obstacles can impede or

alter the development of a potential technology including a lack of funding,

public apathy over the need for the technology, public concerns about

potential applications, or a fundamental belief that the technology will not

work (Williams & Edge, 1996). For scientists and engineers, the best way

to jump-start technical development is to produce a working physical pro-

totype. Working physical prototypes, however, are time consuming, expen-

sive and require initial funds. James Cameron’s quote that opens this paper

illustrates the faith that film-makers and science consultants place in cin-

ema’s ability to entice public support for technological development by

revealing possible technological futures. As Threshold demonstrates, cine-

matic depictions can foster public support for potential or emerging tech-

nologies by establishing the need, benevolence and viability of these

technologies. It is fictional film’s ability to create images of ‘technological

possibilities’ in the audience’s mind that leads film-makers and scientists to

believe that depictions embedded within cinematic narratives can help

overcome developmental obstacles.

In Serious Play, Michael Schrage (2000) argues that the prototyping

process has now become the driver of technological innovation. Models,

simulations and virtual prototypes are the means by which engineers and

futurists determine not only the viability of embryonic technologies, but also

which aspects meet the social needs of users. As Schrage says, ‘it’s not enough

to have brilliant ideas, you have to demonstrate them.You have to get people

to want to play with them’ (p. xiii). Schrage’s contention about the impor-

tance of social context for technological development is in line with the work

of Brian Winston (1998). Winston found in the development of communi-

cation technologies that patterns of innovation and technological diffusion

were not separated from the social sphere but instead were highly dependent

on social forces. Winston (1998: 6) argues that the transformation from pro-

totype to invention – movement of a technology from the lab into the larger

world – requires ‘supervening social necessities’. Prototypes, then, are what

44 Social Studies of Science 40/1

Lucy Suchman et al. (2002: 164) call ‘performative artefacts’ that establish

in the social realm the viability and possibilities of a nascent technology.

The performative aspects of prototypes are especially evident in diegetic

prototypes, because a film’s narrative structure contextualizes technologies

within the social sphere. Narratives in popular cinema require certainty from

their technological devices to move their stories forward. That is, of course,

unless a plot hinges upon technological uncertainty for dramatic purposes.

Even in these cases, however, the closure required by most popular movies

establishes certainty by the end of a film. So cinematic texts require tech-

nologies to work and provide utility to their users. Technological objects in

cinema are at once both completely artificial – all aspects of their depiction

are controlled in production – and normalized in their representation as

practical objects. Characters treat these technologies as a ‘natural’ part of

their landscape and interact with these prototypes as if they are everyday

parts of their world. For technologist Julian Bleecker (2004: vi), fictional

characters are ‘socializing’ technological artefacts by creating meanings for

the audience ‘which is tantamount to making the artifacts socially relevant’.

Thus, the supervening social necessities for potential technologies are estab-

lished as given within the framework of a popular film and are disseminated

to a large audience through the highly popular medium of cinema.

Joseph Corn’s and others’ studies on the ‘history of the future’ demon-

strate how visions of the future in popular culture have been a powerful force

in creating and framing the desire for technological advances (see, for exam-

ple, Corn, 1986; Corn & Horrigan, 1996). There is, in fact, a long tradition

of scholars charting the ways in which popular cultural representations,

including entertainment media such as cinema, have led to the production of

real technoscience (for example, Hayles, 1999). Studies examining space sci-

ence, in particular, have demonstrated how scientists, engineers and space

enthusiasts have used science fiction literature to promote, and secure fund-

ing for, space initiatives (Bainbridge, 1991; McCurdy, 1997; Penley, 1997;

Kilgore, 2003; Franklin, 2008).There has also been recent work done on the

use of science fiction tropes and imagery within non-fiction texts, such as

popular science books, magazines and documentaries, to promote the need

for and potential of an emerging technology (Milburn, 2002; Haran et al.,

2007; Mellor, 2007). These works all demonstrate the utility of speculative

narratives in promoting technoscientific agendas across a wide variety of

media. What separates out a diegetic prototype in cinema from other media

is its combination of a visual rhetoric along with narrative integration. No

matter how evocative a novel is in its descriptions and storytelling, it still lacks

the visual element that is at the heart of a diegetic prototype. Movies can show

audiences how a technology works, why it is safe and why they need it.

Despite numerous studies showing the importance and efficacy of sci-

ence and technology in entertainment media, there has been surprisingly

little academic attention paid to the production of these texts (for excep-

tions see, Frank, 2003; Kirby, 2003a, b). Cinematic texts are the sum total

of film-making and consulting decisions made during production. In this

essay, I acknowledge the agency of those who made these decisions by

Kirby: The Future is Now 45

examining the production context for entertainment media in order to

show how process impacts content. The cases that I report below of con-

sultants and film-makers using cinema to promote technological develop-

ment are located within a larger research project concerning the role that

scientists play in constructing cinematic texts and how such popularization

affects real world technoscientific culture.

The goal of this essay, then, is not to explain the development of med-

ical, computer or space technologies in cinema. Rather, its aim is to focus

on the social actions of film-makers and science consultants in order to

show specifically how they construct cinematic scenarios – their diegetic

prototypes – with an eye towards generating real-world funding opportuni-

ties and the ability to construct real-life prototypes. Diegetic prototypes dif-

fer substantially from what I term ‘speculative scenarios’ in movies, such as

manned missions to the centre of the Earth as in the film The Core (2003).

Speculative scenarios represent highly implausible and impractical situa-

tions and technologies that film-makers and science consultants imbue

with a sheen of plausibility, so that they look possible within a film’s narra-

tive. They make these technologies look plausible, knowing that they are

impossible to achieve in real life. In contrast, technological advocates who

construct diegetic prototypes have a vested interest in conveying to audi-

ences that these fictional technologies can and should exist in the real world.

In essence, they are creating ‘pre-product placements’ for technologies that

do not yet exist. Film-makers and science consultants craft diegetic proto-

types and enhance their realism by creating a full elaboration of the tech-

nological diegesis which includes any part of the fictional world concerning

the technology. Through their actions they construct a filmic realism that

implies self-consistency in both the real world and the story world.The cre-

ation of diegetic prototypes involves the inclusion of scenes that provide

opportunities to demonstrate this realism as well as positing a real world

need for the technology and the avoidance of scenes that would undermine

the technology or cast it as risky. Popular cinema, then, provides scientists,

engineers and technological entrepreneurs with the opportunity to pro-

mote visions of a shiny future in hopes that these visions will become self-

fulfilling prophecies.

Below I explore four cases of technological development in which diegetic

prototypes played a role in generating public excitement (and subsequent

governmental or corporate action) for moving these technologies from the

fictional into the real world. It should be mentioned that, although this

study moves across several historical ranges and changing cultural contexts,

the key point of the essay – the use of film to visualize, and thus realize, spec-

ulative technologies – holds across contexts. Cases were chosen to best

demonstrate how diegetic prototypes have been constructed for a broad range

of technologies that exhibit a range of real world obstacles to production.

I began the essay with the case of a medical technology that had already

been built, tested in animals and made ready to use, but which required

public willingness to allow human use because of ethical issues. In contrast,

non-medical technologies, such as virtual reality or data gloves pose few

46 Social Studies of Science 40/1

physical dangers to users, but incur huge financial risks to entrepreneurs

because of high development costs amid uncertainties about potential con-

sumer markets. What better way to generate market interest for a potential

technology than to demonstrate its potential in a popular movie? In The

Lawnmower Man (1992) and Minority Report (2001), diegetic prototypes

of embryonic computer-based technologies directly resulted in funding

opportunities and the ability to construct real-life prototypes. Audiences

could see with their own eyes ‘real’ people effortlessly interacting with

these futuristic computer technologies. But what if technologies have no

obvious social benefits, an extremely high price tag and high risk factors?

Technologies where the success or failure of development hinges upon

whether or not scientists garner public support? Such is the case for space

travel, which presents hard-to-define benefits alongside easily understood

challenges and risks. Therefore, I examine two ground-breaking space-

based films, Frau Im Mond [Woman in the Moon] (1929) and Destination

Moon (1950), which provided scientists and engineers with the opportunity

to create diegetic prototypes of rocket travel and promote visions of a shiny

outer space future that played a role in convincing the public that space

travel was essential.

