Of time machines and telly
History is best viewed from the comfort of one’s armchair, writes David Slack.
From a distance, say, Shanghai or Frankfurt, New Zealanders seem more or less the same. Friendly, a bit awkward. Like to dress in black. Won’t shut up about sport. Say ‘‘sweet as’’ for no apparent reason.
But look more closely and you begin to find differences: Marmite or Vegemite. How we say Taupo. Whether we think David Bain did it or not.
Once again we’re talking about him. When were we ever not? Will it ever end? Lundy, Watson, OJ, all of them. What happened to Scott Guy? What is a ketch? The mysteries gnaw at us.
I keep saying: if I had a time machine, first thing I’d do is go back and fid out what happened. Who shot the Crewes? Who killed the Bains?
People reply: ‘‘That’s what you’d do? With a time machine? Hang around murder scenes? Wouldn’t you start by killing Hitler?’’ Well of course. We all want to do that. And not gently or kindly, and maybe a lot like after that dungeon scene in Pulp Fiction.
But you can’t. You step on a butterfly as you get out of the time machine, and when you get back here, you find Kim Kardashian is president. That’s how time machines work. The year 2016 is bad enough already, not counting what the Chiefs might still do.
So I don’t want a time machine to travel in, I want a time machine that feeds into a TV channel and shows us everything that ever happened. The lot, right there on the screen, for us to watch with our feet up. The Real History Channel.
I love a history channel, even though it’s always just World War II with a bit of Henry VIII and Mata Hari.
Real History might sound dull, but that’s what I thought
Periscope, because it’s boring life in real time, tells the truth. I expect my Real History Channel would do the same.
about Periscope when I first loaded it up.
People use Periscope to film whatever they’re doing, and they broadcast it on the internet. I feared it would be people sharing their daily lives, minute by ordinary minute, but in fact I was delighted to find it was people sharing their daily lives, minute by ordinary minute.
Take a look! It’s way more fun than Facebook. Who needs all those photos of holidays and parties that press your nose up against the window of somebody’s happier life? Those people, they never shut up about their kids.
Periscope, because it’s boring life in real time, tells the truth. I expect my Real History channel would do the same. And of course, it would solve murder mysteries. Los Angeles 1994. Where’s OJ? What’s he doing with those gloves? Petone foreshore, August 2000. Can we see a lumpy guy in his car reading a book? What happens next?
It’s easy to be breezy about this but I have to ask myself: would I look? Could I actually watch sustained, real horror?
If you think you can take it, this kind of thing is only a few clicks away, all the way down to ISIS. Boy, do you ever want to believe that’s not real.
But it is. So much blood, so much horror. Humanity, what are you? If you’re in law enforcement, if you’re in emergency services, if you’re at the sharp end, you know the answer to that question and it is: ‘‘not so great’’ .
If your job was to lock up the killer and you had footage available on my imaginary-but-maybe-one-day-entirely-possible TV channel, could you actually watch all the horror? Surely you would, for the undeniable proof, for the certainty of getting the killer behind bars.
I can also imagine it would scar you. But I daresay the job is already doing that to you and, really, we can’t salute you enough for taking it.
Could this technology ever happen? Why not? This is such a time of discovery and brainy science we live in. Driverless cars! Robot vacuum cleaners! Netflix!
But consider this, world. Every single embarrassing thing that you and I and everybody else has ever done would be there on screen for anyone and everyone to watch. Are we ready for this, even slightly?
If your glass is often half full or more, it might feel hugely liberating. No more secrets! It could change the way we live.
Or maybe we might just prefer to go back to buying pints in the pub and debating whodunnit.
@DavidSlack