20 minutes into the future, a virtual celebrity powered by cutting edge AI pairs up with the investigative journalist that provided the brainscan that powers that AI to solve the most future of mysteries, this is the history of Max Headroom.
Specifically this episode is about the US version of the Max Headroom TV show, which ran for two seasons from 1987 through to 1988. We're going to be giving the first episode of season 2 some particular attention as well as discussing some of the characters and themes.o
Matt Frewer plays intrepid reporter Edison Carter and, with the help of makeup, prosthetics, special lighting and greenscreen, his digital trickster counterpart Max Headroom.
In the future TV networks are tech giants that essentially function as totalitarian corporate government and broadcast TV is the absolute dominant medium. Edison Carter, working as a maverick investigative journalist for the biggest of the TV networks, Network 23, discovers that their new advertising technology "blipverts" is causing some viewers to spontaneously explode. When the network heads realize that Carter is aware of the cause of these mysterious deaths caused by "blipverts" they have him pursued, he crashes his motorbike in a parking garage and the last thing he sees is the sign "Max. headroom" on the garage gate.
To discover what Edison Carter knows about blipverts and who he has told the network has his brain scanned, this brainscan achieves full sentience and escapes, taking on the last thing Carter saw as it's name, Max Headroom.
This show has everything you might expect from an 80s cyberpunk inspired show, extreme sports, people trying to upload their consciousness, recordings of dreams sold as entertainment, advertising delivered via brain implants and of course hackers! Oh the hackers.
By 1987 in the US hackers were firmly engrained in pop culture, The TV show Whiz Kids, which we did a previous episode on, has been and gone, the movie Wargames has sparked an explosion in the hacker BBS scene and groups of hackers like the Dalton Gang, the 414s and the Inner Circle have had high profile arrests that featured in the news.
Hacking as portrayed in Max Headroom reminds me a little of modern video games like Watchdogs, it's a lot of line of sight wireframe represented device to wireframe represented device communication and terminal text continually scrolling on monitors.
Back to the actual Max Headroom show. Season 2 episode 1 is titled "Academy" and revolves around unknown people "zipping" Network 23's satellite signal broadcast feeds, "zipping" here meaning something between hijacking, interrupting and hacking, people who do this are known as "zippers". It is worth noting that two months after this episode aired the Chicago signal intrusion that we just looked at occurred.
Reg's televised trial for zipping in this episode also really reminds me of a TV friendly version of the satirical TV segments from the original Robocop movie and parts of the Ru
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