Virtual ‘Virtual Reality’: Visualizing the Potential of

Computer-based Technologies

Technological entrepreneur and film director Brett Leonard created an

entire movie, The Lawnmower Man (1992), which highlighted the potential

of virtual reality (VR) and three-dimensional (3-D) interactive technolo-

gies. The horror aspects of the film certainly angered many VR proponents.

Especially scenes set within the virtual space where Jobe uses the technol-

ogy to try and take over all the world’s computers (see Fig. 1).Yet, the film’s

visuals were an important vehicle in promoting the potential of VR.

According to Leonard, his exposure to these embryonic computer tech-

nologies came through his integration into ‘the social network of digerati’

in northern California in the 1980s.

The financial success of his first film

The Dead Pit (1989) brought him to the attention of producers who owned

the rights to ‘a 7–10 page Stephen King short story called “The

Lawnmower Man” about a guy who telekinetically controls a lawnmower

to rip a guy apart’. As Leonard tells it, the minimalist nature of the source

material presented him with an opportunity to create a film based around

the VR technologies he had been discussing with digital pioneers such as

Jaron Lanier: ‘I told [the producers] “Well, I can’t really make an entire

movie out of this but I have this idea about something called virtual real-

ity.”’ So the King short story became a single scene in a larger narrative

involving VR technologies.

The film’s computer-generated visual effects served a dual purpose for

Leonard. First, the state-of-the-art computer graphics would be the film’s

major selling point. Second, the VR world inhabited by the film’s central

character, Jobe, would illustrate for the audience VR technology’s potential

Kirby: The Future is Now 47

applications in the real world. For Leonard, VR represented an extreme

example of the types of interactive technologies he was publicly promoting,

‘If you go back and read the profiles of that time, I was crying for a revo-

lution. I saw an end of passive media and the beginning of interactive

media.’ His goal for The Lawnmower Man was to create a modern ‘techno-

logical mythology’ featuring interactive technologies. According to

Leonard, a film director acts like a ‘tribal shaman’ who creates visions of

the future that can define a culture’s shared desires:

If you study the work of Joseph Campbell, in particular his book The

Mythic Image, you see that it presents a thesis of how visual, artistic and

visionary storytelling creations define for cultures what the future will be

because it creates this vision first. Cinema, because it is a visual story

telling modality, fits this notion very, very strongly. The feedback loop for

cinema is very quick and it is getting quicker all the time. So when I talk

about myth, I am talking about creating iconography for a new landscape.

That was one of the things that I was very focused on while creating the

visual style of The Lawnmower Man.

As part of this myth-making process he created a ‘narrative environment’

for The Lawnmower Man in which the technologies on display became a

natural part of the visual landscape in the film.

Leonard also understood that the inclusion of emerging but unknown

Internet technologies enhanced the plausibility of this elaborate diegetic pro-

totype. Through his social contacts he was able to discuss upcoming devel-

opments in digital technology with several people who were at the forefront

of computer science including Lanier, Nicholas Negroponte and Steve

48 Social Studies of Science 40/1

FIGURE 1

The Lawnmower Man took audiences for a ‘virtual reality’ ride as seen in this film still.

While the film was criticized for its horror elements, the film’s depictions of virtual real-

ity technology increased the public’s desire for their own virtual reality journeys

Wozniak. According to his production designer Alex McDowell, film-makers

also toured various computer companies, such as Sun Microsystems, and

talked to a number of computer scientists about recent developments in com-

puting technology. They were looking for nascent technologies that would

make the VR technology in the film seem more cutting edge and prescient:

I met some interesting people at Apple. It was pre- any public access to

web links or hyperlinks. I remember that the speed gleaning idea for Jobe

in the film, seeing him scan all this stuff, came from this meeting. I was

completely fascinated by this thing that is so commonplace now.

While the horror aspects of the film angered many VR proponents, the

film’s visuals were an important vehicle in promoting the potential of VR.

The film provided audiences with a VR ‘experience’ that contemporary VR

technologies could not. An Omni magazine article from 1992 captures this

sense of the film presenting an alluring vision of a VR future:

In the graphics scenes you will see what such worlds might look like in the

future. At present, most VR systems are fairly crude, but the technology is

developing extremely fast. According to David C. Traub, an immersion

computing expert from Centerpoint Communications who was a consult-

ant on the film, by ‘looking beyond the futuristic luster of these new toys

to the somewhat pained fantasies they often portray,’ The Lawnmower Man

will give us some powerful hints about what might be in store. (Wertheim,

1992)

The Lawnmower Man was a financial success with an estimated budget of $10

million and a worldwide box office take of $150 million. Leonard followed

up The Lawnmower Man with another VR-based film Virtuosity (1995).

As Leonard had hoped his cinematic depictions of VR technology cre-

ated a ‘modern myth’, which whet the public’s appetite for enhanced VR

and immersive entertainment technologies. The Lawnmower Man’s success

was a key component in his ability to acquire the venture capital needed to

start L-Squared Entertainment where he could develop new interactive

entertainment technologies: ‘[L-Squared] came out of my success as a

young director on [The] Lawnmower Man and an acknowledgement of my

futurist talents. I was very much wanting to create a company to extrapo-

late off of those things both from an entrepreneurial level and on a creative

level.’ After Virtuosity Leonard began to create the types of interactive expe-

riences he hinted at in The Lawnmower Man including the first IMAX 3-D

movie T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous (1998) that Leonard believes:

was the closest thing to an amazing immersive virtual reality experience as

you could have in the context of a narrative. This work followed from my

previous work on Lawnmower Man and Virtuosity in a natural kind of pro-

gression both from the interactive side and the IMAX 3-D side.

For Leonard, then, this ‘immersive virtual reality experience’ was only pos-

sible because of his successful diegetic prototypes.

Kirby: The Future is Now 49

Computer engineer John Underkoffler’s engineering firm has also ben-

efited from his opportunity to create cinematic depictions of computer-

based technologies in films such as Aeon Flux (2005) and Iron Man (2008).

He has worked as a science consultant on several other high-profile films

including the Steven Spielberg technology-laden blockbuster Minority

Report (2001), starring Tom Cruise, which was based on the Philip K. Dick

short story ‘The Minority Report’. Underkoffler is well aware of cinema’s

ability to instil public desire to see the real-world development of fictional

technologies. In fact, he approaches every consulting opportunity with the

explicit goal of creating cinematic technologies that enter into the ‘techno-

logical imaginative vernacular’ of actual scientific discourse.

To do this,

Underkoffler treats his diegetic prototypes as if he were designing not only

physical prototypes but also real objects that become part of ‘everyday life’

in the diegesis.

Production designer Alex McDowell and prop master Jerry Moss

noticed Underkoffler’s dissertation work on interactive technologies during a

pre-production tour of MIT’s Media Lab where he had just completed a

PhD. They were impressed enough with his work and his knowledge of

movies to hire him as the primary science consultant on Minority Report a few

months later. Although Underkoffler was responsible for helping design all of

the technologies in Minority Report, his chief concern was the gesture-based

computer-interface technology that protagonist John Anderton uses to

manipulate computer data with his hands (see Fig. 2). Minority Report was a

golden opportunity for John Underkoffler to demonstrate to the public, and

potential funders, that not only would his gestural interface technology work,

but also that the technology would appear as if it were ‘natural’ and intuitive

for users.The important factor was that Underkoffler conscientiously treated

this cinematic representation as an actual prototype, ‘We worked so hard to

make the gestural interface in the film real. I really did approach the project

as if it were an R&D [research and development] thing.’

The most successful cinematic technologies are taken for granted by

the characters in the diegesis, and thus, communicate to the audience that

these are not extraordinary but rather everyday technologies. These tech-

nologies not only appear normal while on the screen, but they also fit seam-

lessly into the entire diegetic world. In these cases audiences will accept as

true that characters still use these technologies even when they are off-

screen. Successful cinematic technologies conform to Lionel Trilling’s

(1972) notion of ‘sincerity’ in acting as the performance of not performing.

‘Technological sincerity’, then, means taking technological entities as part

of the film’s natural landscape. For Minority Report, this meant that the ges-

tural interface technology appeared to be something John Anderton has

used before it appeared on the screen and will use again even when the

camera is somewhere else. Yet, for audiences they do represent extraordi-

nary technologies because they do not exist in the real world. This means

that these cinematic technologies come across to audiences as both ordi-

nary and extraordinary.To achieve the sense of an extraordinary technology

appearing as ordinary within the diegetic space, Underkoffler established

50 Social Studies of Science 40/1

the gestural interface as a ‘self-consistent technological entity’ that adhered

not only to the rules of the diegetic world but also to its own internal logic

and the constraints of real-world computer technologies.

To achieve self-consistency, Underkoffler worked out an entire new

gestural language for his technology that he based on American interna-

tional sign language, SWAT team commands, air traffic control signals and

the Kodály hand system for musical notes. Although only a small fraction

of the language appears in the film, Underkoffler believed it was essential

to develop an entire system of commands and gestures. According to

Underkoffler, previous incorporations of a gestural interface into movies

were not formalized in any way:

The way a gestural interface normally happens in a film, like Johnny

Mnemonic (1995) that involves some suggestion of a gestural interface and

Paycheck (2003) with which I was indirectly involved, the way you usually

do that is the director says ‘Argh, just have the actor out there and wave

his hands around or her hands around and let the editor sort it out.’ And

the poor hapless editor is left with this task to piece together something.

The best you can do at that point is to make it spatially continuous and

consistent so that you can cut around and the same basic gestures are hap-

pening. But you cannot really put any meaning in at that point.

To make sure his diegetic prototype functioned appropriately and conveyed

a sense of internal consistency with established protocols for use, he cre-

ated training videos and manuals, and a dictionary of gestures. He worked

Kirby: The Future is Now 51

FIGURE 2

Police detective John Anderton uses science consultant John Underkoffler’s gestural

interface technology in a film still from Minority Report

extensively with Steven Spielberg, the actors and special effects technicians

before and during filming. For production purposes, Underkoffler’s com-

prehensiveness allowed actors to engage in improvisation work on set. In

terms of the technology’s cinematic realism, a completely worked out ges-

tural interface minimized the possibility of the types of logical inconsistency

that call attention to cinema’s constructed nature. In addition, a totally self-

consistent technology would convey to the audience that they could operate

this technology themselves:

The gestural interface has real narrative and technological consistency. I

think the lay audience look at the technology in the film and say, ‘Wow.

Okay, I see how that works. I think I could operate that myself in fact. I

learned how from the film. I bet I know what that gesture means, and I bet

I know what that command is.’ Somehow that technological consistency

has remained very, very resonant since the film came out.

Self-consistency of the gestural interface enhanced the film’s realism

but more importantly for Underkoffler it moved his technology into the

technological imaginative vernacular by making it appear that anyone could

operate the gestural interface.

In addition to fully working out a complete gestural language,

Underkoffler established the gestural interface as a ‘real’ technology in the

diegesis by acknowledging potential design flaws. ‘Perfection’ is a mistake

made with most cinematic depictions of technology, because it is a por-

trayal that does not mesh with most audience’s experiences. In the case of

the gestural interface, Underkoffler reasoned that the technology’s design

would make it incredibly sensitive to the user’s hand motions. Therefore,

the data on the computer screen would follow any hand movements, inten-

tional or otherwise. Underkoffler suggested to Steven Spielberg that he add

a scene to the film in which someone extends his hand to Anderton while

he is using the gestural interface. Anderton would instinctively move to

shake this person’s hand, and by doing so, he would shift all the data on the

screen into a corner. Underkoffler successfully conveyed to Spielberg that

rather than detracting from the technology’s realism, this flaw would add to

the believability because it highlighted the self-consistency of the technol-

ogy. Spielberg found the idea visually interesting and so he incorporated it.

This ‘flaw’ also served Underkoffler’s goal of convincing the public that his

technology could function in the real world. One concern with potential

gestural interface technologies is the possibility that they will not be

motion-sensitive enough to be considered useful. Thus, the ‘flaw’ in the

movie was not really a design flaw, Underkoffler meant for it to highlight

the fact that the technology worked too well.

In the end, Underkoffler’s diegetic prototype was extremely successful

on many fronts. His gestural interface quickly entered into the techno-

logical imaginative vernacular and has since become a focal point for dis-

cussions about interactive technologies. Underkoffler points out that,

‘A simple internet search will turn up dozens of academic projects and

products that identify themselves with or allude to the Minority Report’s

52 Social Studies of Science 40/1

gestural interface technology.’ Underkoffler himself was able to generate

significant capital because of his diegetic prototype:

In the wake of Minority Report there have been countless approaches from

individuals, organizations, and companies that saw a piece of technology

in the film and want to know from Alex [McDowell] or me is that real?

Can we pay you to build it if it is not real? Chief among those technolo-

gies, of course, is the gestural interface.

These approaches led to the funds he needed to start the company Oblong

Industries and to turn his diegetic prototype into a physical prototype.

This real world prototype in turn led to a development contract with

defence giant Raytheon to produce gestural interface technology for the

US military.

From Underkoffler’s perspective, his work as science con-

sultant on Minority Report was not simply a minor component in this story;

his well-worked out diegetic prototype was the crucial element in the

development process.

Cinematic Test Rockets: Demonstrating Space Travel’s

Viability in Woman in the Moon

Diegetic prototypes can be particularly effective for technologies such as

space travel that have no obvious social benefits, an extremely high price

tag and high risk factors. Development of these technologies hinges

strongly upon whether or not scientists can garner significant public sup-

port. Director Fritz Lang hired the Romanian rocket scientist Hermann

Oberth, popular science writer Willy Ley, and the German Rocket Society

to serve as consultants/assistants for his film Woman in the Moon. On the

surface, the collaboration seemed a win–win situation. Lang created the sci-

ence fiction classic Metropolis in 1926 and was one of Germany’s greatest

cinematic artists. In addition to increasing scientific verisimilitude in his

film, Lang hoped that linking the well-known Oberth to his space-flight

film would add significant publicity value. Lang and the film’s production

company, the world-renowned Universum Film AG (Ufa), even commis-

sioned Oberth to build a 2 m gasoline–oxygen rocket to be launched as a

publicity stunt at the premiere of the motion picture.

For Oberth, a film by one of the world’s most famous film directors

provided a significant means for promoting the field of rocketry, especially

his own research on liquid-propellant rockets, to a worldwide audience

including potential financial backers. In addition, Oberth received vital

research funds from Ufa and Lang for his work on a test rocket. Ultimately,

Oberth’s work on the Lang film provided a significant boost for his scien-

tific research, improved his funding opportunities, and successfully pro-

moted rocketry to a wide audience.

Oberth was in need of research funding and experimental validation of

his ideas about liquid-propellant rockets since all of his work to this point

was theoretical. Essentially, Oberth was in a catch-22 situation that would

be familiar to any present day scientist who applies for funding through

Kirby: The Future is Now 53

granting agencies.The only way for Oberth to obtain funds for experimen-

tal research was to convince investors of the viability of his approach. Yet,

Oberth could only show the viability of his ideas by successfully firing a test

rocket and building that rocket, of course, required financing.

Although there were few channels for research funds in 1920s

Germany, there was enormous public excitement about rocketry and space

flight (Neufeld, 1990). The VfR was founded in 1927, in part to obtain

funding for Oberth’s research (Winter, 1983). Former palaeontologist

turned popular science writer Willy Ley was one of the founders of the VfR,

and its initial vice-president. Ley was an enthusiastic crusader for space

travel in general and for Oberth’s ideas in particular.While the VfR was able

to gather some capital through donations and membership fees, there was

still not enough money available for Oberth to pursue experiments to

demonstrate the feasibility of his liquid-propellant rockets.

Like many in the Weimar Republic, rockets and the possibility of space

travel fascinated Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. Inspired by industri-

alist Fritz von Opel and Max Valier’s ‘rocket car’ experiments, von Harbou

published the novel Frau im Mond in 1928 which she and Lang adapted

into a screenplay. Before contacting Oberth, Lang initially approached

Valier about serving as science consultant on the film.

