Home
Map

The President's Analyst

1967

(What's this copyright notice?)

Part of the plot revolves around interaction of the government and the public with a large mythical monopoly that completely dominates the supply of telephone services in the US -- called, appropriately, "The Phone Company." Sound like anyone we knew in the 60s and early 70s?

Toward the end of the movie, TPC kidnaps the President's analyst by remotely locking him in a roadside phone booth, then dispatching a truck to replace the entire booth and take him (still in the booth) to their operations center. There they try to entice him to support their efforts to get the government to back the implementation of their Cerebrum Communicator project. It sounded really bizarre when the movie was new, but with today's cell phones and computers, we seem to be well along another path to the same end. Here's part of the rationale (supported by appropriate visuals in the movie):

Do you have any idea how much your phone company spends just in maintenence?

No, I never really thought about that.

Well, I guess many people don't.
But those billions of miles of wire and all those exchanges...
Why just the maintenance on our thousands of offices and buildings...
And that's not even to mention our rolling stock -- the cars, trucks, airplanes and satellites.
And then all those fine people who are actually on the payroll to take care of all that.

Now, wouldn't it be just grand if we could get rid of all that old-fashioned hardware?

And there's another thing that's going to come as a surprise to you. There are quite a few people who actually dislike "The Phone Company." And because of this irrational dislike of their own publicly-owned company, they often don't pay their bills and sometimes even damage the equipment.

[There follows a description of The Cerebrum Communicator ("CC"), a small electronic device, about the size of a printed period (.) that is injected into the bloodstream and lodges in the brain. It provides all standard telephone functions, plus a lot of new features -- without the wires, exchanges, buildings, people, etc. The monologue continues...]

Can you imagine the ease, the fun, with which you can place a call? Why all you have to do is think the number of the person you wish to speak to and you're in instant communication -- anywhere in the world.

... Congress will have to pass a law substituting personal numbers for names as the only legal identification, and requiring a pre-natal insertion of the Cerebrum Communicator. Then a communication tax could be levied and paid directly to "The Phone Company."

If it's still on YouTube, you can view the clip here

When this movie was made, wired phone service was the norm. "Mobile phones" were available, but only to the rich.
The movie poked fun at the negative reaction of switching to all digit dialing -- "depersonalizing" the phone experience.

Fortunately, we now have computerized voice recognition, so we can keep our names after the implant goes in!

In addition, with integral GPS, they'll always know where we are!

Please send comments or photos of your favorite phones to: