Fringeware
Electronic brain tools, the most commercially accessible of which is the Synchro Energizer. Patented in 1980 by the Cleveland bioresearcher Denis Gorges, the SE consists of a goggle lined on the inside with tiny lights, headphones that pulse with New Age music and a carrier tone.
The SE slips the user into a daydreamy theta state similar to relaxing presleep moments. Judith Hooper and Dick Teresi’s Would the Buddha Wear a Walkman? (1990) describes a plethora of such “consciousness tech”-contraptions like the Somatron, Graham Potentializer, the Tranquilite, Binaural Signal Generator, and Cerebrex.
Consciousness can also be expanded through psychological software,… Continue reading
Direct Satellite System
System for delivering crisp images and CD-quality sound to television viewers via a digital-signal broadcast, thus threatening cable. Also called DSS (Direct Satellite System), the orbiting satellite beams down a signal containing more than 140 television channels and 40 radio channels (although local programming is largely absent).
Each television program and movie is coded with a digital title that includes the show’s name, length, stars, and–shades of the V-chip–rating.
The first system was set aloft in a $750 million GM-RCA venture called DirecTV that has paid off handsomely, with more than half a million people signing up within the first… Continue reading