Valier seemed to be

the perfect choice; his rocket car experiments had inspired the screenplay

and Valier’s book DerVerstoss in den Weltraum [Breakthrough Into Space] was

immensely popular. Although Valier was an almost shameless promoter, he

did not see the promotional value in working on a fictional film and turned

down Lang’s offer. He felt he was better served by directly promoting his

ideas through the lecture circuit and traditional academic venues, and by

continuing with his rocket car experiments. Upon actually meeting Valier,

Lang also decided that he might not be the best on-set consultant because

‘he talks too much’. It was unfortunate for Valier, someone trying to pro-

mote visions of the future, to have so clearly underestimated the power of

cinema as a communication technology.

It was at this point that Fritz Lang approached Oberth about serving

as consultant during production of Woman in the Moon. Oberth’s acquain-

tance, cultural historian and writer Otto Folberth, recalled in an article in

1930 that Oberth was ‘surprised by the offer of Ufa to be an advisor on

the rocket film Frau im Mond’ (quoted in Freeman, 1993: 43). Despite his

own positive experiences with the fictional novels of Jules Verne and H.G.

Wells, Oberth originally had misgivings about communicating the idea of

space travel through a fictional medium. He worried that rather than con-

veying the feasibility of space travel, the film would add to cartoonish

visions of space travel he had seen in other popular cultural portrayals. As

Folberth states, ‘Oberth had to overcome a number of misgivings before

he decided to accept the offer. For the newspapers, magazines, novels,

comic strips had already significantly compromised the scientific rigor of

the idea’ (quoted in Freeman, 1993: 43). Despite his misgivings, Oberth

accepted Lang’s invitation and moved to Berlin in Autumn 1928 to begin

work on the film.

54 Social Studies of Science 40/1

Willy Ley, whose popular 1928 book Die Möglichkeit der Weltraumfahrt

[The Feasibility of Interplanetary Travel] was also cited as a scientific source

by von Harbou, joined Oberth in Berlin to serve as astronomical science

consultant and write promotional articles for the film and the publicity

rocket. Unlike Oberth, Ley had no misgivings and he foresaw great pro-

motional possibilities in having Germany’s most famous director make a

movie on space travel. According to Ley:

The news that Fritz Lang was going to make a film on space travel was

very good news indeed. It is almost impossible to convey what magic that

name had in Germany at that time .... A Fritz Lang film on space travel,

consequently, meant a means of spreading the idea which could hardly be

surpassed in mass appeal and effectiveness. (Ley, 1968: 115–16)

Ley was hoping that Oberth’s diegetic prototype would galvanize public

support for governmental research funds. Although Lang constantly battled

with his consultants over depictions of the Moon, he gave Oberth wide lat-

itude in designing scenes featuring the rocket, its take-off and technical

details of its flight scenes. Oberth’s input included advice on a lengthy

scene featuring the movement of the rocket from a hangar into firing posi-

tion (see Fig. 3). A ‘Fritz Lang film’ had the added bonus of being a major

social event in Germany and invitations to the film’s premiere requested

‘tails or black-tie’.

This provided an opportunity to convey the message

directly to important and influential individuals who might actually have

the means to support rocket research:

Kirby: The Future is Now 55

FIGURE 3

For Oberth and Ley the take-off scene was the most crucial element of Woman in the

Moon. In this film still, the rocket is being moved into position for firing

The first showing of a Fritz Lang film was something for which there was

no equivalent anywhere as a social event.The audience – it was an unwrit-

ten but rigid rule that one had to wear full evening dress, not just a dinner

jacket – comprised literally everybody of importance in the realm of arts

and letters, with a heavy sprinkling of high government officials. It is not

an exaggeration to say that a sudden collapse of the theater building during

a Fritz Lang premiere would have deprived Germany of much of its intel-

lectual leadership at one blow. (Ley, 1947: 128–29)

Of course Ley and Oberth were counting on many potential funders to

attend the premiere of this particular Fritz Lang film. If done properly the

scenes of space travel could ‘demonstrate’ the feasibility of space travel suc-

cessfully enough to acquire funds for actual experiments. Thus, Oberth

treated the design of the fictional rocket and the trajectory as if he really

was designing a trip into space. Although Lang constantly battled with his

consultants over depictions of the Moon, he gave Oberth wide latitude in

designing scenes featuring the rocket, its take-off and technical details of its

flight scenes.

For Oberth, the opportunity to create depictions of rocket

travel in a Fritz Lang film outweighed any disappointment he may have felt

about the scientific accuracy of the Moon.

In conjunction with their film-making duties, Oberth and the VfR were

also constructing the publicity/test rocket. While the test rocket was nomi-

nally promotion for the film, Oberth, Ley and the VfR realized that the

rocket was as much about promoting the rocket itself as it was about pro-

moting the film. Moreover, Oberth and Ley saw a significant connection

between the film and the test rocket. Since Oberth designed the fictional

rocket – his diegetic prototype – based on his Model B liquid-fuel rocket,

then a successful rocket launch at the premiere would ultimately legitimate

the vision of space flight in the film. According to Ley (1947: 129), ‘The

idea was to say that this actual rocket represented the first step toward the

solution of the problem shown in the movie.’ In the end, Oberth envisioned

the launching of the test rocket at the premiere as a way for him to validate

the viability of the ideas that the audience was going to see on the screen.

By accepting Ufa and Lang’s offer of research funds Oberth commit-

ted himself to constructing and perfecting in less than 4 months a rocket

capable of soaring 90 km (50 miles) high. Unfortunately, Oberth’s previous

work consisted mainly of theoretical studies with few experiments.

According to Ley (1968: 115–16), ‘[Oberth] was the greatest authority on

rocket propulsion at that time, but he was a theorist, not an engineer.’ Four

months after construction had begun on the rocket, there was only a series

of explosions – one almost blinded Oberth – to show for Oberth’s efforts.

Fearing that failure to produce a much-publicized rocket would endanger

his reputation and call into question the feasibility of the liquid-fuel rocket,

he fled Berlin when he realized that he could not get a working model ready

in time for the film’s premiere (Ley, 1947: 135).

Despite Oberth’s failure in the real world, the diegetic lift-off that he

designed for the film was a complete success, since it visually and dramat-

ically communicated the possibilities of rocket travel to potential funders

56 Social Studies of Science 40/1

and government officials at the film’s premiere. According to Ley, the take-

off scene in the film achieved the goal of generating excitement in the pre-

miere audience about the potential of space travel:

There is without question no other scene, either on Earth or on the

Moon, that would have ruffled the poise of this cool, reserved, expert

audience – these journalists, scholars, diplomats, men of affluence, and

film stars. In the face of these outstanding technical achievements, the

audience exploded. Electrified, carried away. The fiery jets of this film

rocket swept away their carefully prepared skepticism, indifference, and

satiety with the same speed with which the rocket raced across the screen,

giving their minds a small glimpse of the tremendous possibilities. (Ley,

quoted in Freeman, 1993: 47)

Film critics also acknowledged seeing the ‘tremendous possibilities’ in that

take-off scene. Despite overall mediocre reviews for the film, the take-off

and rocket scenes impressed film critics throughout the world including art

historian Rudolph Arnheim and French journalist Jean Arroy.

Other rocket scientists quickly recognized the film’s capacity to visually

render rocketry and show audiences technological ‘possibilities’, and they

used the take-off scene from Woman in the Moon as a promotional device and

a fundraising tool (Geppert, 2007). A NewYork Times report on the showing

of the take-off scene from Woman in the Moon at a 1931 fundraising event for

space research captures the essential elements of a diegetic prototype:

The moving picture graphically illustrated some of the amazing experi-

ences which travelers to the moon could expect. Last night’s spectators

watched it [footage from Woman in the Moon] as if it were a newsreel of an

actual happening today. (Anonymous, 1931)

Oberth and Lang certainly considered that a successful test rocket would

have been the primary means of publicizing their ideas.Yet, the film served

their purposes just as well. In the end Oberth’s virtual rocket – his diegetic

prototype – succeeded in ways that his test rocket could not. Like a

Latourian immutable mobile (Latour, 1986, 1990), the cinematic demon-

stration provided advantages missing from an actual demonstration; the

film was portable, repeatable, and larger than life. These advantages would

again prove critical as space travel appeared in cinema 20 years later dur-

ing the next big step in aerospace engineering: moving from rockets to

manned space travel.

Documentary of the Future: Space Travel as a Dire

Necessity in Destination Moon

Destination Moon reached theatres as the Cold War was heating up and pro-

pagandists in the US and the USSR were beginning to use technological

supremacy as a symbol of ideological correctness (see McCurdy, 1997;

McDougall, 1997). While the space-race was well underway scientifically by

1950, the public campaign started in earnest with the release of producer

Kirby: The Future is Now 57

George Pal’s documentary-like film about a privately financed trip to the

moon, Destination Moon.The film’s financial and critical success launched a

long-lasting space film cycle that was bookended in 1968 by director Stanley

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Producer George Pal was indeed inter-

ested in rocketry and considered Destination Moon a ‘documentary of the

near future’ (Pal, quoted in Hickman, 1977: 42). Like all film-makers, Pal

was most interested in making money, but he hoped that the film would be

useful in promoting space travel to the public.The future of space travel was

certainly of critical concern to the numerous scientists (astronomer Robert

S. Richardson, rocket scientist Werner Von Braun and physicist Robert

Cornog, among many others) and scientific experts (artist Chesley

Bonestell, science popularizer Willy Ley and writer Robert Heinlein) who

assisted film-makers during the construction of the film.

Destination Moon

highlights cinema’s power as a persuasive tool for those with an ideological,

financial or research stake in promoting space travel and who had the capa-

bility to significantly influence the film’s visual and narrative construction.

I will focus on Destination Moon’s initial scriptwriter and main science

consultant, science fiction author and former US navy engineer Robert A.

Heinlein, who also wrote the 1947 book on which the film was nominally

based, Rocketship Galileo (Heinlein, 1950[1947]). Using Heinlein I will

show that his role in constructing this ‘documentary of the future’ went well

beyond technical recommendations. Whereas Herman Oberth was initially

reluctant to lend his scientific credibility to a fictional film, Heinlein envi-

sioned the film as a major opportunity to demonstrate the feasibility of and

the need for rocket travel to the American public. Also unlike Oberth,

Heinlein was not looking to acquire research funds. He was, however, a

strong advocate for developing rocket travel in America. He held member-

ship in several rocket societies, such as the Pacific Rocket Society, and had

published several short stories and novels based on space travel. Although

he received financial compensation for his script and his technical assis-

tance, the film provided him an opportunity to advocate not only ideas

about the viability of space flight itself but also to visually explicate the rea-

sons for going into space. In fact, this one technology advocate fundamen-

tally created a new genre – the space film. Before Destination Moon there

were no preconceived expectations of what a space movie should look like.

Heinlein’s influence over the look of Destination Moon, his emphasis on

realism and believability, and his anxiety about beating the Soviets into

space shaped this new genre for the next 20 years.

According to Heinlein, the key to the film’s rhetorical power was its

adherence to scientific veracity, and his correspondence shows a consistent

insistence that the film-makers approach the film as if they were planning a

real trip to the Moon. Based on his archival material, I would argue that

Heinlein had multiple reasons for insisting upon verisimilitude, all of which

were in line with his belief that cinema was a legitimate and powerful means

for promoting a vision of space travel. First, as a ‘hard’ science fiction author

Heinlein thought it would be intellectually dishonest to make a space-based

fictional text and disregard scientific accuracy.

In addition, he felt that it

58 Social Studies of Science 40/1

would be deceitful of the film-makers to publicize the film as ‘realistic’ if

they did not make a sincere effort to adhere to scientific principles.

Fundamentally, Heinlein believed that scientific realism was the key to

the film’s box-office success – something film-makers and financial backers

wanted to hear. Heinlein conveyed his belief in realism’s box office benefit

through various memos and letters:

If people believe in our picture emotionally, accept it as real while they

are seeing it, it will be a success – a box office success. … Those who see

it will tell others what a wonderful, thrilling, out-of-this-world experience

it was – ‘My dear, you have no idea! They actually made you feel that you

were on the Moon!’

Heinlein also recognized that a scientifically accurate film would generate

significant positive publicity within scientific circles and that it would be a

picture ‘the New York Times science editor would praise … and that scien-

tists would commend publicly’. He also worried that an unrealistic film

would lead to negative publicity from scientists and teenage audiences

because he ‘knows what the “hep kids in the first six rows” like’. Box office

success meant that the largest possible audience would witness Heinlein’s

diegetic prototype.

For Heinlein, accurate representations spoke for themselves. A scien-

tifically accurate film was ‘truthful’, thus; it was a legitimate promotional

tool and not propaganda. As an ardent anti-communist and staunch liber-

tarian, Heinlein was sensitive to the charge of sloganeering and propagan-

dizing. Despite the fact that the film reeks of propaganda to present-day

viewers, he believed at the time that the film’s message was subtle. Heinlein

was adamant that ‘reality’ was the key to political transparency. He warns

film-makers on several occasions that the ‘one purpose of this picture is to

show what free men and free enterprise can do – but such an effect can

never be achieved by blatant propaganda. It must be handled gently.

Specifically, we must not say it, we must show it.’

Space travel on the screen had to be based on ‘genuine’ science and

engineering; not science in the service of political motives. The only way an

audience would support space endeavours was if the audience believed that

the space flight in the film was actually possible.

Heinlein felt that audiences could ‘sense’ when something was authen-

tic. Therefore, he approached the making of the film as if he were model-

ling an actual trip to the Moon. Like Underkoffler, Oberth and other

successful science consultants, Heinlein approached this film project with

the attitude that the film’s fictional nature was irrelevant. Heinlein’s

archival material contains dozens of pages of hand calculations for every

technical aspect of the cinematic space flight including the mass-ratio, jet

speed, trajectory times and the fuel requirements. As he explained ‘none of

these calculations would appear on screen but the results do’ (Heinlein,

1992 [1950]: 129). Similar to Hermann Oberth, he viewed the most cru-

cial aspect of the film as the technical detail of the take-off, flight and land-

ing on the Moon. Heinlein was so concerned about these scenes that he

Kirby: The Future is Now 59

generated a lengthy letter to the George Pal and production supervisor

Martin Eisenberg entitled ‘The Care and Feeding of Spaceships’, which

was to provide them with technical details ‘in case I should be hit by a taxi,

go to jail, or otherwise be unavailable’.

He complained during James

O’Hanlon’s script re-write that he ‘was assured repeatedly that the part of

the picture from takeoff to the end had not and would not be tampered

with’. As with Oberth, Heinlein believed that the reputation of space flight

as a serious scientific endeavour was at stake and he could not afford

for the film to be sloppy or lenient with the technical details. Unlike

Underkoffler, Heinlein could not afford to let any technical ‘flaws’ appear

in the film, even ones that could add to the technology’s realism.

Despite believing that these technical details would ‘feel’ authentic,

Heinlein was concerned that audiences would not grasp the scientific prin-

ciples well enough to actually believe the cinematic trip to the Moon was

‘authentic’. His initial script treatment contains side notes to co-screen-

writer Rip Van Ronkel expressing this concern:

I have a mild fear that, in attempting to maintain good story and strong

drama, we may be skipping over explanations necessary in understanding

the issues on which our drama is based. In a Western, one does not have to

explain steers, revolvers, lariats, nor branding irons – whereas we are prac-

tically forced to explain acceleration, reaction, planet vs. star, vacuum, free

flight, et cetera ad nauseam. Sad but true.

(emphasis in original)

To quickly educate the audience on complex technical principels, Heinlein

recommended several didactic elements, which while common now, were

groundbreaking at the time including expository dialogue, lecture scenes

and, most famously, the use of a Woody Woodpecker ‘animated movie’, all

of which appeared in the final film (see Fig. 4).

The studio did not immediately embrace Heinlein’s commitment to film

realism. At the time, cowboys and musicals sold movies seats; not science lec-

tures. The film-makers hired veteran script doctor James O’Hanlon to add

elements with box office appeal. O’Hanlon radically altered Heinlein and Rip

Van Ronkel’s original screenplay by adding several sure fire movie staples of

the period, including comedy, musical interludes and cowboys. The film’s

financial backers, including N. Peter Rathvon, preferred O’Hanlon’s version

of the script because it included elements they knew would make it prof-

itable. Heinlein was furious when he saw the O’Hanlon re-write. He spent

‘five days of unrelenting toil’ composing a memo that he fired off to Rathvon

and George Pal. He rants that their profit motives would be better served by

spending money on the rocket and special effects. He tells them that in this

script their money is needlessly spent on extraneous elements ‘at the expense

of that part of the picture on which it was agreed that money would be spent,

to wit, the special effects needed to give it authenticity. We skimp the space

ship to put in a dude ranch, a horse, a barbeque pit!’

Heinlein’s lengthy memo is a scathing critique of the script. While he

points out the script’s factual inaccuracies, he aims most of his criticisms

at the additions of fantastical elements to the plot, such as the singing

60 Social Studies of Science 40/1

cowboys. He knew that these clearly fictional elements would, by proxim-

ity, cast doubt upon the legitimacy of the cinematic space flight. The addi-

tion of a musical interlude, for example, created too great a disconnection

from the real world and thus threatened the believability of the space flight.

He complains, ‘We put the audience into a musical comedy farce mood,

where anything goes, when we are about to try and get them to believe in

a trip to the Moon.’

He also understood that any money budgeted

towards barbeque pits and dude ranches would detract from the money

allocated to the space trip itself. In a later memo Heinlein sums up his

belief that the audience’s acceptance of the space flight scenario depended

on their buying into the entire film:

There is to my mind, a basic criterion which should be axiomatic in deal-

ing with this picture: if the audience believes emotionally that they are

making a trip to the Moon while they are seeing this picture, the picture

will be a success, financially and other ways. If they don’t, we’re a flop.

Heinlein successfully argued for the removal of every fantastical element.

His strong comments as science consultant wiped out an entire script

which the film’s funders were keen on producing. Ultimately, the final film-

ing script looked nothing like the O’Hanlon script because the director

‘removed practically every objection I had to its predecessor’.

Even if the technical details were completely accurate, Heinlein under-

stood that the film would not be successful as a promotional tool for

Kirby: The Future is Now 61

FIGURE 4

Heinlein recommended that film-makers incorporate several didactic elements in

Destination Moon to explain complex ideas to the audience, such as through a

Woody Woodpecker cartoon as seen in this film still

rocketry research unless it engaged the audience at every level. Heinlein

influenced the narrative so as to remove elements that portrayed the trip as

risky, such as a meteor shower originally in the O’Hanlon script.

He was

also able to enhance narrative elements to make the Moon trip appear to

be a necessary and highly desirable future. He inserted dialogue that pro-

vided several justifications why a trip to the Moon would be advantageous

including mineral deposits, scientific progress, and industrial patents. Most

importantly, Heinlein believed that a trip to the Moon was essential for mil-

itary reasons and his dialogue became part of the national rhetoric of the

era.

In one scene, the General tells a group of industrialists that it is a

matter of national security for America to be the first on the Moon:

The reason is quite simple. We are not the only ones who know that the

Moon can be reached. We’re not the only ones who are planning to go

there.The race is on, and we’d better win it, because there is absolutely no

way to stop an attack from outer space. The first country that can use the

Moon for the launching of missiles will control the Earth. That, gentle-

men, is the most important military fact of this century.

Publicity material for the film also highlighted the military necessity of a

Moon trip with several articles addressing the topic including one entitled

‘Must America Engage in a Race to the Moon in Self-defense?’

The film’s

meticulously constructed diegetic prototype effectively enhanced Heinlein’s

cinematic argument about the Moon’s military importance. If the film could

convince American audiences that their scientists could make it to the Moon,

it also needed to convince them that America’s enemies could as well.

Judging from reviews of the film, Heinlein was successful in conveying

both the excitement of space travel and its military necessity.

Bosley

Crowther (1950) of the New York Times, for example, states, ‘They make a

lunar expedition a most intriguing and picturesque event.’ Crowther also

singles out the military rhetoric as particularly convincing, claiming, ‘It is

arresting to hear an eloquent scientist proclaim that the first nation which

can use the moon for launching missiles will control the earth.’ The inter-

vention of real-world events heightened the effectiveness of the film’s rhet-

oric. As if to underscore Heinlein’s argument, the 1950 adaptation of

Destination Moon on NBC’s radio program Dimension X was actually inter-

rupted by a news bulletin stating that North Korea had just invaded South

Korea.

Not only were communists on our doorstep, they were threaten-

ing to invade the heavens as well.

Despite Heinlein’s belief that his film was legitimate promotion of space

flight, it was certainly viewed as propaganda by the Soviets who considered

Destination Moon and subsequent space-based films such as When Worlds

Collide (1951) and Red Planet Mars (1952) as attempts to scare Americans

into space. One Soviet journalist even claimed that the American

Department of Defense created the films in order to ‘propagandize the idea

of conquering the universe’ (Anonymous, 1954). Of course, Heinlein was

correct in stating that Soviet scientists also were aiming for the Moon. It was

62 Social Studies of Science 40/1

not just American scientists who understood cinema’s rhetorical power.

Futuristic Soviet space films such as Planeta Bur [Cosmonauts on Venus]

(1962) employed several science consultants, including astrophysicist

Aleksandr Vladimirovich Markov. While a film such as Doroga k Zvezdam

[Road to the Stars] (1958) inspired Soviet audiences with its depictions of

colonies on the Moon and Mars, these same scenes caused ‘heavy breath-

ing’ among American audiences (Thompson, 1958). One audience’s shiny

spaceship future is another audience’s impending doom.

Diegetic Prototypes After the Moon: Missions to Mars

and Beyond in Cinema

It is tempting to view the experiences of Hermann Oberth, Robert Heinlein

and others on these space-based films as relics of a bygone era where film-

making was a much simpler process. Such a view would not only be igno-

rant of film-making’s history, it would also discount the fact that scientists

still promote space travel through cinema. From 1920 when Robert

Goddard advised Max Fleischer on the combination animation–live action

short movie All Aboard for the Moon to NASA’s involvement in recent films

such as Space Cowboys (2000) and Sunshine (2007), scientists and film-

makers have worked on space travel films for more than 80 years as a means

of promoting outer space futures.

Even with space travel successes in the 1960s, culminating with the

moon landing in 1969, scientists still considered fictional films as a useful

vehicle for popularizing space ventures. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a classic

example of cinema creating expectations for space travel, as well as other

technologies, with more than 65 private companies, government agencies,

universities and research institutions providing free advice and material

objects for the opportunity of shaping technological visions in a highly

anticipated film about the future. They happily shared information on

future designs for the chance to have ‘pre-product placements’ which estab-

lished their brand as ‘futuristic’ in this high profile film.

The film – created with the assistance of scientists, engineers and futur-

ists – contextualized space travel for audiences in the same manner that

Fritz Lange’s Woman in the Moon (1929) and George Pal’s Destination Moon

(1950) had done in previous eras. Unlike those two films, however, 2001

did not establish the technological capabilities and societal necessity of

space travel. Manned space flights had been taking place since 1961. What

2001 did was contextualize for audiences the cultural and social potential

of space travel. 2001’s vision of space travel with its space stations, trans-

port shuttles to the Moon and interplanetary space ships is still influential

(McCurdy, 1997).

Outside of an institutional context, diegetic prototypes can still help indi-

vidual scientists involved in space science. The Disney film Mission to Mars

(2000) served as a high profile platform for Robert Zubrin’s Mars Direct

plan (Kirby, 2003a).There is no obvious reason to spend public money on a

Kirby: The Future is Now 63

clearly risky manned mission to Mars. Film-makers brought in physicist

Robert Zubrin, president of the engineering firm Pioneer Astronautics and

founder and president of the Mars Society, to help them design a ‘plausible’

plan for colonizing Mars. The filmmakers also used his book as a model for

the mission and several scenes of the colonization modules appear as near

identical to images from Zubrin’s book (see Fig. 5). Given the incredible

expense involved in developing space-based technologies, Mission to Mars

was the most effective form of advocacy Robert Zubrin could have hoped for.

Not only was Zubrin paid for the rights to develop a cinematic version of his

Mars Direct plan, he also received all the advantages associated a diegetic

prototype. He was able to demonstrate to the public and other scientists that

a trip to Mars was desirable and that his Mars Direct plan could work suc-

cessfully without serious incident. As with Underkoffler, Oberth and

Heinlein, Zubrin gained these benefits because he took his diegetic prototype

seriously and planned it as if it were a real, not fictional, space trip.

Conclusions: Technological Development, Diegetic

Prototypes and Happy Endings

In her influential study of science fiction films and American culture,

Screening Science, Vivian Sobchack (1987) regards space films of the 1950s

as a form of technology worship. According to Sobchack (1987: 69–70),

films such as Destination Moon and WhenWorlds Collide (1951) ‘visually cel-

ebrate the spaceship and dwell on its surfaces with a caressive photographic

64 Social Studies of Science 40/1

FIGURE 5

This film still from Mission to Mars looks remarkably similar to an illustration from

Robert Zubrin’s (1996) book The Case For Mars

wonder which precludes any ambiguous interpretation of its essential

worth’. Sobchack singles out Conquest of Space (1955) ‘with its lavish treat-

ment of takeoffs, maneuverings, and landings’ as a particularly blatant form

of technological worship (p. 70), but she overlooks the fact that it is not only

film-makers who are worshipping at this altar. Conquest of Space’s science

consultants, including Chesley Bonestell, Robert Richardson and Werner

Von Braun, significantly helped in creating these take-off and landing scenes

because they had an enormous stake in establishing the ‘essential worth’ of

space travel. Movies have provided many film-makers and scientists with the

opportunity to create diegetic prototypes establishing the necessity, viability

and minimization of risk associated with space travel.

These films then served as promotional tools for other scientists and sci-

entific organizations who used the films, or at least the technical parts, to

bolster their own lectures. Such public showings offered the public glimpses

of a future that could happen. Hermann Oberth and the VfR were so suc-

cessful in creating a sense of future possibilities that film stills from Woman

in the Moon were routinely used as illustrations in journals and magazines

until the 1950s (Geppert, 2007). Film footage was also spliced into several

research films, and one such film was shown by the British Interplanetary

Society in the War Office at Whitehall (Gatland, 1948, 1950). Likewise,

it is telling that the only two films shown at the ground-breaking First

International Astronautical Congress in Paris in 1950 were a film of V-2

launches at the White Sands missile range and Destination Moon.

These

films gave the collected experts a vision of the present state of rocketry and

a vision of where they wanted rocketry to be in the future. We have ample

evidence from social studies of science and technology that space travel films

made a difference; they were extremely successful in exciting the public and

other scientists about the possibility of space travel (see, for example,

Neufeld, 1990; Bainbridge, 1991; Freeman, 1993; McCurdy, 1997; Penley,

1997; Billings, 2007; Geppert, 2007; Franklin, 2008; Telotte, 2008).

The utility of the diegetic prototype may be most evident through

space films, but their advantages are certainly not limited to this technol-

ogy. Brett Leonard and John Underkoffler’s diegetic prototypes of embry-

onic computer-based technologies directly resulted in funding

opportunities and the ability to construct real-life prototypes. Audiences

could see with their own eyes ‘real’ people effortlessly interacting with these

futuristic computer technologies in The Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity,

Minority Report, Paycheck, Iron Man and other computer-based films.

Underkoffler, in fact, felt that the potential of cinema for technological

development should be brought into the scientific and design community.

After Minority Report Underkoffler and Production Designer Alex

McDowell helped to form an organization called MATTER Art and

Science, whose objective is to transfer the creative methods of cinema into

scientific and engineering work. For MATTER Art and Science every

potential technology should be treated as a diegetic prototype. This allows

them to map out the social, political, economic and practical possibilities of

a technology before it is even considered for development.

Kirby: The Future is Now 65

The presentation of science within the cinematic framework can con-

vince audiences of the validity of ideas and create public excitement about

nascent technologies. Fiction’s lack of constraints and film-makers’ creative

assistance provides an open, ‘free’ space to put forward speculative concep-

tualizations; it also embeds these speculations within a narrative that treats

these ideas as already actualized within a social context.The key to cinematic

diegetic prototypes is that they allow scientists and film-makers to visualize

specific methods and technologies within the social realm of the fictional

world. Film-makers and/or scientists can use the narrative and visual frame-

work of cinema to contextualize and model potential futures for their partic-

ular technology whether it be medical, computer or space-based. Cinema

provided an ideal vehicle for establishing a technology’s necessity, its viability

and its benevolence within society. It is Robert Jarvik’s artificial heart func-

tioning perfectly on the screen, Brett Leonard’s and John Underkoffler’s

computer-based technologies, and Hermann Oberth’s and Robert Heinlein’s

visions of space travel. Disney’s Touchstone Pictures provided Robert Zubrin

with the opportunity to show the public that his Mars Direct plan could work

and the narrative provided reasons why the public should want it to work. For

any science consultant who is trying to get funding for their un-developed

technology diegetic prototypes allow for ‘happy endings’.

Notes

I want to thank audiences and commentators at the 2007 Science and the Public

Conference and the 2008 Society for History of Technology (SHOT) Conference for helpful

comments. I also wish thank James Sumner, Jeff Hughes, Ray Macauley, Paul Marshall

and other members of the History of the Physical Sciences and Technology reading group

at the University of Manchester for useful feedback. Three anonymous reviewers provided

invaluable suggestions, which have improved the work substantially. A debt of gratitude

is particularly owed to Laura Gaither, who read and commented on many versions of

this manuscript.

1. James Cameron’s speech to the Mars Society can be found at <www.spaceforum.com/

articles/Cameron_Mars.doc> (accessed 22 April 2009).

2. On the concept of virtual witnessing see Shapin and Schaffer (1985).

3. All quotes from Brett Leonard come from Brett Leonard, phone interview by David

Kirby, 8 February 2009.

4. For the producers it was crucial to maintain a tie to the original story so they could use

Stephen King’s name in publicity. The official title of the film was Stephen King’s The

Lawnmower Man and King’s name was used heavily in marketing the film. King

unsuccessfully sued to have his name removed from the film (see Winteringham, 1994).

5. All quotes from Alex McDowell come from Alex McDowell, interview by David Kirby,

London, UK, 17 January 2005.

6. All quotes from John Underkoffler come from John Underkoffler, interview by David

Kirby, Los Angeles, CA, 25 March 2005. In addition to his work on the interactive

technologies Underkoffler was also responsible for developing the ‘predictive

surveillance’ technologies depicted in the film. According to Underkoffler, many of

these technologies have advanced further than what was predicted in the film, which for

him represents a disturbing development:

We have a lot of biometric stuff and iris scanners in the film. It turns out that iris

scanning is a lot more reliable than retina scanning. Officially speaking our Minority

Report scanners were iris scanners. Unfortunately, the US in particular, especially in

66 Social Studies of Science 40/1

the wake of 9/11, is starting to veer towards the panopticon society depicted in the

film. So, the film accidently became really, really prescient. In the movie the notion

was that this was by virtue of out of control consumerism.There was a desire on the

part of vendors and manufacturers to track one’s every move so that you could be

appropriately advertised to. Instead in the name of security we are seeing the same

kinds of civil liberties dissolving. Still, in that case that stuff is happening much

faster than we said in the film.

Despite its role in influencing the development of these technologies, Minority Report

ultimately conveys the same cautionary message shared by much of science fiction

cinema by warning against excessive trust in technology.

7. There are several news accounts of Raytheon’s acquisition of this technology (see, for

example, Karp, 2005). Underkoffler’s real-world prototype can be seen in CNN’s

coverage of the technology. Available at <www.g-speak.com/press/cnn-gspeak-

19apr2005.avi> (accessed 22 April 2009).

8. See Ufa Press Release (1929), ‘Die Ufa Meldet’, 21 September, in the Willy Ley Papers,

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, DC.

9. Information and quotes in this paragraph come from an undated manuscript in which

Willy Ley recounts the making of the film. Willy Ley (date unknown) ‘Frau Im Mond,

A Film by Fritz Lang’, in the Willy Ley Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives,

Washington, DC.

10. Quoted in Ufa Invitation (1929) ‘Ufa Programm Frau Im Mond’, 15 October, in the

Willy Ley Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, DC.

11. See Ley, Willy (date unknown) ‘Frau Im Mond, A Film by Fritz Lang’, in the Willy Ley

Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, DC.

12. Ley indicates that Oberth returned to Berlin for the World Premiere of the film on

15 October 1929.

13. Summaries of film reviews can be found in Kaplan (1981). Most reviewers dismissed

the story as fluff but all were impressed with the technology on display.

14. Several scholars mistakenly attribute the film’s science consulting to Hermann Oberth

(see, for example, Frayling, 2005 and Vieth, 2001). Oberth was living in Switzerland

and Italy in 1949–1950 and did not work on the film.

15. For example, in one memo he tells film-makers that good storytelling requires scientific

authenticity, saying that ‘there is a way to please the overwhelming majority – by telling

an honest story honestly, by being careful of little details, by not assuming that the

audience is too dumb to catch you when you pull a phony on them’. Robert A. Heinlein

(1949) ‘Critique of the James O’Hanlon Script’, Memorandum from Robert A.

Heinlein to producer George Pal and financier N. Peter Rathvon, 18 September in the

Robert A Heinlein Archive, University of Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, Special

Collections, Box 19.

16. Heinlein emphasizes in several memos that the film can benefit from his publicity

contacts but only if it is scientifically authentic. In one case he tells Pal and Rathvon

that his book publisher is willing to promote the film ‘provided it maintains the same

high standards of technical accuracy as do my books. The proviso is important.’ Robert

A. Heinlein (1949) ‘The Care and Feeding of Spaceships’, Memorandum from Robert

A. Heinlein to producer George Pal and production supervisor Martin Eisenberg, 30

September in the Robert A Heinlein Archive, University of Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz,

CA, Special Collections, Box 19.

17. All quotes in this and subsequent paragraph come from Robert A. Heinlein (1949)

‘Critique of the James O’Hanlon Script’.

18. This and subsequent quote from Robert A. Heinlein (1949) ‘The Care and Feeding of

Spaceships’.

19. Quoted in Robert A. Heinlein (1948) ‘Initial Script Treatment for Operation: Moon’, in

the Robert A. Heinlein Archive, University of Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, Special

Collections, Box 19.

20. Heinlein had suggested the use of Elmer Fudd and Buck Rogers, but George Pal was a

personal friend of Walter Lantz, the creator of Woody Woodpecker.

Kirby: The Future is Now 67

21. Quoted in Robert A. Heinlein (1949) ‘Critique of the James O’Hanlon Script’.

22. Ibid.

23. Quoted in Heinlein (1949) ‘The Care and Feeding of Spaceships’.

24. Ibid.

25. Heinlein worried that such a scene would overstate the likelihood of a meteor hitting a

spaceship while it was on the Moon: ‘This is a question of probability. It could happen –

but it is just as likely as the possibility that a meteor will hit your parked car and keep you

from going home tonight’ (Heinlein [1949] ‘Critique of the James O’Hanlon Script’).

26. Heinlein believed that the military argument for developing space travel was so essential

that he fought throughout the production to keep this dialogue in the screenplay.

A letter from his collaborator Rip Van Ronkel shows how one potential financier was

concerned about how this dialogue would go over in foreign markets: ‘Pal’s oil company

contact out here insisted that his company would not go for the war stuff nor would

they ever accept even veiled references to Russia’ (emphasis in original). Alford Van

Ronkel (1949) ‘Letter to R.A. Heinlein’, 15 February, in the Robert A Heinlein Archive,

University of Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, Special Collections, Box 19. Although the

military angle survived through several script revisions, Heinlein continually found

himself arguing for the importance of this dialogue. In one instance, he responds to a

producer’s concern that the Russians may not respond well to the inclusion of this

dialogue by arguing, ‘I think the military angle is important and I think it is too late to

worry about what Russia thinks about it’ (emphasis in original). Heinlein (1949)

‘Critique of the James O’Hanlon Script’.

27. See George Pal Productions (1950) ‘Must America Engage in a Race to the Moon in

Self-Defense?’, Facts About Destination Moon, press kit, in the George Pal Papers,

UCLA, Arts Library Special Collections, Los Angeles, CA, Box 1.

28. Heinlein was clearly correct about realism selling the picture. Destination Moon was on

the NewYork Times’ ten best pictures of 1950 and it was the third highest grossing film

of 1950.

29. The radio adaptation was broadcast on 24 June 1950.

30. See Eric Burgess (1997) ‘Paris, 1950, First International Astronautical Congress’, from

the Record of the Formation and First Decade of the International Astronautical

Federation and its Annual Congresses. CD in the Eric Burgess papers, Manchester, UK.

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David A. Kirby was a practicing evolutionary geneticist before leaving

bench science to become Lecturer in Science Communication Studies at the

University of Manchester. Several of his publications address the relationship

between cinema, genetics and biotechnology including essays in New

Literary History, Literature and Medicine, and Science Fiction Studies. He is

also exploring the collaboration between scientists and the entertainment

industry with publications in Social Studies of Science and Public

Understanding of Science. He has just completed a book manuscript on the

subject of science consultants in Hollywood entitled Lab Coats in Hollywood:

Scientists’ Impact on Cinema, Cinema’s Impact on Science and Technology.

Address: Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine,

University of Manchester, Simon Building, Manchester M16 9WD, UK;

e-mail: david.kirby@manchester.ac.uk

70 Social Studies of Science 40/1

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Weimar Culture and Futuristic Technology: The Rocketry and Spaceflight Fad in Germany, 1923-1933

Article

Full-text available

Oct 1990

Michael Neufeld

Yesterday's Tomorrows

Book

Jan 1996

Joseph Corn

...the Heavens and the Earth

Book

Jan 1997

Walter McDougall

Machines in Our Hearts

Book

Jan 2003

Kirk Jeffrey

Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space

Book

Jan 2003

De Witt Douglas Kilgore

War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination.

Article

Jul 1989

Animating Space: Disney, Science, and Empowerment

Article

Mar 2008

Jay Telotte

One of the pleasures of animation, it has been argued, is that it affords viewers a sense of power over the everyday, thanks to its ability to bring into being a world unrestrained by the conventions of realism or of probability. This principle is one that Walt Disney not only well understood, but also brought to bear in his studio's early foray into the realms of science and science fiction, the "Man in Space" programs created for the Disneyland television series during the 1950s. In these shows, produced against a backdrop of popular media science fiction that was clearly colored by the anxieties and uncertainties of the Cold War and its threat of atomic holocaust, Disney employed his studio's strength in animation to create a new context for these science-related issues, one that allowed for safe speculation about the future, while reframing some of the more disturbing or intractable problems as science fiction, thereby reassuring viewers and offering them a sense of power over the contingencies of their world.

Astrofuturism: Science, race, and visions of Utopia in space

Article

Jan 2003

W.D. De Kilgore

Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space is the first full-scale analysis of an aesthetic, scientific, and political movement that sought the amelioration of racial difference and social antagonisms through the conquest of space. Drawing on the popular science writing and science fiction of an eclectic group of scientists, engineers, and popular writers, De Witt Douglas Kilgore investigates how the American tradition of technological utopianism responded to the political upheavals of the twentieth century. Founded in the imperial politics and utopian schemes of the nineteenth century, astrofuturism envisions outer space as an endless frontier that offers solutions to the economic and political problems that dominate the modern world. Its advocates use the conventions of technological and scientific conquest to consolidate or challenge the racial and gender hierarchies codified in narratives of exploration. Because the icon of space carries both the imperatives of an imperial past and the d mocratic hopes of its erstwhile subjects, its study exposes the ideals and contradictions endemic to American culture. Kilgore argues that in the decades following the Second World War the subject of race became the most potent signifier of political crisis for the predominantly white and male ranks of astrofuturism. In response to criticism inspired by the civil rights movement and the new left, astrofuturists imagined space frontiers that could extend the reach of the human species and heal its historical wounds. Their work both replicated dominant social presuppositions and supplied the resources necessary for the critical utopian projects that emerged from the antiracist, socialist, and feminist movements of the twentieth century. This survey of diverse bodies of literature conveys the dramatic and creative syntheses that astrofuturism envisions between people and machines, social imperatives and political hope, physical knowledge and technological power. Bringing American studies, utopian literature, popular conceptions of race and gender, and the cultural study of science and technology into dialogue, Astrofuturism will provide scholars of American culture, fans of science fiction, and readers of science writing with fresh perspectives on both canonical and cutting-edge astrofuturist visions.

the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age

Article

Apr 1986

Goals in Space: American Values and the Future of Technology.

Article

Dec 1992

The Future Is Now: Diegetic Prototypes and the Role of Popular Films in Generating Real-World Technological Development

Abstract and Figures

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